Although I haven’t spent much time in my actual studio this month (after a rough winter, the mere thought of the place conjures up memories of freezing air and stinky toilets), my gear has been getting a fair bit of play while set up cozily in my bedroom. I’ve tracked out rough versions of all the songs in my current set, which are now ready for tweaks to their arrangements before I record final takes and turn to mixing (all three of these steps will no doubt be much longer in practice than described, lol). I’ve been thinking about what I want my live set to be: what is worth simplifying, keeping, or eliminating.
After much trial and error in recent years, I’ve achieved some proficiency with my hardware and can generally make it do what I want it to these days (no small feat in my personal book). When I started out on the journey of creating the type of music that became Reliquary V (a process of ongoing development to be sure), I was inspired by super noisy, gritty hardware electronics performances that I saw all over Brooklyn in warehouses, basements and DIY venues. The recordings produced of this music (which take up a decent amount of space in my music collection) have a lot of the same noisy qualities.
As I begin to finally record my explorations in physical electronics and hear what I’ve created, I’ve been evaluating what I want these recordings to sound like. Now that I’m past the initial excitement of shaping the sounds and giving them the most straightforward structure, I want things to gel on a deeper level. It’s that phenomenon of gaining experience that in turn makes you feel less certain than when you knew less (“knowing what you don’t know”).
Although I wouldn’t exactly describe the process as fun, I would say that I am experienced enough by now to not get discouraged in these moments. I’m slowly figuring out the balance between the two extremes of perfectionism and overconfidence that have plagued me in various past incarnations. And most importantly, perhaps with the recent advent of Spring, I am letting go of the past in its many guises. As always, music is a ritual and sometimes a trial by which I move from one manifestation to another.