This methodology is great for me but it's proven fatal once a firm deadline is installed for when things must be finished and that's kind of what I've been working against this week. We have a big group meeting coming up, Part III of our almost-famous Reclamation Weekend, and certain materials have to be presented in a close to final form. I have several bits and pieces of projects started and not finished and some not even started and it's becoming more and more challenging to finish as the weekend approaches.
Normally this stress is invigorating to an extent. In fact I tend to put things off because the stress and pressure to get things finished by a certain time is extremely motivating and some studies have shown, may be necessary for me to finish things. I thrive on that stress to the point that if I get something done early or what I deem to be too easily, then I'm going to be unhappy with it. This is clearly unreasonable.
I guess I'm more worried about this weekend because it's so important. We're just past the halfway mark with this album and I know it's only going to get more busy as time goes on, so we really need to get a lot done this weekend. We have to. We want this album to be unlike anything we've worked on before, so getting together and recording in the same environment with the same equipment with a group atmosphere is imperative and I'm not sure we'll be able to get more than one more meeting before March. In fact here's the hypothetical Vegas over/under I just made up:
Total Number of Group Meetings (after 11/11/2012)
O/U: 1.5
We need these opportunities together more than I thought we would, which is great. It's going to improve chemistry, it's going to sound better, it's going to facilitate more and better decisions. But the downside is that it makes time more precious, which is frustrating. I just need to relax (which I won't) and calm down (which I can't) and just do as much as I can (which won't be enough) and trust that this weekend will work out (it will!!). I hope everyone is ready.
One final thing: I wanted to go into the weekend with a new beat in case we accidentally came across some extra time (we won't). During Reclamation Weekend: Part II (RWII), and during most our smaller get-togethers, we usually try making a new beat in the group and during RWII it didn't go well. It ended up frustrating me a lot, part of which was just me over-thinking everything, but part of it was justified, enough so that I wanted to maybe try something different this weekend (RWIII). Ideally, I would have an unfinished, skeleton of a beat that I would be almost 100% certain the group would like. I'm not good fucking horrible at knowing what everyone likes so this idea was sort of doomed from the start. I would have a clear idea of where the beat would go and maybe have parts of it roughed out, just not sequenced. From that we could all write to the beat together in the same room, which we haven't done in a while.
I was finally able to do this last night for a new Sample Pages beat. It's exciting for a couple of reasons:
- Finally a new Sample Pages beat
- The sample translated cleanly and evenly. No hiccups.
- I figured out a decent changeup of the main riff that was easy to do and (probably) works
- I love the song we're sampling (sorry, no peeking!!)
It's not exciting for a few more reasons:
- Like every beat I make, I don't know if the group is actually going to like it
- It's sort of a cousin to a Sample Pages beat I made about three years ago that we never could do anything with.
- I'm worried about the speed of it because I'm sure everyone will say it's too slow. When something's too slow and it's sampled based there's a lot of work involved, but I think it could be worth it. I just don't know if I should finish it as is or go ahead and change the temp of the samples and work from there.
Maybe we'll find out this weekend.
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