forgive me, tender reader, as Miss Manners might say...it is not my intent to offend or bruise anybody's ears, and i will try to choose my words well instead of abandoning myself to the sort of thing that is usually represented in type by alot of %$#%$^^&%!! and%^^**&*()*()&*()&*(____!! etc...but just know that it is all right here,
right on this lumpy chair with me...what the enemy has intended for evil i
will use for good.
within the last week i have received a couple of rejection letters from two separate publishers...this in and of itself is no big deal; i am fully aware that i am pretty much asking to get the crap beat out of me on a daily basis, for deciding to try and be any kind of legitimate
anything on my own, creatively, without the benefit of some windbag boss or faceless corporation telling me what to do. i
knew this going in...but that doesn't make it feel any better every time it happens. i was struck last night by the simliliarity between this and being in love with someone who is emotionally unavailable. you find yourself saying "Don't like this? How bout this?" alot, and feeling like that one squirrel in the movies who would sell his soul for the cookie...
i've been reasonably ok with all of that, dutifully picking myself up after each strafing and starting again. But these last two have flummoxed me a little.
To the uninitiated, understand first of all that i have, since the first of this year, been trying to capture something i've never seen or experienced before: a music publishing deal. it is a completely intangible concept to me right now, but it's what i want. for one thing, other people have been telling me for YEARS that it's what i want. every time i even look in a different direction someone who loves me says, "Oh no. what you want is a publishing deal. move to Nashville. get a publishing deal." i'm easily as impressionable and insecure as the next self-respecting co-dependent, so...OK!! that's what i'll do, by God.
Being an adult, i like to go about things in a somewhat methodical, step-by-step way. so i have read alot about publishing and demos and shopping material to the unseen almighty addresses in
The Songwriter's Market and elsewhere. i have tried to absorb every possible little nuance that will impart the gloss of professionalism, ready to cough it back up at the slightest provocation. my business cards and mailing labels match. my writing is legible. i spellcheck. i have stationery for God's sake. it's sickening.
and beyond all that packing material,
i write a good song these days. i am making it my official business to do that, because i thought that was the point.
The one area where i fall short, and where i am fully aware that i fall short, is an area called
production. specifically, the quality of my recording production has come increasingly under fire. i do not have anything resembling disposable income. in fact i do not have anything resembling income, but the tradeoff for that was time. to record demos, i must use the resources that i have available. what i have available is a digital recorder, a couple of good (not great) quality microphones, some decent powered monitors, 1 set of $99 dollar headphones, a nice piano, some guitars, assorted percussion toys and enough understanding of how things work to piss myself off on a daily basis. all these things and me are crammed into the basement of our house, next to the washer/dryer, and from this arrangement i have every confidence that one day some kind of twisty greatness is going to emerge.
me and about twelve million other people across this great deluded land. That is, until some invisible despot sends me a reply on
his nice stationery that "the downside to your submission is the manner in which it was recorded." then in the words of a friend, i want to throw my crotch across the room.
not because i think i'm a great recording engineer, because i am keenly aware that i am not. That's not what i have tried to get good at all my life, so it would follow that my production values stink.
what i have worked at is
songwriting. every trade paper, book, magazine article, and online dissertation i have read on the subject has emphasized a point to me, like a chorus of little canaries, which i thought was my friggin salvation: that being, when shopping for a publishing deal, production values are not a high priority, as long as the vocal is up front and well performed, and the backing instrumentation is simple and unobtrusive. i have been getting alot of compliments on my singing. Thank you God and St. Bernadette's Catholic School. and we all know how unobtrusively i can play the guitar if motivated to do so. so i thought my little homemade demos would fly just fine, given that you can hear the words, the melody,and the changes. but apparently i am insane, and even the scantiest of demos must now be broadcast ready(whatever that actually means, because i have certainly heard some rank stuff on the radio my own self!), even though i am looking for a PUBLISHING DEAL. i wonder how many times i am going to hear this. i wonder how many teeth i will lose from grinding them.
i'm not giving up. but i'm feeling really inadequate right now because i don't have an extra bag of money to go throw at some fancy studio with a genius at the board and a stable full of crack players ready to obey my demands...and then of course that pisses me off because why should i let a bunch of douchebags with no imagination have any kind of sway over my feelings?
about anything?! am i alone here? i need a support group. maybe, "anger management for the self employed". i don't know. thanks for listening.
