Why do we bother?
I ask myself this a lot these days, especially as I get older and how I spend my time feels more important than ever.
To make an album takes a lot of time and a hell of a lot of energy and drive. First there is the writing and creating phase; making rough demos, trying out ideas, recording, listening back to hours of tracks to find the hidden gold nuggets. Then there is the sharing phase; tracks sent back and forth to other band members, primarily Brendan, to add parts and to enhance ideas; and vice versa of course for Brendan.
Next it’s time for recording things properly. Hours of trying out parts, setting up amps and microphones, effects units, microphone placements for acoustic guitars and then recording them, perfecting them, deleting them by mistake, swearing and having a tantrum, recording them again, hating them, reworking them, recording them again, and so on.
Searching for the right sounds and effects to enhance the parts, tweaking and playing around with the whole balance. Creating guide tracks for the drums and bass before sending them out to the band to do their magic.
Then of course the recording and engineering of the rhythm section, which takes time and involves travel across Europe for the sessions. Hours of mic’ing up drums and getting the right sound and balance. Recording take after take to get the right one.
Once the rhythm section is done then it’s time to revisit the other parts, maybe change things, re-record things that the final drums might have inspired us to change. Adding more keys, layers, sounds, until the basic track is done.
Then the fun really starts for me ….. lyrics and vocal melodies …. it’s a bastard.
I always leave this until last because, in my view, the music itself should stand alone instrumentally, but also because the music inspires the lyric for me. The sounds, the feel of the piece, the flow of it, all conjure up a certain mood or feeling and that drives the lyric out. I really struggle with lyrics, for me it’s the hardest part of the whole process.
What do I write about? hmm … what am I inspired to say? … what’s my message? …. hours of typing stupid sentences, notes, lines into my phone, laptop or on paper … on trains, planes, busses … trying to find something that inspires words to come. Usually it start with one sentence or phrase that inspires the whole lyric, and once I have a phrase I like, the rest of the lyric usually comes quickly. It’s a process. An annoying, long, irritating process filled with headaches and self doubt. I know that once the lyrics are out there they are there forever, in plain view of anyone who cares to listen or read. If I am going to bare my soul and feelings in these words then they had better be good. … Will people like them? Understand them? Hate them? Am I repeating myself? Have I used that phrase before in another way? Does that sound obvious? Is that the right word there? Has someone written that before? …. thinking, overthinking … pulling out my remaining 3 hairs, lyrical lubrication in the form of beer or gin .. more pondering.
Then comes the vocal melody. Usually it’s in my head while writing the lyrics, or at least the melodic structure is, but then I have to make that real. This involves me ‘singing’ the main vocal in my hideous droney voice then adding more hideousness for the odd backing vocal or ‘harmony vocal’, although in my case I am not sure that harmony is the correct term. Once it is ready I send it over to Aio along with the lyrics and he turns my rubbish into something magical. It’s so inspiring when I get the track back and it sounds so good with his finished vocal, as he embellishes the melodies and makes them his own with his own touches.
Ah, then it’s time for the mixing. Paul spends hours, days, weeks on each mix, each song going though anywhere up to 50 or more different mix versions before becoming final. We spend hours listening, tweaking, changing, listening, until we are happy and we never want to hear the damn track again! Paul’s patience and detailing with the mixes are beyond measure.
Then there is the whole sequencing of the album. This usually involves me creating a running order and burning a CD, and also adding to my portable music player, then playing it back continuously. Next comes making version 2, with some changes to the order; and thinking about crossfades and flow of the album and moods, the overall pacing. Then comes version 3, with some more changes, all the time sharing these with the band for feedback. Then version 4, and so on, until I think it is exactly right. Adventures in Anhedonia went through 4 different running orders until I was happy.
Finally, when the album is ready there is even more to do … organising the creation of the artwork with Antonio Seijas, who is an absolute joy to work with. Then it’s web site creation and update, making promo videos, social media updates, record label stuff, promo campaigns, graphics, emailing contacts, finances, pressing and distribution organisation, etc etc etc. Until it finally gets released and ends up in your CD player, on your turntable or streaming into your lives.
I often wonder how many man hours it takes to make an album like our latest one, Adventures In Anhedonia. I did some rough calculations based on my memories and estimations of the time spent on all of these things and came up with approximately 269 man days, or 2152 hours. That’s a lot, especially when all of us have full time jobs and other commitments too. So when do we find the time? …. Weekends, evenings, holidays, middle of the night, stolen moments inbetween work and family commitments, and basically whenever we can find a spare moment.
At the end of all of this we just hope that people will listen, maybe buy a copy, hopefully appreciate the music and the words and the albums we have created. It’s diminishing returns these days as it is becoming increasingly hard to reach people, physical sales are down by 90% since streaming became the main consumer choice for listening to music.
It’s hard not to get disillusioned when all this work and effort barely breaks even these days in terms of costs, and that’s not including all those ‘free’ man hours we have all put in in our spare time. If you add those in at a very conservative and meagre man hour cost of say 25 quid an hour, then we are about 50K+ in the hole per album. Food for thought.
So why? Why keep doing it? …. mainly because we love it, we love writing and creating something, we love working together to create something we love and to as high a standard as we can. The feedback we get from people who love the music makes it all worthwhile, and our thanks go out to everyone who has bought our music and supported us in any way.
Will we keep on making albums? ….I think so, but it gets harder as you get older …
Cheers
/Adrian
