State of the onion

Back in July, I hinted that I wanted to start a new humour music project. It's been three months since I made that commitment so it's a good time to take stock, review what I've achieved and clarify my goals for the next three months.

Taking on a project like this comes with so many challenges and tasks. One of the earliest things I did to kickstart the project was to start a Google Document called "Humour Project". I have it broken down into categories including:

• timeline/goals, 
• songs I've written, 
• songs I need to finish, 
• ideas for songs, 
• venues,
• photo/bio ideas
• one-liners/heckles and banter
• instrumentation ideas
• merch ideas

Many sections aren't filled in yet and others are a mess but it's nice to have everything in one place and easy to find. Well mostly - I'll get to that part next. The idea of having a master document to work off of came from advice I saw in a reel by Thor, often known as Pirate Software on YouTube. The man is simply full of wisdom but his recommendation to have a design document if you're going to make a game was similar to many strategic planning documents I've done in the past and even if it's rough and disorganized, what I have is better than nothing and can always be improved and referenced. It's done wonders to keep myself accountable. 

This morning I caught this great video about Prince's work ethic. The video talks about what we as artists can learn from how Prince made his music broken down into six lessons we can learn from the man in purple:

1. Work fast
2. Become a finisher
3. Abandon perfectionism
4. Make art every day
5. Sleep and
6. Have a vault mentality

The first four lessons were all things I'd already been working on. I needed to shake a lot of my misconceptions about how I made music and what I sound like to make this project progress. I've done really well with those things, resulting in some really satisfying results, like this fun little song I posted last Friday. Or even the video I did for Pizzamas last week. Sleep and rest are aspects I'll need to keep in mind but not a concern right now.

The vault mentality lesson is one that I've naturally been doing a bit of but in watching the video, I realized I need to be more purposeful about it. To the point that I think I need to add it to my project design document. The argument in the video is that Prince wasn't so much working on being famous or making money as he was building his legacy. To have a legacy, you need to have an archive or a vault to collect and store your work. 

I've been doing this a bit. Not so much to create a legacy as much as just to try and organize the heap of ideas I have and make them accessible. Over the past three months, I've set aside about an hour a week to get my Google Drive in order and put lyrics and demos together. It's far from where it needs to be and I have plenty more I want to do. This video reinforced the importance of that work and I think I might bump up my vault work time a bit every week - at least until I have everything working the way I want it to. I still need to figure out how to make my phone automatically back up my demos onto my Google Drive. 

Creation-wise, I've been doing extremely well. I have about 7 songs that are basically done, and I've chosen two to develop into a "tight 5 minutes." I've had November 4 circled on my calendar for weeks, that is the date I want to head over to The Cure and play at the open mic. Go play my 5 minutes and see how people respond. From there, I want to hit a separate open mic in the following 2-3 weeks at a different location to try the same set. Beyond that, I'd like to hit up The Cure again before the end of the year with a second set of new material, repeat at another open mic and so on. 

I'm frankly shocked at how prolific I've been. Sometimes it's in spurts of little song snippets, sometimes it's entire songs flowing out in an hour or so. With a strong set of goals and a developing vault, I've been able to turn these snips into songs. While I'm only at 7 fully written tracks, I don't think I'd be exaggerating much to say I've got about 50 ideas in various stages that will become something in time. Being prolific like that is nice for the ego but it also means I'll have a lot to choose from - and a lot to throw away - as I move through this. 

There are many things I still need to nail down. I don't exactly know what name I want to brand this project under. I've gone through a few including my usual nickname Pilot or trying to use a name I've always had around, The Spurge. The one I've landed on so far and will probably use on Nov 4 is just the monomer "Jeremy". It's an awkward, stupid name with some meme history. It does tend to bump into the Pearl Jam song, but maybe I can use that to my advantage. 

I'm also working on the supplemental instrumentation for this project and I can't quite decide how to roll it out. I'll be using the kazoo as my "lead" instrument but I'm not well practiced yet and I can't quite figure out how I'll play it while also playing guitar. I have an around-the-neck harmonical holder and I've also thought of building some kind of clip to go on a mic stand. The jury is still out on that one. I think I'll do the first few performances without it until I have a bit more confidence. I've had a few other instrument ideas that I hope to incorporate in time too. 

Finally, I've done well carving out the time for this and finding space to do it in. I haven't been able to do exactly what I've envisioned but I'm really happy with my tenacity. I find time every day or so to practice, organize and learn. I've started taking lessons and this weekend I tried out using one of the Regina Public Library's studios to do some practicing and writing. 

Overall, I'm shocked at how well all of this has gone. I don't know why I'm shocked, nothing I'm doing or planning is outside of my talent, ability or experience. I think the biggest reason is that I had built up all of these misconceptions about myself: I can't finish a song, I can't play solo, I don't know how to play guitar and sing, I'm not funny, I can't sing, I can't... and on and on. Once you stop worrying about what you can't do and focus on what you can, things all of a sudden open up in front of you. I've felt so positive and used this as a springboard to connect with friends, be creative, boost my ego a bit and feel like I'm actually doing something. 

Something for me. 

I could go on and on but this post is long enough for today I suppose. Hopefully, I can post a bit of a review or post-analysis of my first live performance in a couple of weeks. And of course, if this keeps working for me, I'm sure there will be plenty more to say here as time rolls on.