End of Year Round Up.

Well, the good news is, I thought I started this blog in January 2014, so my lack of progress, was really a wasted year and quite depressing.   Then looking at the blog, I see I started it in June.   So that made me feel better.

I started with great intentions and dreams and got sidetracked by the day job, The Hair Thieves EP6 and EP7, the world cup, the Xbox and me temporarily killing my music PC whilst trying to upgrade it.

I'm glad to report the PC is now fine and back up and running, so no excuses for 2015.


I have been through some of my backlog of abandoned and rejected tunes and done rough mixes of everything so far.  I think I probably have ten songs (in various states of completion) I could work on, with about 25 minutes of music so far (the shortest idea is about a minute. The longest about 5.  Only one has complete music and lyrics).

So I am going to set some targets with dates. as per week one of the Ariel Hyatt book that is now somewhere on my Kindle at about page 8.  I haven't given this any thought, I'm just going to type five things and see how it goes, whilst trying to make them achievable.

So the immediate plan.
1) Finish and preview new song March 2015.  (This will probably be called Persephone).
2) Do Fawm 2015
I did Fawm 2014 and managed five new songs.

Fawm is an annual attempt to write 14 songs in 28 days.

Of the five songs I wrote in 2014, one made it onto the Hair Thieves EP6.  Another of which is about Bacon.  Another of which I stole for an instrumental project. Least said about that last two the better

Oh go on then.  Here is a song about bacon!



And here is the instrumental.



So we shall see what next February brings to the mix.

3) Launch website March 2015.
4) Start practicing guitar / singing with aim to start playing open mics in Spring 2015.
5) Release EP (or possibly album) September 2015.   (ideally an album. Must be finished by 6th March 2016....)

bonus task
6) Finish '80s musical journey blogpost Jan 2015
7) Finish '90s musical journey blogpost Feb 2015
8) Finish '00s musical journey blogpost March 2015
9) Finish this decades musical journey April 2015.


So that is a rough plan, that I now need to stick to!  (I will finish this and update my task management system appropriately)

At the top of the page is a video of me messing about with a synth.  It is by no way an indication of where I am going with this project.  I just stumbled across it on my phone today and have no recollection of actually recording it.

Hope you all had a wonderful 2014 and hope you get a better 2015.   I'm off to practice my guitar....  

Month One report.

One month into the solo album and things haven't gone totally to plan.

I'm blaming this on the World Cup, (which I didn't take into account for) and also me complicating the Hair Thieves latest release by adding another song and signing us up to record a cover song for a Mansun tribute album.

However, as I stated in the intial post, I have done some planning based on on Music Success In Nine Weeks by Ariel Hyatt.

I failed to do the 5 victories thing each day.  Mostly because I have a pretty good task system, so I can see the progress of things ticked off, each day!


So I have set myself a end target to release the album in March 2015, which will coincide with my birthday.

Before then, I need to set up a website (which won't be needed until I have something for people to listen to).  set up distribution, social media and start playing local open mic nights and find some support slots.  So much to think about, plan and do.

I have started work on the first song, however.  So far I have some music and some lyrics.  It has the working title of Persephone.   I rejected it from being a Hair Thieves tune on the basis that it is in DADGBD tuning.    So I will see what I can do with it in the next week or so.

I have also dragged out my old amp.  I bought this amp in 1990 (around the time I bought the B.C. Rich Warlock).  I used it to gig throughout the 1990's.   Eventually selling it, before buying it back again since I missed it.

I am contemplating recording some of the material with it, given in the past, I have used V-amps. PODs and Amplitude plugin for guitar sounds, so it might be nice to record a proper amp for once.

This does, obviously, subconciously assume that this is no longer the planned acoustic album I envisaged.  Plus with different tunings, this might make playing the songs live acoustically tricky.

So to Ariels, week two tasks (or months task in my case).   Branding.   I will write a separate blog entry on this and my problems with it.  And try and do part one of my '80s musical heritage!

Later

Rollasoc

Week 1 - Getting Mentally prepared.

It is the first of June 2014.

The start of the the journey into creating some music and blogging about the process.

Some of this will partially be based on Music Success In Nine Weeks by Ariel Hyatt, for no other reason than I need a plan.

Given, my musical priority is and will be The Hair Thieves nine weeks is a little ambitious.  So I will spread the nine weeks out over many months.

I will assume Arial thinks I might already have material written, gigs on the go and what not.

I am starting from near scratch.  Just a collection a few under developed ideas and lyric snippets. Song is different tunings and time signatures.

At the moment I only have two rules for this project.

1. If the song starts sounding like it should be a Hair Thieves song, then it should be and I will show it to E to say if we should use it.
2. Given the The Hair Thieves brand tag is"An eclectic mix of ambient indie pop rock punk jazz soundtracks", this project should have a focus and not be eclectic. I have an inkling as to what I want to do.  More about that soon.

  So, back to Ariel's book.

The tasks this weekis to set some goals and set some dates for those goals.

Apparantly, only 3% of people have their long term goals written down and it has been proven that people who track their goals are more likely to achieve them.

I have been a been advocate of David Allen's Getting Things Done: How to Achieve Stress-free Productivity methodology. I have had a system in place for about eight years now.

It mostly works, for me. I will blog more about my time management system in the future.

So I already have a working task tracking system in place.

The bit of Getting Things done that I have always struggled with is the big picture.

What are my life goals?

I don't have issues with goals for individual projects, but what is my life goal.  I really don't know.  Ariel also iterates the need for lifetime goals.  I'm still unconvinced.

So for the purposes of this experiment.  I will limit my goals to twelve months and this one project and reserve the right to change them whenever!

So this weeks task are to

1. Write down each day. 5 victories.   (Now I used to do that years ago, so I will start again)
2. Write down six Focus areas for the next twelve months
1. with dates
2. that involve me only
3. are realistically achievable

In the book, Ariel mentions money goals.   I'm slightly uncomfortable with that.  I would be happy to make enough money to sustain my musical hobby.   I have no ambition to be a full time musician.  I love my day job enough to want to carry that on as a career.

Right, so whilst I get my mind thinking of what I want to achieve for this project.   I have some immediate tasks to get on with namely :-

1. Name the project
2. Get the domain name
3. Get the social media names for it
4. Create project structure on my music PC for it
5. Create a project structure in my lyric writing system.

So let's begin and get all of this into my task management system.

later

Rollasoc