Spending all my free time on songwriting, I hate my own hobby?

Since June, I've been spending all my free time on songwriting and music recording. Every last drop of it. When I had a day off and on my off-hours after work I played and recorded music, that's it. Nothing else. I work 40 hours a week (thankfully not the 60 I used to work).

My routine was: wake up, go to work, come home. As soon as I got home I'd practice drums for a minimum of 15 minutes, but usually if I was working on a song I'd play for longer, maybe an hour. I'd get a sweat going, then once I felt comfortable with a drum take, I'd know it and say to myself, "That one felt pretty good." Usually it was just a matter of not flubbing any notes and making sure the tempo was correct. The drum mics were constantly set up so to record all I had to do was open up my DAW and press record. As a side note I live in a tiny room so... My bed was actually on the floor with wires tangled all around it and drum mics wavering overhead and the drums setup mere inches away from the mattress, for the entire 6 months.

Once the drum take was done, then I'd plug in my guitar (into a keyboard amp) and start messing around with an idea of some chords, or a melody. I have a nice pair of studio headphones I used for overdubs. For June and July I wrote using an acoustic bass through a fuzz pedal (with some reverb). I probably recorded about 10 songs this way before I found a certain formula using an actual electric guitar that worked for me.

It's now the end of November. I started this routine around June 1st. In this span of time, I've recorded 27 completed B-sides (That's a finished song with bass, guitar, drums, and vocals) and 5 finished songs I will release. So that's 32 songs in 6 months. I think if I really wanted, I could probably put out 10 songs (instead of only 5), but I'll save those 5 extra B-sides for a rainy day.

I gotta admit, I'm pretty much annoyed with recording and have been for a while. The final product is always awesome... when you record something that you're satisfied with, but the nuts and bolts of setting up the equipment, and the fact it's sort of like an endless pursuit (because at what point does it end?) have soured my take on it (and I've felt that way since about 2015). Many times it's a giant waste of time. As much as I love playing drums and guitar I'm ready to ditch recording for a while, maybe play some golf, go fishing, take up painting again. Just something different. I wouldn't mind performing live again, if only I could find a suitable drummer.

Ideally, I'd like to have a nice separate room to play drums in, and play guitar in, but I think the concept of having a recording interface always setup is too addictive for me, in a bad way. Years ago, I sold all of my recording and music equipment (except for one guitar), which was probably for the best, since the acoustic songwriting stuff I was recording was pretty cringy (looking back). But I'm happy with the songs I'm about to put out, at the same time.

 I'll be sharing the 5 songs shortly, after I finish up the mixing and cover-art. Stay tuned. - Mike

How I recorded a full album's worth of drums in two days

Recently I recorded a full album of drums. I guess these days the "album" is somewhat of a lost art.

Personally, I've always found a full album somewhat elusive. As a music writer I'm well-aware of what tends to occur during music-writing progress, particularly what happens when you aim high, and for a "full album."

An example of the charts I write out and then reference when recording drums for a song

Usually, when you continually fixate on creating a body of work such as an album, you start to lose focus on what's in front of you. My point is, you can only write one song at a time. Anyone's mind can work quite fast, and ideas may emerge at a rapid pace. You've got to adhere to a specific rule: one at a time. Everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time.

How I deal with any influx of creativity is often a "make or break" moment of music creation. This extends from a mental exercise to actual on-the-spot decision making, and years of habit-forming practice. I've found with music and with painting, you have to be ready in the moment with what decisions to make, because these decisions can impact the life-span of the work. For instance, tuning your drums, or replacing your guitar strings, or being careful when touching the dials on a mixing board, and the settings on a recording device (or not touching them) will impact the results of any recording. In the same way, making sure you have enough paint to finish that painting is just as important as those artful flicks of the wrist that cascade a waterfall of enamel across your masterpiece.

With a multitude of great ideas at your disposal, you may be tempted to spread them thinly over a set of songs, rather than select only the best parts for a singular creation. With this album of drums I went for a different approach.

Once again, I'm left with the clumsiness of a music-theory based description, but I'd like to bypass this (in my opinion) egoistic formalism. Instead, how about a simpler take. The man, in the woods, who hits a stick on a downed tree stump. With a little bit of rhythm (and some imagination) we're basically listening to ACDC's "Back in Black," if we want to be, or perhaps a whimsical Hendrix tune. All it takes is the tree branch.

To record the full album of drums what I did was to create charts based off of songs I like myself. I broke down each song by counting 8-beat measures. I literally counted out loud "1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8." Once I hit 8, I would write a number down and circle it. With each new circled number I was marking down song parts, i.e. Verse, chorus, bridge, and so on.

From there I was able to figure out how the songs were structured, and it didn't feel like a chore because I was listening to stuff I actually like a lot. Typically, a 4/4 song would have four consecutive 8-beat measures to round out half of a verse or chorus. 

I went one-at-a-time. I created a chart, then brought it over to the drum set. From there, I studied the piece of paper (on the floor by my hi-hat pedal) while I performed a totally indiscernable-from-the-source-material type of different drum pattern all-together (other than the format guidelines I provided for myself), and voila! I was left with a full set of drum tracks for an album. Wasn't so tough really.

From there, I brought my guitar over and basically just went off-the-cuff. At the end of the day I tracked bass (and scratch guitar) for all 10 songs. After a day, I decided two of my cuts were weak, and shortened the length to 8. Another day passed and I was content with 4 out of the 8. And yet another day, and I was down two 3 out of the original 10. At this point in time I'm now at two tracks that I will likely attempt vocals on. When it came to the guitar, the best results were just totally free-styled (after I made sure I was in-tune). The best part is when you start to realize in the moment you're crushing the take (out of nowhere, because, you're hearing the music for the first time yourself). It's at this moment you have to make sure to exercise a bit of caution, but also flash a bit of a switch-blade of risk as well. If you make it to the end of the tape even after this, you're onto something. - Mike