Rejection/discomfort challenge Week 14: (#47: Record and produce a song on GarageBand)

Well, I did it! I booked a gig. To be fair, my friend and bandmate is the one who is putting the bill together; and to be fair, I am absolutely, positively fucked.

Not only does this gig announcement mean that I get to do something a little more exciting than an open mic night (which was originally one of my challenges), but it also means that I have to put together a fifteen to twenty minute set, which is especially difficult considering I’ve never fully finished a song.

Let me give myself some credit here. I have written maybe hundreds of songs in my lifetime, and some of them actually have the whole verse/chorus/verse/bridge/chorus pattern. But what none of them have is a full arrangement. Or a full, finished arrangement. I got close once, but then two years later I listened to the song again and decided it wouldn’t be good unless I spiced things up. Which I still haven’t finished doing. So, I have roughly a week and a half to put together a five or seven song setlist, with maybe three unfinished songs that I would be comfortable singing in front of people. And that’s if I can even get myself to sing.

Despite this somewhat precarious situation, past-me actually did myself a solid and put “record and produce a song without hating it” on my to do list. So that was this week’s challenge.

I have a hard time not hating what I make. I fell behind on this project because I’ve been having a difficult time not fulfilling a different aspect to the challenge (giving a piece of art to a local business). But music tends to make things a lot harder. I have to actually listen back to myself; I can no longer pretend like it’s someone else reading my work. This, combined with my serious habit of being too self-critical, usually puts me in irate tears long before I’m close to finishing a song. But not today.

To ease my frustrations a little, I downloaded Ableton Lite from the code off of a synthesizer I got from my friend’s ex. I figured a new program would make my anger a bit easier. And it did, after a while. Even though I didn’t end up writing/producing what I was planning on, I did come up with a decent other song.

There were a lot of moments where I wanted to just scratch it out and make something new. Usually, I listen to that destructive thought. But something was different this time. Maybe it was the several nightmares I had in a row about getting attacked not having anything to perform, or maybe it’s because until yesterday I thought I had four days to prepare, but regardless something inside me persisted. And I’ve finished my first song. It’s far from perfect, but for once the voice in my head was able to be quiet until I wrote something decent. I’m glad it’s been giving me a chance.