In October I had the idea to finally release an album, something I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to do prior, because in 2026 I don’t see a clear distinction between uploading songs on youtube and soundcloud and calling something an album.
People don’t enjoy media the way they used to. The amount of names floating around in people’s heads are too many to count, things have a shorter life span and you can do everything yourself now.
But I found a concept I wanted to express that needed at least 4 songs to express and each song clocked in at 5-10 minutes, and a few other songs wanted to tag along for the ride. These themes wanted to weave together and an album finallt made sense.
I set August as the release date, not sure if it was realistic or not but wanting to push myself for sooner rather than later, and any earlier than that felt unreleastic since those 4 songs were hardly written and doing all the instruments and recording and mixing myself felt like a massive task.
And so I spent at least an hour or two every day writing and the songs completed themselves much easier than I imagined.
So here I am now with 2 songs nearly finished with recording! I wasn’t planning to start recording until at least May but when I ran into a friend from out of town by chance who makes music, they offered to help me produce it. And so I got to recording as soon as I could to give them something to work with and brainstorm over.
At the same time, I ran into the band closest to me in terms of ideas about how to share music, who organizes the kind of relaxed, at home shows that I have been trying to create, and they invited me to play in February. I was hoping to ask them if I could play their show in April or May but that got pushed forward to February by our chance meeting.
I’m not sure if the album will be pushed foreward or not, but it sure feels good to be ahead of schedule and have more fire to spend on this project than I had initially anticipated, and more help at that.
More important than getting the album out earlier, I feel like I’ve built the rythm to keep going after it’s release. I finally have the right set up at home, and I am learning a lot more about mixing just playing around on ableton and how to set up for live shows.
I was even invited to play that event again, not to mention two other shows by other friends!
I was hoping to slowly work my way up to two shows a month by the end of the year but it looks like that rhythm is coming much earlier too.
Something that makes all of this more exciting is that I am doing it all by the overly ambitious condition I’ve set for myself, for each show to adapt completely for a setting.
Unlike artists who write songs and share them the same way every time or help them evolve slowly, I want each song to adapt to the setting. Adapting a song to be able to work in both a tatami house and a bar is no easy task.
Harder, softer, faster, slower, solo, band, old arrangement, new arrangement, newer arrangement, those are the basic colors I have to paint with, but each color has many gradiants and interact differently with other colors.
Arrangement is like the black and white, light and darkness that you can add to or take away from each color.
I didn’t expect that idiom to fit so well but it does.
And so I guess I’ve become a painter of mood, not only a musician.
It’s a skill I place even about music because if you can shape mood, you can shape an entire experience.
This is a lot more work than I am letting on. It’s more work than anyone who hasn’t tried it can imagine, but it’s really fun work that I can do every day for an hour or two in the afternoon and an hour or two in the evening without feeling bored.
And so every single day for whatever amount of time I can commit, it becomes a daily practice.
Each day I focus on the task at hand, preparing songs for a particular show in a particular environment, or recording them, writing a bass line, jamming with myself and seeing what comes out.
It may only be 10% of my salary right now but I give it 50% of my energy and have no regrets about that whether it materializes into half my income or not, and I can see a future where it does.
Here’s my latest short, from a song that was very emotional to write:
Can finally sing this without crying
