simplicity, my song "solitude", and possible setup upgrade?

 (original draft - 15.03.26 - 22:32)

(picture i took in the car - i love love LOVE evening/night drives!)

[I now have a linktree! where you can find more of my music, social(s), and can post feedback! https://linktr.ee/hollowby]

june 2022 - my song "solitude" was born!

04.10.26 - 2:51pm:

Wow, time really has flown by - I almost forgot I still had this blog up! 💆🏽‍♀️

and unfortunately I've lost my voice and so can't record as planned today :(

when i look back at the original project session (in Tracktion Waveform) i always stare in awe at how barebones the song is. Under 100 tracks - around 50-60?), no complex routing going on (the song originally started when i was 15, as just an instrumental i had made, that I had no plans for recording vocals over), and a pretty transparent structure and simple vocal stacks. And I discovered that every vocal was only recorded in one take! shock! horror! (my voice was also a lot less "matured", so I suppose it was probably easier for me to do this back then. 

The song is a lot simpler than my sessions get nowadays (It's hard for me to stay under 70 tracks for example, especially with the amount of vocal stacks I like to work with). it's always so funny to me how the song came to be, because, up until that point, one of the most confusing - and frustrating - things when I sat down with all these musical ideas in my head is the never-ending debate - instrumental or lyrics first? or, in my case, overthink or overthink?

This was a me-classic: an "instrumental and then abandon" project, but when I revisited it around a year or two later - whilst I was in the middle of transferring all my files from my old USB drive to my then-new USB drive, (I've since been using my current and most recent external 1TB SSD), I barely even remember how I came up with the current vocal melody and lyric ideas. I guess the instrumental being so calm and soothingly simple just made the process so easy ;) - I believe once I hit record was when I came up with the melody on the fly, and then the lyrics came soon after - The power of making calming music 🧘🏽‍♀️✨

If my memory serves me right (which it usually doesn't) solitude was one of the first songs I recorded after luckily winning a $500? $300? giveaway on the music-collaboration platform Bandlab - where we had to explain how Bandlab helps us make our music. Whilst I was much younger, and if I'd won the giveaway again I would've gone about spending that money a bit...differently...the main thing I had used that money to buy was the Blue Yeti microphone - the one with the built in stand - and a pop filter. Best decision I'd ever made, and I wouldn't be able to record any of my current songs in the quality I can right now.

I do plan on upgrading my current production setup very soon - which currently consists of the aforementioned microphone + pop filter, plugged directly into my AIO [All-in-One] PC, and a pair of apple earpods plugged into my microphone [wired]. Whilst this setup works for me (proven by the fact that I haven't changed it for the past 4 years), my room is both 1) very small, and 2) very cluttered, and having to try and find something to balance my microphone stand on is a bit of a hassle. I plan on upgrading to a very simple XLR setup eventually - an AudioTechnica AT2020 (which i think should even out my often lower, boomy voice) , Scarlet solo 4th gen, and a boom arm. Also planning on getting a proper pair of monitoring headphones, but that I can sort out a lot sooner luckily! (if anyone has any recommendations I'm always open to listening! 😌).

[LEFT: me recording in REAPER, the DAW i more recently transitioned to less than a year ago]

[RIGHT: cheeky little thumbs up ;> my microphone has to be propped up against some sort of box in order to get to mouth level to record, and yes, it has fallen many a time...]