Hello out there!
When I last left this web site, I had done a bunch of releases and was intending to do more. But a silly thing happened on the way to that goal: I went back to playing the oboe.
Unlike John Lennon who was famous for saying “Life happens while you’re making other plans,” I was busy chasing other plans as life was happening.
I hunted for a new oboe, made reeds, learned hard pieces, got a teacher – the whole shebang. And I WAS back to playing by the time a year and a half had rolled by.
But I missed writing music and singing it. I also missed playing music that didn’t feel as if I’d been run over by a hearse. Oboes are brutal to play as a hobby. It can be done. But it makes for a miserable life. (This is my own personal point of view, by the way. Other oboists LOVE to play.)
You might be wondering, “Why is an oboe like a hearse and where did that come from?”
Oboes are notorious for back-pressure and a sense that you’re suffocating while playing it. If oxygen deprivation is your “thing,” go ahead… play an oboe. If you like breathing, though? Maybe play flute instead.
So, I restarted the music factory over here. New songs have been written. It’s just a matter of getting them recorded and released. And now that I’m not clouded by a rather dubious detour into oboe-land, I can focus more on writing songs and producing.
A few changes while I pursue this:
- A minimalist (a.k.a., cheap!) web site.
- Bandcamp for releases
- DIY - Doing everything (recording, producing, and mastering) over here in my own world.
Mixing and mastering by others has sounded great. I’m not knocking their work. It’s just expensive.
If you’re at all familiar with the music industry, this won’t come as a surprise. If you aren’t it might. But hardly anybody makes any money releasing music these days. Taylor Swift? Yes, of course she does. But then there’s the 99% of the rest of us. We write for the love of writing and sharing.
And I will be sharing a lot coming up…
Until next time.
🙏