Rant post
Skip if desired.
There are many things about grad school I'd like to rant about, but somehow none of those really cut quite as deep as this thing that should be relatively minor and unimportant. As some of you know, I've just recorded a CD. Some of you have gotten it. You others who want it...I'll get there, eventually. Sorry. Here at school, it's been easy to pass around since I see everyone every day. And I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I feel without sounding whiny like "waaahhh, I need attention." But most of the people I've given a CD to haven't even bothered to listen to it. Yeah, we're all incredibly busy, but we also all have cars. That's what my roommate did...he stuck it in the CD player of his car and listened to it when he drove. 5 trips in the car and you're done with the album. It's been weeks, and the CD's that I took time and money to burn and the jewel cases I bought and gave away are going to waste.
Aside from those who havent listened to it, those who have are just a mite unresponsive. Mostly shrugs and comments like, "Not bad for doing it all in yor bedroom." Or meaningless criticisms like, "It's all in the same tonal range, and I like variation...changes within the music." This is coming from someone who knows zip about music and is trying to explain to me how she feels about it using terms she has no clue about. If that statement was true, I'd try to take it to heart, but in some ways I can objectively listen to my own music, and it is not all the same tonal range. She actually compared my work to church music, saying "Not in the music, and not in the lyrics, but in the tone." Huh? No. Ridiculous. When even someone else looked at her like she was on drugs, she got giggly embarrassed and was like, "I don't know how to explain it. I only listened to it once. I'll give you a better critique when I listen to it again."
She never listened to it again.
I gave a copy to one of the sound guys. He never listened to it on his own time. He ended up sticking it in when they had to do some sound test in their studio because no one had any other CDs. They listened to 2 minutes of one of the songs (I don't even know which one) and last night one guy told me that happened something like 2 weeks ago. All they could do was talk about how crappy the sound quality was because of my program, my microphone, my mixing. The guy said to me that it didn't sound like an electric guitar, it just literally sounded like I was in a garage. I told him he was probably listening to one of the songs that didn't use a strong filter for, which DID make my acoustic sound like an electric. And here I thought I did pretty well for what I had...yeah, it was a crappy Radio Shack mic that I got for 20 bucks. Yeah, it's a primitive recording and mixing software. Yeah, I've never done this before. Could they even be bothered to listen to the motherfucking SONG? Nope. What he said: "Yeah, we were talking about it, we were like, Evan might be good, but we can't really tell because it was done on bad equipment." Okay, I know it's not professionally mixed or filtered like a real studio, but you can still hear the songs. You can hear all the chords, all the instruments, and most of the time when I'm singing. If you can't approach anything that's not on your fancy ass $300 microphones and playing in stereo sound on speakers as big as your body and mixed perfectly by someone who's done this for years, then you aren't a fucking sound designer. Because not everything is going to be like that all the time. It's not like my CD is full of static. It IS listenable. Fuck you, you snobby, incompassionate assholes.
People just naturally don't want to believe that someone they know personally could come up with something good. I give people a CD, saying, "I wrote, sang, and produced this." Automatically it's "Evan's CD," not a music CD. Not a CD by an artist of any kind. It's something their friend or acquaintance put together, and because of that bias, all the flaws will stick out like sore thumbs and the good parts will seem instantly mediocre, because even though the lyrics are better than anything 3 Days Grace has done, even though the melodies are varied and interesting, unlike Blink 182, whose non-singles all sound the same, no one who knows me, could believe I have talent in that area that rivals any crappy band who got on the radio and sells records God knows how. This is especially true of people who haven't seen someone's musical development, because if someone at a young age was into music and had bands from the time they were 14, well by the time they're 18 everyone's used to them playing and singing and writing songs...it's easier to suspend your disbelief that this is a musician, not just your son or little brother or next-door neighbor or classmate who likes to fuck around and feel like they're somebody. But, sucks to be me, my musical development was almost entirely private. It was writing songs by myself since I was 13, and never singing one to anyone else until I was 18. It was not singing at all until I was 17, and then a long private struggle with controlling my voice into something presentable. It was starting to really teach myself guitar when I was 20, after a couple failed attempts at drums, harmonica, keyboard, and guitar itself several years earlier. It was feeling like an idiot because everyone else I knew who was vaguely interested in music had some sort of training...voice, an instrument, or theory. I had none. I developed an intense interest, but I was late. I was 21, and it was time to choose my career. Too late to study music.
I'm just feeling shitty now, and I don't even know what kind of response I was expecting. I thought I was good. I was told I was good by my friends in college. Did they say that just to make me feel good about myself, and now that I'm surrounded by more pretentious people, I can never expect to be complimented again? I actually thought that recording them with the illusion of a full band would improve my songs, but no one seems to care. The responses I've gotten thus far can be summed up to a bunch of "meh"s and a bunch of nothing at all.
There are many things about grad school I'd like to rant about, but somehow none of those really cut quite as deep as this thing that should be relatively minor and unimportant. As some of you know, I've just recorded a CD. Some of you have gotten it. You others who want it...I'll get there, eventually. Sorry. Here at school, it's been easy to pass around since I see everyone every day. And I'm trying to think of a way to explain how I feel without sounding whiny like "waaahhh, I need attention." But most of the people I've given a CD to haven't even bothered to listen to it. Yeah, we're all incredibly busy, but we also all have cars. That's what my roommate did...he stuck it in the CD player of his car and listened to it when he drove. 5 trips in the car and you're done with the album. It's been weeks, and the CD's that I took time and money to burn and the jewel cases I bought and gave away are going to waste.
Aside from those who havent listened to it, those who have are just a mite unresponsive. Mostly shrugs and comments like, "Not bad for doing it all in yor bedroom." Or meaningless criticisms like, "It's all in the same tonal range, and I like variation...changes within the music." This is coming from someone who knows zip about music and is trying to explain to me how she feels about it using terms she has no clue about. If that statement was true, I'd try to take it to heart, but in some ways I can objectively listen to my own music, and it is not all the same tonal range. She actually compared my work to church music, saying "Not in the music, and not in the lyrics, but in the tone." Huh? No. Ridiculous. When even someone else looked at her like she was on drugs, she got giggly embarrassed and was like, "I don't know how to explain it. I only listened to it once. I'll give you a better critique when I listen to it again."
She never listened to it again.
I gave a copy to one of the sound guys. He never listened to it on his own time. He ended up sticking it in when they had to do some sound test in their studio because no one had any other CDs. They listened to 2 minutes of one of the songs (I don't even know which one) and last night one guy told me that happened something like 2 weeks ago. All they could do was talk about how crappy the sound quality was because of my program, my microphone, my mixing. The guy said to me that it didn't sound like an electric guitar, it just literally sounded like I was in a garage. I told him he was probably listening to one of the songs that didn't use a strong filter for, which DID make my acoustic sound like an electric. And here I thought I did pretty well for what I had...yeah, it was a crappy Radio Shack mic that I got for 20 bucks. Yeah, it's a primitive recording and mixing software. Yeah, I've never done this before. Could they even be bothered to listen to the motherfucking SONG? Nope. What he said: "Yeah, we were talking about it, we were like, Evan might be good, but we can't really tell because it was done on bad equipment." Okay, I know it's not professionally mixed or filtered like a real studio, but you can still hear the songs. You can hear all the chords, all the instruments, and most of the time when I'm singing. If you can't approach anything that's not on your fancy ass $300 microphones and playing in stereo sound on speakers as big as your body and mixed perfectly by someone who's done this for years, then you aren't a fucking sound designer. Because not everything is going to be like that all the time. It's not like my CD is full of static. It IS listenable. Fuck you, you snobby, incompassionate assholes.
People just naturally don't want to believe that someone they know personally could come up with something good. I give people a CD, saying, "I wrote, sang, and produced this." Automatically it's "Evan's CD," not a music CD. Not a CD by an artist of any kind. It's something their friend or acquaintance put together, and because of that bias, all the flaws will stick out like sore thumbs and the good parts will seem instantly mediocre, because even though the lyrics are better than anything 3 Days Grace has done, even though the melodies are varied and interesting, unlike Blink 182, whose non-singles all sound the same, no one who knows me, could believe I have talent in that area that rivals any crappy band who got on the radio and sells records God knows how. This is especially true of people who haven't seen someone's musical development, because if someone at a young age was into music and had bands from the time they were 14, well by the time they're 18 everyone's used to them playing and singing and writing songs...it's easier to suspend your disbelief that this is a musician, not just your son or little brother or next-door neighbor or classmate who likes to fuck around and feel like they're somebody. But, sucks to be me, my musical development was almost entirely private. It was writing songs by myself since I was 13, and never singing one to anyone else until I was 18. It was not singing at all until I was 17, and then a long private struggle with controlling my voice into something presentable. It was starting to really teach myself guitar when I was 20, after a couple failed attempts at drums, harmonica, keyboard, and guitar itself several years earlier. It was feeling like an idiot because everyone else I knew who was vaguely interested in music had some sort of training...voice, an instrument, or theory. I had none. I developed an intense interest, but I was late. I was 21, and it was time to choose my career. Too late to study music.
I'm just feeling shitty now, and I don't even know what kind of response I was expecting. I thought I was good. I was told I was good by my friends in college. Did they say that just to make me feel good about myself, and now that I'm surrounded by more pretentious people, I can never expect to be complimented again? I actually thought that recording them with the illusion of a full band would improve my songs, but no one seems to care. The responses I've gotten thus far can be summed up to a bunch of "meh"s and a bunch of nothing at all.