My day off

I had a free day today, a somewhat rare occurrence. My wife and kids were out visiting a friend so I had a few hours to do whatever I wanted in the whole world. That said, we've an ongoing mould problem that I should've been sorting out and the brake discs and pads need replacing on my car. I’ve bought replacements due to arrive today that, should they have turned up, I would have fitted them straight away, but they never did. This meant I did have a good few hours almost guilt-free to get up to nonsense.

I really should have been writing one of the few stories I've got on the go but as long as I'm creating something for at least one platform then I consider it productive. Yesterday (Friday) I’d listened to the Aretha Franklin banger about ‘You make me feel like a natural woman’ and noticed with my keen musicians eye that ‘You make me feel’ has the precise number of syllables a ‘please buy my book’. Needless to say I wanted to record a cover with my brand new, hilarious lyrics. 

I spent a good bit of time at the beginning trying to use one of the two melodicas I own, one of which is much better quality but also much older (by literally 30 years). I tried many times, unsuccessfully, to work out a solution in which I could listen to my previous recording whilst recording the new track and through frustration I eventually gave up on the melodicas.

I resolved to:

1. Use my keyboard and record the separate takes

2. Upload them to Google Drive

3. Download them to my laptop

4. Comp them together in time with each other

5. Export

6. Re-upload to Google Drive

7. Download to my phone

8. Upload to Tiktok.

It wasn’t the most streamlined process and it took up so much more time than I wanted it to but I'm glad I did it. I’ve always been an absolutely awful singer. I can’t even call myself a singer, I just talk the words while raising my eyebrows along with the melody. That said, I really wanted to do this video, and by the time I actually listened to the singing, I’d spent so much time on it I didn't want it to have been a waste. 

I had this same feeling when I first started uploading videos to Tiktok when I was just talking. The same instinctual repulsion to hearing my own voice which, the more you think about it, is such a strange thing to be self-conscious about. Necessity dictates, though, and I had to start trying to sell books so I had to make videos of myself talking. I'm now capable of doing this with minimal levels of cringe happening. 

Hopefully this will be seal broken on doing musical videos. Despite not being able to sing I still enjoyed making the final product and if I can think of records that aren’t too contrived and I can do a half decent job of it, I'd love to do it again.

After recording and uploading that song I was still feeling the musical vibe so I fired up my copy of Reason 6 (2011). I knew I wanted to try to make a complete, finished track in the unknown amount of time I had left before my family returned home so I started with the Dr. Octo Rex loop player and found some loops from the factory sound bank. This worked well and I ended up using the loop player for every element of the track, except for the sample from which the track gets its name: Chicken.

It’s not a ground breaking track by any means and it’s certainly not going to get nominated for any Grammys but it’s not bad to listen to and today was about getting stuff done. First, I made a video that I'm reasonably proud of but, regarding the video, I’m more interested in what it represents; that I can do bad singing on video and live to tell the tale. Second, I made a half decent record that I can use for something at some point. Third, I wrote this blog post about the day, which is something I need to start doing more. That's the whole point of this blog, to get myself writing more words, whether it’s thoughts, journal type things, stories or general nonsense I need to be writing about it, safely hidden away here, where no one will ever read it.

So all in all I'm quite happy with how the day’s gone. I hope you had a nice day too!

You can see the final video on Tiktok here

or on YouTube here

I can't see anywhere to upload or embed Chicken so for now just keep an eye out on my Tiktok, I'll probably use it on there at some point.

Cheers,

Beaumont Storm