It’s the same routine every time I’ve ever started writing/recording an album. Weeks and weeks of procrastination! To be fair, the time is spent productively, but at its heart, the reason for all of this procrastination is THE FEEEAR!! It’s the fear of actually starting to record something, because then I find out the answer to what’s been nagging at the back of my mind for months (or years in this case); “maybe I’ve lost it”, “what if I can’t write anything good”, “what if no one likes what I do” etc. etc. Then I remember that I think the same thoughts EVERY single time I’ve started an album. It’s become part of the whole process at this stage. It’s almost reassuring in a weird way, and now that it’s happening again, it feels liken muscle memory is beginning to kick in. Doing anything artistic that involves a lot of time and energy means that you are putting your work (and yourself) out there for anyone and everyone to take a shot at, but that fear is kind of exhilarating. Either that or I’m a masochist.

Instead of starting to record the ideas that are in my head for ages, I do anything else that I can possibly do to delay the inevitable. So I spent one week putting a project template together. Now this is actually a pretty good use of time, because if it’s done right, it speeds up the recording as each song is worked on. In the past few days, I’ve gone back into the session files for songs from both the Agents and Reptile King albums as well as the trailer cues I wrote, because I couldn’t remember how I put them together. There were a lot of ‘oh yeah, now I remember’ moments.

Over the years, I’ve been trying to reduce my recording system size to be as small and cable free as possible, and I’m almost at the stage where my ‘studio’ isn’t much more than a workstation, a few bits of outboard equipment, some guitars, 2 small keyboards, some mics and 2 sets of monitors.
I used to think that tons of equipment meant more choice and a better end result. I was delusional! For me now, it’s all about the best sound with the least equipment. I spent a lot of time this week getting equipment routed and up and running again. I also found out that two of my audio interfaces were now in audio interface heaven (RIP).
Guitars were cleaned, cables tested, hard drives wiped out and primed……………and now I’m out of excuses. It’s time to bite the bullet and actually record something.

I’ll let you know how that goes!

G.