Becoming The Overman

SO, I FINISHED my first full-length album, amateur as is may have been, on Valentine's Eve, and gave it to Beth for Valentine's Day; I've been critiquing it ever since. Because it was for Valentine's Day, or more importantly because it was for Beth, the album consisted entirely of love songs with the exception of the first track, which was a short sample of me pretending to be The Beatles introducing themselves. Because I do not normally write love songs, the album was originally going to have two cover songs, Hallelujah based on Rufus Wainwright's version and Xanadu from the film of the same name. I cut Xanadu at the last minute and replaced it with two covers, leaving the rest as original works:

1. Beatle Greetings
2. It Was You
3. Hallelujah (Cohen)
4. The Dream Song
5. Tell Lorrie I Love Her (Whitley)
6. I'll Come Running Home
7. The Song They Were Playing
8. My Love Is Falling Down Tonight
9. Silly Love Songs (McCartney)

Because I either mastered the tracks wrong, or made the input levels too low during recording, the songs ended up very quiet. On most speakers it isn't a problem, just turn up the volume, but on some, such as laptops like the one Beth listened to it on, the music was almost indiscernible.

Also, because the recording was finished up on such short notice -- I only realized it would make a good present several days beforehand -- many songs became acoustic; just me and my guitar going boom-chicka-boom-chicka-boom. It gives the songs a nice, warm, humble feeling that makes you tap your foot, but I wonder if I should go back and change some of them, put in more instruments, perhaps even some drums, to make it more popularized. I like the simplicity of the guitar and voice, but I want it to be interesting as well.

Nevertheless, I wasn't expecting my first album -- though, again, it is a little rough around the edges, sometimes with nothing much more than scratch for vocals -- to be a "love" album. More variety, that's what I wanted. But, still, I ended up really liking the song selection, and I think instead of working on another album with that heightened variety I mentioned, I'll just use this one as my guinea pig to work out the kinks.

But you know what they say...a ship in the harbor is safe, but that's not what ships are built for.

Posted by C. Nicholas Walker on Wednesday, February 20, 2008 at 1:37 AM | Permalink