Adri's Music

This Thursday June 7th at The Annex I'll be performing at a show presented by the Music Waste festival! The show starts at 9PM and The Annex is located at 307 West Cordova. I'll be performing a set of my original electronica vocal and instrumental compositions from my upcoming album. I am scheduled to go around 9:50ish. I am really looking forward to it!

The lineup also includes Eryn Holbrook and The Creaking Planks. Eryn will be doing "melodic frenetic electropop" and The Creaking Planks will be doing "modern cover songs on Old Timey instruments." Should be a really fun show...

I look forward to seeing you there!

Lately I've been way obsessed with photography. I keep going out on little photo expeditions to try to catch a shot. I should really try to keep my focus 100% on finishing my album, but it seems like creativity breeds more creativity. As long as I'm being creative I think I'm basically satisfied in life. It's like my default state making stuff, any kind of stuff. When I was little I used to spend hours cheating my bedtime by sewing little dolls and their tiny clothes. I don't know if my parents knew how late I stayed up...

But I digress. I think the reason I like photography so much lately is that it's the polar opposite of music. It's totally instant, especially with a digital camera. Snap. That's how long it takes to suddenly make something wonderful. No hours toiling in front of the piano, no retake after retake, no slow methodical editing of parts... It's just BOOM and you're done. You might do a few tweaks later, but the satisfaction is basically instant. Also, you take in the whole thing in an instant. A song is something that has an arc that develops over time, usually about 5 minutes, which makes it harder to assess. With a photo you get that immediate yes feeling.

Of course, some shots take longer - anything involving a tripod or night-time. For example:



Wouldn't it be nice if I could wave a wand and a song suddenly appeared?

OMG, apparently there is an entry for me at MusicBrainz.org! I had no idea. Here it the link to the Adri entry.

Oh my god I have so much to do!

I. Have. So. Much. To. Do.

It's kind of overwhelming and exciting at the same time. I am trying not to get project paralysis and I have to remind myself to just take a bite off and chew it really hard. I am getting so close to the end -- yet my task list just seems to swell and balloon more and more! I wonder if am really as close to completion as I think?

It's really a very ambitious project, undertaking the entire writing, performance, production and engineering of an album on my own. I will use a mastering engineer, and have asked some people to play a few instruments -- but aside from that it's entirely my work from start to finish. It's a bit crazy. Most people have a band. Or an engineer. Or just generally ask for more help. I did do it once before on "Adrift" but that album was arranged on the fly without much studio trickery and no real song structure.

This upcoming album is full of structure. It takes all the neat weirdness and textures of "Adrift" and builds on it with some great song-writing and composition that is all very very deliberate. In going that route I pretty much generated enormous amounts of work for myself, so this is a whole new experience. I think it's going to be worth it, but I wont be able to tell until the album is done. I have no idea how it's going to land emotionally with the general public -- but initial reaction from my musical colleagues has been excellent.

Let's hope for the best!

To branch out some more, I did a songwriting co-writing workshop recently with two amazing teachers: Pat Pattison and Steve Seskin. They both come from a country music background which is really profoundly alien to my electronic music background. They are both really skilled songwriters and lyricists however, and I really respect the work they do. Country music is actually a genre that is really heavy on the lyrical quality so I think there is a lot I can learn from Country music songs. It's also one of the most popular genres of music in North America, far outselling electronic music (which I hear is selling very little here. Argh!!!)

Fear not, I'm not about to learn the pedal steel guitar or start wailing about my broken down pickup and how my girlfriend left me. But I did experience doing some practice co-writing with various different people of various musical backgrounds during the workshop, which was really cool. I really enjoyed sharing ideas and the synergy that happens when you write with someone else. The feeling of "I would never have made that on my own" is really compelling, and it makes me want to do it again.