I WROTE THIS YESTERDAY AND FORGOT TO POST!!

Taking a quick break at the studio, I opened Steemit and realized this post was still parked and hadn't been submitted!

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Today, I'm finalizing preparations for heading to the studio for the rest of the week, starting tomorrow! I'll be recording a 6-song EP, tentatively titled Sad Bastard Music, and the track list right now is looking like the following (still not sure on their order):

• One More Time
• Ain't A Kick
• No More Mixtapes
• The Terrorist
• Alice, Wake Up
• 16 Bucks

I've been rehearsing my ass off, and I really hope I can bang these out when I get there without too much stop-and-go and without fucking them up a million times before I finally make something I like.

The reason I say this, is that the last time I recorded a full and complete project (not just singles and randoms)...a million years ago, in 2005, as @rockchickjen can attest, because she was there for essentially all the sessions on that project, felt like it took a lot longer than I had originally anticipated, and I think ultimately I wasn't as prepared as I realized I needed to be.

Flash forward a lifetime and 12 years

I feel generally more prepared going into this project than I did then, and I think more importantly, I feel more mature. That said, it feels like maybe I am finally ready to start doing this again.

My confidence can be seriously lacking...I've never considered myself a singer. My elementary music teacher helped with this complex when he told a 4th grade me in front of my entire class that my audition hadn't been good enough to make the choir performing along with the high school play that year...ever since then, I just decided I wasn't a singer.

After I started writing songs, I looked for people to sing them, and was fairly successful until I was 19, when I was completely burned on being in a band in general by a totally random situation involving my bandmates and my pro-choice opinion...alas, that is an entirely different story altogether.

Anyway, after I decided if I wanted something done I needed to do it myself, I started trying to sing. Now, I will say this a million--nay--a billion times, I'm no singer. My goal has always been to get by enough that folks can listen to the words of the songs without totally being repulsed by my voice...but definitely don't consider myself a singer.

Over the years, I've really worked on it. Like I've said before, I have literally no classical vocal training and am, along with the help of a few educated and knowledgeable friends, primarily self-taught. I have a good ear and can match pitch, so that's always been something I have going for me...even when my skills aren't at the same level across the board (piano, guitar, vocals, songwriting, etc.)

But I could honestly go on forever about how insufficient my skills are and how much I feel like I suck...but instead I think it is probably healthier if I just start manifesting positivity rather than waxing on my lack of confidence. I really am working on it. Last week, a person who has watched me play music off and on in Springfield for years told me that she could tell my confidence has risen over the years, and how scared I used to sound when I first started playing in Springfield. It makes me laugh, because I have a sense of past-tense embarrassment over not sounding amazing always, but it also made me think a bit on the literal growth that I've had over the last few years...and especially since the beginning of 2016.

I feel excited. I'm still trying to settle in to this new schedule at and around home...without formal ties dragging me to obligations every morning. It's nice, but I still feel stir crazy. I think that will subside once I sink into this fully, but I'm definitely not there yet. Working on it. Always working on it.

I came here to talk about the studio!

Well, after that wax poetic, I'll get to the point. I'm getting ready to record tomorrow. I'm going to get raw with these songs and I hope to pull off my own scabs to record them. Figuratively, of course. Recordings are tough for me...I tend to be really formal in the way I approach them, and then it loses a lot of the emotion that my actual performances have. That's something I'll be working on consciously throughout the week.

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I changed my strings!

...because they had about 50 hours of gigs on them, if not more. Changing my strings annoys my shit. I used to avoid changing my own strings by just having friends change them soon after I started playing guitar...but when I got to college, I realized that I was going to have to do that for myself.

I'm not sure what I do to make the process more difficult than it has to be, but I sincerely feel that I'm doing something to lengthen this process and make it something utterly frustrating. One would think that after 18 years of hanging out on these strings that I would have found an efficient way to approach this process...but I don't want to spend money on a fancy apparatus nor do I want to need a bunch of tools.

My peg winder sucks.

This is a peg winder...the green thing.

This one is probably 10 years old. I've owned a total of two of these during the time I've played guitar...and this one is about to reach retirement age as well, because it's loose and I'm worried the damn thing is scratching my guitar.

This is the only tool I use to change my strings...but I wish I didn't need any tools.

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I WORK WITH WHAT I HAVE, YO

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More goodies coming soon!! Studio diary and what have ya.

Yours,
Jessamyn

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Follow me @jessamynorchard for more assorted randomness!

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