Here's an ESSAY

The last thing I always wonder when I finish an album project, and especially one so conceptual as MB-LP, is if it was successful. It's a given that I learned a ton while making it: about integrating research into my writing, writing from different perspectives, composing with loops, mobile recording, and mixing. So in that sense it was successful. The product itself, though, is harder for me to come to grips with. Unlike a lot of songwriters that talk about their songs as being like their babies, once I'm done working on a song I don't feel paternal affection for it, at least not in terms of unconditional love. If I'm in the right headspace, I can appreciate the thing I made, but it doesn't really tell me anything new about how good it is.

I need other people for that, and at this point I haven't had much feedback about the MB-LP material at all. Even people who've heard it aren't automatically forthcoming with specific opinions, which doesn't bode super well. If someone loves something, they'll tell you. But my suspicion is that even if what I've made is somewhat enjoyable, it will become more so the more the listener understands about its construction and its aims. That takes time, and charitable listening, two things that are in pretty short supply outside of people who already know and like you.

I tried to have something immediately appealing or arresting about the songs on MB-LP, but I definitely feel that there are things I could have done to make the songs catchier. Some I've avoided on (probably misguided) moral grounds: lyrical and structural repetition, especially for looping music, is at a minimum, there aren't a lot of cool sounds for the sake of having cool sounds, or decadent processing on the tracks. Others I should have done but didn't, like explore the possibilities of the loops more, write more songs to pare down from, play them live more times before doing demos. I'm sure I'm ignorant of still other ways, but I hope to learn them someday.

I made a decision to have this project be very conceptual, and to put that up front. The album and track titles are four letter codes, for goodness sake. Bot that said, my hope was always that the overarching concept wouldn't prevent the songs from standing up on their own right. I find it difficult to distil my ideas into something simple and communicable, and am not the best judge of when I've done so. I write and evaluate my lyrics on paper, which is not how listeners experience them unless they have a lyric booklet. And since I don't make CDs, uh, good luck with that.

My point is that a lot of the things I spend time and effort on aren't readily apparent, or require very specific knowledge or attunement to discern. And since most people don't have the time or energy to find them, I have to either temper my expectations of being generally appreciated or change what I focus on. Alternatively, I could insert another step in the process, after I have something I'm happy with but before anyone else is, where I find ways to convert test listener complaints into further accessibility. Having to do major revisions to things I already enjoy is a daunting prospect, but if I want people who don't know me to enjoy my music (and I think I do) I'm going to have to suck it up.

All this is premised by the idea that music isn't actually subjective. Or, if it is, then it's possible for a good thing to appeal to a wider range of subjective taste. Coming up with a plan of how to do this requires knowing who you currently appeal to, so you can determine what you can change without alienating those people while bringing new ones in. At my scale, this means talking to the few people who I know like my music, and trying to see what they think could be improved and what they find essential. I've noticed in the past that when I put a collection of songs together, the first five or ten people I ask will all praise different songs, and my personal favourite will never be one of them. So faced with this reaction every time, I've never been enthusiastic about choosing a direction and seeing if I can stick to it. MB-LP is an eclectic project by design, and I was hoping that in writing it I'd be able to pick the types of songs out that I enjoy writing the most. But I do have a sort of restlessness that makes me have to throw an angry song into the cutesy ones, or vice versa. And that goes for writing as well as performing; I hate to be one-note, and I hate to just fulfil expectations. So in trying for homogeneity I think I'm fighting a losing battle.

Definitely I do notice that I enjoy writing happy, uptempo songs more than in the past. I think when a lot of songwriters first start writing, they feel like writing when they're sad or lonely or anxious, and so those songs come the most naturally. For me at least, it took a while to feel authentic and comfortable writing in happier, less introspective modes. But now I am, and enjoying it, so there's some tangible evidence that I'm improving, or at least broadening my range.

So I guess what I've said here is that I think that making MB-LP was a valuable, fascinating experience, and that through it I've become more aware of ways I can write with greater success in the future. And sometime in the future, when I'm feeling self indulgent, I can grab some earbuds and remember what I thought sounded good back then.