Building habits, bit by bit

Yesterday, after I finished my post for the day, a habit that I’m trying to build after years of not sticking to writing every day, I got down to work on Seesaw.

It’s another habit I’m trying to build. Working daily on my own music, with the intent of making at least small steps in finsihing things. Not necessarily getting done with one song in a day (as some electronic musicians seem to have the habit of), but more like setting an achievable goal (every night) and achieving it.

So I’m quite proud to say that I finished the song as a draft production, and it has come out surprisingly well. This basically means it is yet another song that I could choose to professionally produce and release whenever I get around to doing it.

As usual, I shared the song with the three people that I share my works with, and all three had shared positive (varying levels of) feedback about it. The most positive one came from my ex-colleague, and hers felt more like how I had felt about the song. So I chatted with her a bit about the song and the whole creative process.

That’s when it struck me that I could write a blog post about the song, the process, and the habit that I’m trying to build. Here it goes.

Seesaw has been in my life for about 8 weeks. It was born on the day before my knee surgery. An idea had seemingly floated into my brain, inspiring me to grab the guitar to write a hook and record it on my phone.

I remember having checked out the recording after dinner at the hospital, before Jay would leave for the night. It still had it. It had me. It had the potential of being a catchy song that would easily find its place is my top 10 dance/pop discography.

I came back to it on the second week after surgery, when I was finding it difficult to sleep one night. By then the melody for the three parts of the song was set in my head, and it was easy to write lines of the right meter to fit it.

The next day I sang it for the first time, and it was a bit of a let-down because I wasn’t getting the poppy punch that I was hoping it would have, right out of the gate.

Cut forward three more weeks, and I was able to sit at my music work desk for a long enough duration to start working on my productions. Mind you, I had a good excuse to not work on this song. My pop bass was away with my bandmate, who was sub-bing for me during my recovery period.

Yet, somehow, picking up the bass that I generally use for thrash metal gigs out of storage, I started laying down the parts.

The guitars were simple. Clean Telecaster with middle-of-the-neck riffs with a lot of syncopation and muting. Drums were too. Straight up one-two kick and snare with hats. A pickup loop and claps for the chorus. Reverse cymbals for transitions.

Keys were more difficult. I needed some nice sounding pads and a gentle arpeggiator. Pads were a disaster and eventually went on mute. The arpeggiator was found after a few hits and misses. Then came the bass.

For producers/musicians out there, if you are wondering why I’m tacking bass the last before vocals, I really don’t have a good answer.

The best I can come up with is that when I lay down a bass groove after the other elements come in, it's almost like I’m jamming with a band, just like how I would in a real band. That seems to give me enough freedom to loop and come up with some bass line ideas, one of which will eventually make it to the song.

It wasn’t easy at all. Because of some damned pick-up, earthing noise I have at my desk with that bass. It was frustrating at best, and over the course of three days (not consecutive by any means), I had three versions of the bass line, each noisy in one way or the other.

Of these, the last one had manageable noise and was groovy enough for me to want to sing the song in the way that I had always imagined it. That’s how I had left the session three days ago.

So when I wrapped up my post here and opened the song session, I had no idea that it was that groovy. Also, before sitting down to write on the blog, I was jamming some songs on a new acoustic grand piano VST I had downloaded (Autograph Grand; thank you, Spitfire Audio).

Since I’m about a year into playing chords on keys (it means that not proficient at playing piano), I had to slow my chords down so that I made fewer mistakes, which also forced me to sing the same melody in diferent ways.

Finally, I had hit the right vocal texture for Seesaw. Then I tried the vocal texture on the guitar at the right speed, and it sounded good. So much so that I came up with a backup vocal hook that had the potential to fix my arrangement as well.

Voilà, in about an hour, I had done the vocal tracking and done the basic mixing. Then I did some more editing for getting the dynamics of the arrangement right and did a quick master, before cranking out a mix-down.

My first listen on my MacBook Pro speakers was a disaster. Terrible cut-through noise from the bass (instrument) over the bass (line). It had sounded so good on headphones and on the monitor speakers!

A couple of listens on some bluetooth earbuds eased my anxiety, and the song did sound great in the choruses, especially the second one, which had the new backup vocal hook glueing everything together.

By the time I was in bed, adrenaline was high, and I was expecting another night of difficulty in falling asleep. But I had some podcasts as lullabies and despite sleeping 2 hours later than my schedule, I did get a decent night of sleep.

So, after a terribly busy workday, featuring me doing a lot of re-reviewing things—because the original review’s comments were ignored—I was left with choosing to take a break from the new habit. I am tired. I was tired when I had the option of not sticking to the habit-forming habit.

I resisted. I went back to a song that I wanted to improve on. And I started the process. Before I had my dinner. That’s because I knew that I ought to give myself an early night of sleep.

So, here I am, after dinner, feeling the first waves of sleep, finishing this post, proud of having two habits with unbroken streaks.

Tomorrow will be a challenge because Jay and I are headed out to the country house over the weekend, after a late-evening physical therapy session. I do have to wake up real early and get my reading and exercise done before a whole workday and the evening shenanigans.

I’ll wish myself luck, but I’m fairly confident that I’ll keep the street intact, for I can choose to write for both. Maybe I can write about what I wrote for my second habit. We shall see tomorrow evening.

A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

When I saw the poster for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood on BookMyShow, I thought that it looked funny. Throwback color schemes, Tom Hanks looking overly a in a light red sweater, and the words neighbor, icon, friend in an oversized font.


Source: https://cdn.flickeringmyth.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/a-beautiful-day-in-the-neighborhood-600x889.png

The movie was one of the three running last week that seemed worth watching. Judging by the relatively sparse listings, it was also the most "indie" among the three. Unlike most passionate movie-goers, I don't do much research on movies before I go watch them. Because it is the Oscar season, I generally end up having even better experiences by immersing myself in something that seemed to have happened more by chance than by meticulous planning, which is what my life seems to be more than I'd like to admit it is. And this is why I decided to try and gobble the movie up as the first chance I could, despite the scheduling gymnastics that I needed to do.

The movie began with an '80s looking shot of Mr. Rogers--the character Tom Hanks plays--sounding and looking funny. It was fairly obvious that his intended audience was not people like me. I guess the director wanted people like me to feel just that because I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. I guess I ought to clarify that I had no idea what I was getting into. Mr. Rogers was not a thing in my childhood, which technically started in late '79 and must have ended in the early '90s. My household was without a television until 1987 and without cable television until '94. The first thing that I remember looking forward to watching on TV was Giant Robot and Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman, that too on the national broadcaster Doordarshan. Since then, almost all of my non-sporting leisure time was usurped by the once-great MTV once I had cable.

In other words, I was an absolute virgin for Mr. Rogers and his famous TV show for kids. In fact, the movie is about a character--the jaded journalist Lloyd Vogel--who was pretty much in the same headspace as I was at the beginning of the movie. Lloyd is a cynic/critic who writes harsh articles about celebrities in Esquire, who, when given the assignment of writing a 400-word flattering piece on Mr. Rogers, reacts with a mixture of shock and disappointment. He thinks Mr. Rogers is just a TV show host putting on a fake character to get fame. I might have felt like Lloyd at the beginning of the movie, but by its end, I was like Lloyd's wife Andrea, who cherished the show and had uplifting moments in her childhood because of the show.

Lloyd is an interesting character--from my perspective--himself. His cynical self is probably a result of a troubled childhood/early adulthood thanks to a traumatic relationship with his father. Lloyd is still recovering from the trauma of watching his mother succumb to cancer after a painful terminal phase. He feels betrayed because his father Jerry wasn't there to support the family during this phase. Jerry, on the other hand, seeks help from other avenues of support while grappling with the loss of his wife, ends up in a relationship with a woman (too soon for the likes of his son), and eventually marries her. Lloyd also has an elder sister with whom he shares a complex relationship. Lloyd is married to Andrea, a grounded woman with a different upbringing, and is now coming to grips with the responsibilities of a father.

It is at this phase when Lloyd's employer assigns this task. Over several interviews with Mr. Rogers, Lloyd begins to unravel the mystery of the charm behind Mr. Rogers. At the same time, Lloyd also gets perspectives on his life, his relationships, and his responsibilities, thanks to the sagely insights that Mr. Rogers offers. Lloyd loses the cagey skepticism about Mr. Rogers and also about such people in general--the people who find a way to be empathic to others no matter what the situation is.

Mr. Rogers was/is everything that I wanted/want in my life to set things in perspective. He seems to have a bottomless well of kindness and is a master at making people he meets and interacts at ease. He is someone who can talk about something and would make sense to both children and adults without making either group uncomfortable in the way they are being talked to. The body language, the expressions, the choice of words, the tone of voice--everything seems to be perfect for an empathic connection. On top of all of this, Mr. Rogers is an actor, performer, musician, composer, songwriter, and much more. The topics that he addresses are dark concepts like anger, jealousy, death, hospitals, friendship. And yet, the words and the phrases that he chooses to use in his songs are available for everyone.

Fred Rogers seems to have been every bit what the poster said: a neighbor, an icon, and a friend. Mr. Rogers, through his show, its characters, its songs, and its conversations would end up educating children about the mysterious, difficult world that they were being ushered into without much preparation. This is the sort of thing that everyone needs, regardless of the time they are in or the age they find themselves in. Like Lloyd, I felt like watching clips of the show and learning more.

There is nothing more in the world that I seem to want than someone like Mr. Rogers in my life. Someone to help me find my empathy and lose my eternal cynicism.

Article 15 - a mini-review

Last night, I watched Article 15 after a recommendation from a lady friend of mine who I respect and whose judgment I trust. In the two-plus hours that I spent alongside an almost 50:50 audience of men/women in a relatively packed Mumbai multiplex screen, I went through a psychological riot, shifting from anger/outrage, sadness, laughter, introspection, reflection, hope, and contentment. A few drops of tears broke through my resilience during a couple of scenes. At the end of the movie, I found myself searching for faces that mirror my feelings, and I wasn't disappointed.

Aspects of the dark underbelly of 2019 India that the movie covers--some of which include casteism, gang rapes, honor killings, caste and religion politics, media blackouts, fake news, gender inequality, underwage labor, child labor, socioeconomic divide, urban-rural divide, armchair activism, gun violence, social media outrage, bureaucracy, corruption--are issues that should occupy a larger space in our collective consciousness. I hope this wonderful movie sparks educated conversations on these topics, which is the most effective way changes will percolate to the grassroots of society.

Here’s a useful article on the movie. https://www.indiatoday.in/education-today/gk-current-affairs/story/why-is-article-15-important-for-india-1557401-2019-06-28