So yeah. I’ve been producing music with a slouchy laissez faire posture since 2003 (note: self-professed constant consummate predicated laissez faire denizen about every interest I pursue). I was a DJ, so obviously the next step was to make my own mind-blowing choons so I could dive further into an already well-established narcissism. I had a pretty staid confidence going into it. I knew exactly what kind of music I wanted to make, how it was going to sound and thanks to my DJ education, how to structure and order the track. I also knew what types of sound manipulation kicked a song up a notch, so I began with a pungent, rather uncharacteristic drive to make every song hit that kick-ass feeling I felt so rarely when listening to other people’s work. There were, of course, moments I would hear something so complex and driving that pushed that momentum further. Again, narcissism 
.
I was raised with a piano that I played every day, no fail. I understood harmony before I understood how to sing. In junior high, I pathetically belted to Whitney Houston. I imitated her vibrato and tone and eventually realized I sounded just like her when she’s on the radio! OMG! I must seek validation for this amazing talent! (I am abundantly relieved American Idol didn’t exist back then as delusions like that can only lead to audition laugh track spoofs that scar for life. Like Bikini Girl.). I thereafter dove into every single musical and choir I could latch my grubby chords to, affording me a decent classical music education. As a result, I cemented a very static and strict methodical approach from how I learned music to executing it.
After production mega-fests with friends and gleaning some of their expertise, I toyed around with the idea of recording my vocals instead of using, for example, questionable gregorian chant a cappella samples that sounded more like a scared shitless band of ewes fleeing from a cheetah. With excitement and a morbid curiosity, I planted my ample arse in my friend’s bathroom one afternoon. Acoustic heaven – me on the toilet with a sweet microphone (that I still can’t afford) singing Joan Osborne, The Sundays, Tori Amos, Smashing Pumpkins and Joni Mitchell, with a faint waft of Speed Stick in the air. I even hummed progressive straight tones, did operatic trills and attempted some super inadequate kwali. I figured I could easily cut up the samples and they would miraculously slide across the track like butter on toast. But did I use a metronome? Hell no.
As nice as it was to finally have my own vocal samples, I spent a couple years cursing the beat mapping process. That initial heavily winded confidence I had going in slowed to an agonizing resignation that I wasn’t technically capable enough because everything I tried sounded like crap. I could hear it perfectly in my head but I just couldn’t execute. Beat mapping, in theory, is great because it tells the program to analyze the sample’s structure so the pace of the sample matches the pace of the track. Unfortunately, as vocals have no obvious repetition (well, mine don’t), the mapping marks at the start of every phrase and creates a rhythmic cacophony. All the programs I experimented with resulted in the same inconsistent, fubared mess. Why did I torture myself when I had a ten gig bank of licensed, legal samples to choose from? The denouement of these attempts sounded scary. It was like Kathleen Battle anally raping the Fugees. We’re talking an impressively limp cache of half-finished music projects that I won’t go near, to this day, with an industrial crane.
A few weeks ago I realized I really missed making music. It was apparent I needed to find a way to make it easy so I could go back to enjoying the process rather than curse it. I also wanted to try the vocal thing again. I figured hey, I’m unemployed! I’ve got all the time in the world right now to scream obscenities at inanimate objects and bawl like a whiney, petulant child in the privacy of my apartment. A four year break and a lot of major life stuff somehow lifted the super complex veil I draped over the process of making music. I started recording vocals with my iPhone and I can now simply drop the samples directly into the software (oh technology, I could kiss you!). I also decided there is no way I’m going to make a track with me singing an entire song – beat mapping can kiss my psycho roommate’s ass AND roll around in an inordinately large pile of poop. Why not cut up the lyrics and only use some of them? Completely rework that shizz where the vocals aren’t from any recognizable song; set the stage so they become their own animal. Isn’t that what artistic interpretation is all about? Had I completely warped my creativity by studying at a liberal arts college manned with a sorely uninspired and denigrated staff in a state that is painfully ignorant and celebrates New Year’s by firing automatic weapons into the sky? Why yes, yes I had. But let’s not get delusional – I let myself get that way because I was too afraid to stand alone, do my thing and believe it wasn’t going to freak people out.
But fuck it. Freak out. I know Rick James believes he’s a SUPER freak. Which means, in the strata of freaks, I’m probably a serf because I refuse to use hair product and make sweet, kinky love to the microphone while holding a fo’tie and a girl I just met who wants to be my baby mama. Convention is for individuals who are not able to realize that we make the world, not the other way around.
