Day 144 : Historical Reference

lately i’ve been listening to a lot of our music from over the years. it might seem self-centered or vain, but since i’m currently doing one of the 365 projects on flickr, i’m looking at a lot of other’s photos of themselves doing the same sort of thing (or not)¹. as a result i’m routinely looking at photos uploaded by others while reflecting on my own.

so in posting a comment in regards to this photo i reminded myself about a huge amount of history that goes with the music². in this case i linked Learning to Let Go since it felt appropriate, given my own trials for a period of years. at the time i was watching a marriage dissolve (thankfully given the circumstances i came to discover), hating my job, and struggling with depression that only seemed to get worse. to gain back some amount of creative expression and enjoyment, i started spending my mornings and/or evenings in the studio working on ideas.

One of the many tracks that came from that era was Learning to Let Go. i was inspired by some samples lifted from a 3CD set called “The Big Bang” (the vocals you can hear in the track). Its a decent cd set by the way as it covers a wide range of tribal, ethnic, and modern uses of the drum. other than that its all midi sequencing against a roland jp8000, e-mu extreme lead, and akai s3000 (R.I.P.) without any overdubs. As with most of the tracks from this period, its really nothing more than live mixing as i was limited to recording 2 tracks to another computer. the blue and white g3 i used cubase on lacked any audio interface with an input. hours and hours of music were recorded that way over the course of about two years.

as for the title, that was inspired by my own need to accept that somethings i just had to let go of if i was going to ever be happy. there’s a spot in the vocal sample that sounds as if “let me go” is being stated. now six years later, i can say that while it was the ugliest period of my life, it forced me to change some things about myself for the better. these days when things are looking a bit ugly in front of me, it helps to remember that time.

so now i need to figure out how to incorporate at least one free track every day that i participated in creating into a daily post. why? because i can and i’d like to see if it drives any real traffic off flickrfacebook, etc. i’m not quite buying the whole “social media” model.  it has an impact in overall communication efforts to “get the word out” but that defines social media: the current  upward trending channels of communication most likely associated with “word of mouth.”

so give Learning to Let Go a listen. if its not your cup of tea, i can assure you there is something in our online archive that you will like. that much i can promise you. i think there’s probably 15+ years of music from us in there and we’re still working through getting it all online and indexed.

¹ the order meant nothing | ² available for free without drm