With a month to go before the concert, I am getting busy with all the preparations. A couple people showed interest in hearing about the behind the scenes and beyond the music of putting on a concert.
So here’s the breakdown:
You may have heard about celebrities going on crazy diets and workouts before a performance. There is some truth to that. I will be wearing high heels for this concert, so I need to really work my legs out to strengthen them. That and a night prancing around in skimpy outfits… yeah, I’d like to be a little bit more in shape.
As far as working out and dieting go, I’m not about to torture myself and I don’t have tons of time to spend on it, so this is how I do it.
A few weeks ago, I bought shape up shoes for work. I’m on my feet most of the day, so I figured getting a little something something extra out of it is a good thing.
I get up earlier in the morning now and do a short exercise routine. A brisk 15 minute walk/jog and work intensively on my legs. Squats and calf raises. I also do jumping jacks for a minute. By the time the concert rolls around, I will have worked up to more intensity and distance in my walk/jog and more reps for my squats and calf raises.
There are a couple reasons why I decided to get exercise into my routine again. Yes, for the obvious reason of getting into shape, but also because I feel better when I get exercise in. It lowers my stress and allows me to get out a lot of my frustrations. It relaxes me. Hooray for multitasking! I do love efficiency.
I have cut my Pepsi intake by a lot. I start the day now with a couple glasses of water, and now don’t touch the free pop I have available to me at work. (Now if I can just stop sending my coworker for milkshakes….)
I get out of bed, brush my teeth, pour my glass of water and make my breakfast. Lately, it’s been two slices of rye toast with hummas on it. Sometimes I’ll do yogurt or applesauce. For me though, I find it more important to get myself in the habit of eating breakfast again.
While I am out for my walk, I listen to my mp3 player to songs that inspire me and lift my spirits. Also because I am covering Bad Romance at the concert and it’s good workout tuneage, I listen to a lot of Lady GaGa. I let my imagination run and imagine myself actually being on stage performing my music.
That gives me the game plan on where to go with my concert rehearsals. I warm up my voice while I’m in the shower. Oddly enough for a singer, I never used to be one of those people who sing in the shower. Now I make it a point to do my vocal warmups in there and practice some of my songs.
By the time this is all done, I have half an hour to 45 minutes before work to do my computer stuff and practice. I push to do more practice before work, because after work it’s too late for me to practice. I’m writing this blog right now because my room mate worked the night shift last night, so I’d like to let him sleep a bit longer before I start torturing him with having to listen to my practicing.
While I am at work, I practice promoting myself and my music with my coworkers and my regular customers. Also, with my desire to get more in shape, I’ve been parking all the drive thrus so I have to walk further to bring them their food. I do more calf raises when I am standing around or on break. This town already thinks I’m a freak so I’m okay with looking even freakier while I stack napkins lol.
I have started to walk part of the way home at night. Maybe closer to the concert I’ll walk all the way home, but it’s a 45 minute walk and I really don’t have that kind of time to spare that late at night if I want to get to bed at a decent hour.
I get home and do my computer stuff. Check Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc. I do some research, add some friends across social networks and read and respond to blogs. I also brainstorm other promotional ideas and chat with a friend to unwind and toss around promotional and video ideas.
And then I go to bed and prepare to start all over again the next day.
You think that’s a busy day? Days I don’t work are even busier because those are video shoot days.
Since my beginning on YouTube, I have grown in so many ways. Personally, professionally, musically and quite noticeably, in quality on so many levels.
I think a lot of people are scared to start making videos because of a lack of equipment. I also think that no time is too early to start building your following. Personally, I think that it’s best to start small and grow from there. Why invest a bunch of time and money into equipment that you really have little use for? There is something to be said for the creative process of learning how to make magic with little. Or maybe that’s the metaphor for my own life.
I started making videos with my webcam and the built in microphone on my laptop. Both the audio and video quality was terrible. I quickly discovered that my still camera had better audio and video capabilities, although still not wonderful. I found myself explaining quite a bit to people that “I swear, I actually do sound really good live. My videos really don’t do me justice.”
I recorded music with a karaoke machine for awhile. The karaoke machine came with the ability to record stuff directly onto an SD card.
From there, I experimented with musical techniques, camera placement and all sorts of fun stuff, slowly expanding my repertoire.
The purchase of a new, albeit cheap computer allowed me the ability to do small edits on my videos, meaning I no longer had to do all my videos in one take, and I could trim the beginnings and the ends of my videos.
My room mate gave me a tripod he happened to have kicking around the house. It used to be his father’s, and now he had no use for it. It’s amazing how many more options I had just having the tripod available to me. Seriously, if you can buy only one piece of video equipment (besides the camera lol), I definitely recommend going with a tripod.
Over the past couple of years, I have gone through many cameras, most of them being still point and shoot cameras. When my last camera died on me, I took the HD plunge and got myself a video camera finally.
That step alone pushed my videos much further, both visually and aurally. It was quite amazing.
However, now I’m thinking a lot more about recording and live performances, so I’ve started to really step up my audio setup. I got the vocal effects pedal, and invested in a better microphone, which is super sweet. When I was at the music store buying cables for my microphone, I decided to take a look at mixers. They had one there that was cheap enough to start off with. An eight channel mixer, including two XLR inputs. I’m quite happy with it. I now have everything running through my mixer into my amp.
I guess my point with this whole spiel is that I still think it’s for the best to start small and grow from there. Buy one or two pieces of equipment at a time. It also helps you to see what you really need and what is just fancy shmancy decoration.
Over the next little while, I will be focusing more on buying equipment for live use vs video use.
But for those of you who are interested in the specifics, here is the current list:
Video:
Kodak z18 flipcam (in raspberry lol)
Instruments:
Not Ryan: Taylor Acoustic/electric guitar 300 series
Yoshi: Jay Turser electric guitar (I bought it off a kid I work with.)
Code Name Honey: Casio CTK-3000 keyboard
I also have a violin, but since I can’t really play it yet, I don’t really see the point in writing too much about it.
Microphone: Shure PG-48
Mixer: Xenyx 802
Amp: Some small Traynor thing.
Effects: Boss VE-20 vocal effects pedal
Computer/software stuff:
Computer:
e-tard: emachine e440-1394
Audio editing: Audacity
Video editing: Windows Movie Maker (and yes, I’m very well aware that it BLOWS!)
I ripped that bad boy out of the box and immediately started playing with it.
I suppose Lady GaGa seems like a cool person to cover. I mean, this is one of my favorite songs and look at all the people getting record deals because they posted some Lady GaGa cover to YouTube. Lol, I’m kidding. Sort of. I definitely wouldn’t complain if I got signed because of this video, but I’m not counting on it.
This thing is so much fun! I spent yesterday and today playing with it. Now I think I’ve got most of the novelty out of my system and I can really start perfecting everything and getting my stuff polished to the point where I can use this at my concert.
I’m also feeling a lot better about going on stage and performing my myself while everyone else that night has loud bands backing them. I can see much more clearly that I really can hold my own on stage by myself.
Of course, it wasn’t as simple as getting the pedal. I ended up doing a major upgrade to my sound setup. One that I will be taking you on a tour of on Monday. Now to somehow tie that sound system in with my video setup… *sigh* that’s a project for another day.
So I decided to ditch my script. I don’t have the energy to do it, and it’s just not fun for me anymore.
So last week while I decided to look through some of my old songs. Inspired by someone asking if I ever write happy songs, I went back to listen and analyse the happy songs I did write.
I read this comment someone left about how they liked the happy me, but they love the old songs because they were always so angry. He was waiting for the day I went all Courtney Love on the world.
That and some personal events happening inspired Better Than Me.
I don’t know what exactly drove me to try to record this song, but I suddenly felt the incredible urge to experiment. Having no microphone, I recorded all the audio with my video camera, ripped the audio from the video and then imported everything into Audacity.
I played around with everything until my song was good to go. Next project, the video. But alas, my camera had died, so back to the charger for that and time for me to cook up some supper.
So there I was in my kitchen cooking supper in this 50′s style dress… suddenly the concept of the video came to me. This prim and proper old fashioned girl turns into a sexy rock princess.
6 hours later, I had the footage I needed and I was good to go with that.
My desire to experiment still burning within me, I wrote songs, I tried new things, I waited rather impatiently for my vocal effects pedal to come in the mail.
Finally today the magic came to me! Great day for it to come in too since I was home all day.
So I spent the afternoon playing with it and creating some super sweet stuff that I will be showing you on Friday.
Tomorrow’s shopping list includes a mike stand and some more cables.
I’ve been a bad, bad girl. I’ve been running around trying to do everything and neglected a lot of stuff in the process, this blog included.
Another wave of lots of stuff to write about has hit me, so I’ve been working on that as well as trying to expand and step up my game some. I had tons of fun with working on Better Than Me. The inspiration hit me to try some production stuff with that song, and I spent a day dedicated to making videos doing that instead. I’ll write more about that song in Wednesday’s post, but if you want to take a listen or download the song for free, it’s up on my Bandcamp page.
I did take some time out to relax a bit and just have fun playing my guitar and writing and singing. Sometimes I feel like I forget that I do this because I love it.
In the meantime, there’s still lots of work and upcoming projects for me. Concert rehearsals, getting merchandise and promotions. I think I need to find me an intern.
In the near future, I am doing up a questions and answers video, so if you have any questions about me and/or my music please comment/email me or whatever so I can give you an answer in the video!
Sometimes there are no tangible reasons, but something just doesn’t feel right. Sometimes things really are too good to be true.
And then sometimes, it’s 3 in the morning, you’re overtired and just plain angry.
Either way, it turned into a song. I basically wrote the song and then immediately recorded the video.
It’s how I used to always do my videos. I kind of miss the raw, fresh passion that process always gave. The raw immediate sting seems to dissipate somewhat after a few rehearsals.
Friday is April 1st, which marks the beginning of Script Frenzy. I’m excited to take on writing another script this year.
I write these scripts meaning for them to never see the light of day. For me, it’s just a writing exercise and a way to challenge myself.
I got a basic outline done with some help from fellow YouTuber and friend Wolf Bracker. Still some mixed feelings on doing an outline. I suppose it’s probably for the best that I learn proper writing techniques.
When that got frustrating enough for one night, I decided to write a song instead.
Sometimes I talk too much. When I talk too much, I end up admitting things. These things usually end up in songs.
I sat at my piano fiddling around when I came up with the main riff. I played the main riff over and over again thinking about the things I had said and the success I have been seeing recently.
It seemed that every day on my way to work Taylor Swift’s Back To December would play on the radio. The lyrics resonated with me. The song seemed to follow me everywhere. Listening to the song would bring back memories of love long passed.
Watching Glee last week nailed it in. Quinn telling Rachel how the story ends for them. I sat there crying, because I knew that Quinn was so right.
At the piano playing that main riff, scribbling down random phrases until something mildly coherent came from it. Knowing in my heart that my success cost me him, but being with him would end up costing me everything else.
Ever have those days where the first part of the day just drags? Yesterday was one of those days for me. I was incredibly tired and blah and as a result, I didn’t start working on anything until after 4 pm.
But after 4 pm, I was on fire. I got a lot done, so it made things much better.
Until I realized that it was 7 am and I still hadn’t gone to bed yet. Sometimes I have to wonder where exactly time goes.
So here I am, crawling out of bed at 1:30 getting this blog and as much as I can done in an hour before I have to go to the day job.
The basis for this video came to me while on my way to work one day last week. I had all my notes written down and the whole thing in my head in less than five minutes. Shooting the video was incredibly easy and was done in less than 15 minutes. Usually my videos take much longer than that.
As for my sister being able to beat Chuck Norris is a fight… very true. Well this all started a long, long, time ago in a galaxy far, far away my sister was the overprotective daddy (made even funnier by the fact that she’s younger than me). Everyone lived in fear of my sister. Like dude, she tackled a kid three times her size on the playground and bit him. (I ended up dating this guy briefly much later on in life.)
So I have used the scary sister to my advantage a few times before, and now most people think she’s a ninja. She doesn’t appear much, but when she does, you don’t see it coming.
She’s not quite that scary anymore, but we all settle down somewhat with age. She’s still full of awesome.
It dawned on me a few months ago that I do very well for an artist who plays very few live shows and does not have an album… so how much better could I be doing?
I started working on an acoustic album about a year ago. The tentative name for it was “The Secrets Of Love And Lies”.
Then my life turned into chaos and the project got pushed back further and further until… well until it turned into nothing but a fantasy.
I recently discovered Bandcamp though CarylCake. It got me thinking again. I could release an album or something.
Then I got started on 28 Days Of Awesome. Then Next Stop: World Domination!. My concert coming up… oh wait… I’m playing a concert and I don’t have an album?
Recently, I’ve been asked a lot about my album. Do I have one? When is it coming out?
I finally realized that I can’t get much further without an album. But I haven’t been in the studio yet, but I don’t have the greatest songs in the world yet, but, but but…
But I decided to quit working full time and move to the city to pursue music further. Why now? Because if I kept on waiting, I’d never do it.
Isn’t that a much larger leap of faith?
If I keep on waiting for everything perfect, then I’ll never do it. People like me and the songs I’m releasing now.
So last week, I started to put everything together for an EP release on Bandcamp, Naked And Raw. It will be ready for release on Tuesday, March 22. Yay!!!!
Yes, it’s sudden. Because I finally realized if I wait for the perfect time and the perfect studio and/or equipment, I’m never going to release it. The right time for me to do this is now.
The song listing and all that stuff can be found on my Bandcamp page.
I’ve decided that I’d like to post my original songs on Wednesdays. That way people will know when to expect music from me, I’m still posting a song every week, and I also get the most views on Wednesday videos for some reason. Since music is my priority and main goal, it just makes sense that I post it on Wednesdays.
Today’s look is by request from Wolfbracker. We were chatting while I was getting ready to do my nails and he suggested hot pink. So I did the hot pink nails and then decided to build my entire look around that one colour.
Production on this video was very far behind schedule. I wanted to write a new song for this video and last week showed little fragments of lyric, but nothing coherent. So I pulled out an old notebook of mine.
I wrote Maybe We Could Fly in October. I never posted it because there was so much I wanted to do with the song that I just wasn’t capable of doing at the time. In my head I hear a full out studio version… upbeat number kind of with a It’s Raining Men (Weather Girls) meets I Need A Hero (Bonnie Tyler) inspired sound to it.
I recently pulled that song out again after listening to The Cardigan’s acoustic version of My Favorite Game. You might know that song as the song off of Gran Turismo. Or maybe that’s just my nerdiness coming out again. Anyways, the acoustic version of that song is a heart wrenching, raw ballad which made me revisit my original vision of Maybe We Could Fly.
In today’s video, I experimented with using daylight. I wanted to capture the rain turning into snow outside my window, but it just wasn’t working. Interesting experiment nonetheless.
I can’t remember who it was on YouTube, but this girl posted a cover song and wanted the original band to hear it, so she set up a link that would automatically tweet the band. That was a cool idea. I want to yoink it for a future video, but have everyone send my song to Ellen DeGeneres or something like that. I’ll be keeping you posted though.
Anyways, I’m not sure how to close this off… these are the behind the scenes rambles from today’s episode of Next Stop: World Domination! Hope you enjoy the episode!
