Get Some Distance From Your Projects

I know I’ve talked about this before, but I must stress it one more time.   When you are producing yourself, and even if  you are not, getting some distance from the project is really important. 

You get so immersed in something you can miss big important issues because you are so close you literally can’t hear the forest for the trees.

I had such a computer break down, in the middle of my trying desperately to make my deadline and have the All Wood and Doors CD ready for Christmas, but the universe had, if  you can believe it, other plans.

I began my solo CD, Backstage At The Resurrection almost two years ago, and when I came off the road in March, I went after it big time.   Six to ten hours a day in the studio six days a week and then Cliff Eberhardt and I committed to this All Wood and Doors project so I was suddenly doing two recordings as once, something that I’ve never done before.

I discovered that I had developed tennis elbow in my right shoulder from sitting in the same position for months in a row.   I couldn’t sleep at night for the pain.

I had also been listening so much and too loud, so I was developing titanitus in my left ear.    Then life intervened.

I went on the road in September and came home expecting to go right back to work when the computer snafu hit.  

Because of that I couldn’t work on the CD for two weeks, and I decided to give my ears a break as well.  I listened to nothing but my own guitar at practice and didn’t listen to one of the Doors tunes even once.

Got completely away from it for a month it turned out.   And wonder of wonders, when I got everything back to gether and began to work on the CD I could hear everything that was out of whack.

All of it obvious and easy to fix.   I have flown through five songs in nine hours and will go to work again tomorrow.

I hope to wrap this puppy up enough to take on the road and listen on a variety of speakers in a variety of places and then master it and put it into manufacturing before December.

Give yourself some distance.   It’s really part of the process.

Comments

[Robert Tolchin]

Sorry you came to this through your computer snafu James, but this is a great point. Although I'm not a musician, I run into this as a visual artist. I often file away unsuccessful fine art photography projects upon completion only to unearth them months later and find I like them quite bit. Happens all the time. I think sometimes one needs to separate "The Work" from the labor that was put into creating it, and the passage of time is the way to do that.

Of course that doesn't work when you are trying to release a CD on deadline.

Robert Tolchin

[weirdy]

Kids would really love that. Even though free lance writing is boring