Labor of Love

Ahhhhh. That feeling of satisfaction when something you've worked on for a very long time is finally complete.  It's that feeling of joy coupled with a sort empty-nest feeling knowing the bundle of joy you spent so much time cultivating now has a life of its own.

I've reached that point today with Origins my first recorded album release.  I began working on the album about three years ago with only the title of the album and an idea for how I wanted it to sound.  That changed of course as I struggled in the beginning to find my voice.  Not that I didn't have a stylistic idea of how I wanted the music to sound, but I struggled with having so many influences and directions of musical interest that I needed to reel things in to have some consistancy throughout the album.  So I took a democratic approach and let the music decide.   I just kept writing tracks and they eventually began to take shape as a collection and created a voice for themselves - rather than me trying to create the voice and push the music into it.

Now Origins is born into the world and what a joy it's been so far.  For me the joy is two-fold.  During the three year period that Origins was in the works, I beleive I've composed about 50 or so songs.  Some of these are completed and some aren't.  Some sound like a film score, some like an Opera, others like World music and some like urban music or urban Jazz.  The temptation while creating music in other various styles is to get side-tracked from what you're working on and begin working on something else.  This could mean a different song, or a different album altogether.  So during that three years, months were spent writing and recording music that had nothing to do with the album I was trying to finish.  Combine this with being gainfully employed and spending time with the  family, and you begin to see how the months... years slip by.  So one joy is the satisfaction of completing the work and the other is the satisfaction that it's finally complete so I can officially move on the my other projects.

With that said, today is a great day for me with plenty of cause for celebration.  In addition, tomorrow is my birthday (no coincidence in the timing) and my wife just gave me a birthday present a day early. She got for me a much needed pair of recording headphones to replace my current ones.  While my old ones are only four years old and sound perfectly fine, you can clearly see the wear and tear that a tireless composer can put on a pair of recording headphones.

Anyhow, so I begin tomorrow with a new age, a fresh start and a brand new pair of headphones.