Songs For Your Enjoyment And Scratching The Creative Itch

A year ago I was feeling the weight of it all. I feel the weight of it all most of the time, but a year ago I was especially feeling it. I was inching closer to some kind of finality with my nearly 24 years at the same job, our youngest was heading into the final months of his senior year of high school, my friend and co-worker for nearly a quarter century was going through a cancer battle, and I was just generally feeling unsure of everything. I was needing some sort of outlet to dump those unknowns and anxiety into. Something creative, productive, but something that didn’t require a whole lot of bandwidth.

Back in the late 90s I’d bought a music program for our first computer. It was Sony Acid Music. It was a loop-based music program that you could just build songs out of different categories of music. It was completely different from the kind of music making I was used to, which was plugging into an amp and playing. There was a satisfaction I got out of building songs from drum loops, as well as various other sounds(keys, bass, soundscapes, etc.)

Somehow or another I came across Bandlab. It is a web-based music making site that is completely free and allows you to build tracks out of a library of loops. It works very much the same way Acid Music worked, except I didn’t need storage space on my computer as this was all hosted on a site. You can build the songs, master the songs, and download the songs all for free. It seemed like the perfect spot to burn some life fatigue off and make something at the same time.

So I started messing around on the site. Digging into my Boards of Canada and Oneohtrix Point Never side of my brain and came up with ten or so songs over the course of 2023. I found making songs via pre-recorded loops to be satisfying and a way to exercise parts of my musical brain I hadn’t exercised in a long time. I’d forgotten how much fun it was to dig for beats and melodies, then laying them out and see where they would lead me. And with a year that was filled one problem after the next, I needed as much creative escape as I could get.

I wasn’t sure if I’d ever actually release these songs, but I felt like why not? So I’ve released Structures, a five-song set of downtempo electronic tunes. I’m proud of how they came out. Making them has opened a door to a whole new way to make music and be creative. Along with the painting, I feel I’ve got plenty of avenues to explore my creative and artistic side now. I wanted to release these songs out into the wild and let everyone else give them a listen. I’m already working on more and will release a more substantial collection soon. I’m incorporating live instrumentation as well with the next batch.

There’s plenty of art being put out into the world. At times it feels like there’s so much that putting your own out there seems like a futile task. With all the noise it’s hard for your own voice to be heard. As much as making things is a therapeutic thing for me, I’m not much for attention seeking. I’d rather someone spend time discovering art that is vital for that artist’s livelihood. That’s not the case for me. It’s vital I create for my own mental well being, but it’s not feeding my family or paying bills. So if you want to check out these songs, please do. Download them for free. Or don’t download them. Whatever you want to do. But maybe just go buy some music from someone. Instead of streaming their work on one of those music platforms, go download their album off their Bandcamp page. Or go to a music store and actually buy some physical media. Show some real support and buy some music.