I had to put (personal) in the title because I don’t want you to think that this is an update that will impact or benefit you in any way. But it might! I sincerely hope it will.
As you may know, I do session singing and songwriting full time. It’s great and I love it, but it leaves me very little time to work on my own music. I would say that for every 30 songs I do for a client, I do half of one for myself. I usually don’t even have time to finish it, and it sits forgotten in a folder for months.
In addition to session singing and songwriting, I work with my partner at Brain Stamp Music. We produce and write music for clients as well, so we have zero time to put into any original work.
Well, my friends, a lot has happened to me recently. I had a medical emergency which prompted me to look at my life and consider what I want it to be. If you watched the video in that link, here is a video update to it:
So, if you watched through to the end, you probably saw that I mentioned new music. That is my exciting update:
I am actively working on and preparing to release new, original music.
All of my emotions right now!
The Backstory
In 2015, I released my first full-length album, Zebra Stone. I did absolutely no promotion on it. I’m going to write a separate blog about this so I won’t take up too much time here, but the short reason is that I was so afraid of getting hate comments (seriously) that it prevented me from trying to get any comments at all. I know, it sounds insane, but that was one of several reasons I simply released it and did nothing to promote it.
After releasing the album, Brain Stamp started to get more work. People saw what we could do and wanted us to help with their projects. I also started session singing full time, with my album serving as my reel. My own creativity took a back seat to helping others and I was okay with that.
Fast forward to today, where I have a huge folder full of song idea snippets. We’ve been going through them and seeing which ones to work on for a release.
The Plan
Rather than focus on a full-length album, my goal is to have separated, staggered releases. This will allow me to pace myself and focus on quality over quantity. Three songs every 4 months is better than 11 songs in 2 years, in my opinion. The music industry for indie artists seems to favor this method anyway.
I will not be regularly blogging about the process of making the songs. I will blog if there is an important update (such as a new release or interesting story) but for the most part, this blog will continue to be about music in general and the music industry. Aside from a few scattered personal posts, the goal of this blog has always been to help other musicians and not about self-promotion.
I will, however, be vlogging about the process regularly. Since my YouTube channel is filled with personal videos and not just my music, I will be talking about my music there. If that interests you, please subscribe to my channel here for updates!
Okay, but how will this affect your session singing?
Let’s get to the important announcement: My full-time session singing work will not decrease. In fact, I am fully expecting it to increase over the winter (creative types get more creative when they’re hibernating). I will still be taking clients of all types. Working on my own music will not detract from my day job. Rather, it will detract from less important things like watching that extra AHS episode at night (I’m on episode 3 of Roanoke right now!) and getting to work.
Brain Stamp Music, however, will be on a temporary hiatus. My partner has an incredibly stressful schedule with his microphone company and with production work, so he has requested that we focus on our original music for a while. I’m okay with this and I will, of course, update when we are taking new clients again.
So that’s the big news! I’m very excited to share this with you and hope you will check it out when we release it. My VIP members will have access to inside info on how the process is coming along, so if you are curious about that please sign up here (it’s free). Other than that, I will see you next week with a regular post!