At the start of 2024, I decided that this was the year that I’d give music production my best shot. I decided to throw everything I had at it, and really try to do it right. The results were these: From Jan. to Dec. 2024, I composed and wrote lyrics for 77 songs, in-between managing our home and business. Twenty-five songs were flops, bad ideas, un-executable, ugly or weak. Those went into the trash. (Not possible, you say? Each day has 24 hours, remember.)
Of the ones not trashed, 52 (!!) were completed, mastered and released. (I’m reading this and thinking, 52! No wonder I’m so darn tired.)
Releases – and releases still in the 2024 pipeline, due out this month – comprised eight albums/EPs, plus singles:
- Divan Segues (album, instrumental remixes, 7 tracks),
- Remember Us (EP, 3 remixes),
- Howl (album, 11 tracks),
- Ticket to Mars (album, 9 tracks),
- Reaperman (EP, 5 tracks),
- Perfect You (EP, 4 tracks),
- The Colours of Cold (EP, 5 tracks),
- Rondo (EP, 3 tracks), and
- Two singles (Missing You, and Tip the Cup), and one Co-written single (Just Breathe).
- Two songs were produced, as per normal, and mastered, but not released, since they were gifts.
Each released track went out with a music video, visualizer video, lyric video, a Spotify canvas and an Instagram reel. Lucky for me that I enjoy the design side of the job.
What I had to learn to do
Since I am independent, I am my own composer, writer, producer, publisher, and distributor. I have to be able to do every step in the process. I used the following programs and apps – thank God for technology:
- Logic Pro (music production) – It all begins and ends with this.
- Music on iMac (production, exporting, formatting)
- Voicemaker (text to speech generator)
- Artgrid (video clips)
- VideoBolt (visualizer and lyric videos, reels and canvases)
- iMovie (music videos)
- Video (published videos)
- Unreal Engine (A.I. humans/meta-humans)
- Runway (graphics to animated video, lip-synching A.I. video)
- Deep A.I. /deepai.org (text generator for song write-ups and blurbs)
- Whatsmygenre (song tagging)
- Dream by WOMBO (style variations for cover designs, re-generating raw artwork)
- GIMP (graphic design)
- Tunecore (publishing and distribution)
- SoundCloud (publishing)
- Spotify (publishing and artist profile)
- Music streaming platforms: iTunes, Apple Music, YouTube Music, TIDAL, Deezer, Qobuz, Beatport
- Instagram (promotion)
- SOCAN (rights registration and repertory)
- CIPO – Canadian Intellectual Property Office (trademark, IP, and copyright)
And yes, I had to learn the ins and outs of every one of these, technically financially, and legally. Some, like Tunecore and Spotify, require a horribly high level of precision, and I have made mistakes, fortunately correctable. Apart from all of this, I had to learn to write music with my co-writer, and I had to learn how to write in different genres, like House, Trip-Hop and EDM. Until now, I worked in Folk, World and a little bit of Pop.
Wins and gains
I reached three major and satisfying milestones. Firstly, I entered into a co-writing agreement with Sean Berchik (wonderful music-making came from this collaboration). Second, “Cōdae” was at last registered as a trademark, legitimizing my artist name. Thirdly, I was inspired by a song of Luke Garfield, and actually managed to write lyrics for it and produce a new version. I am quite chuffed to be his co-writer.
I do feel that the music I produced in 2024 is hundreds of times better than anything I’ve done before, I am genuinely in love with some of the songs because they turned out to express my feelings exactly and are just plain beautiful. For this, I am deeply indebted to Sean, who has, for the past year, patiently and thoughtfully mentored, guided, taught, and inspired me. Without him, none of this would have happened. (I’m not exaggerating.)
My favourite song of the year – “The Colours of Cold”
Getting back my mojo
Two other little things also deserve a mention: As some of you read on this blog, at the outset on my road of music production, I was convinced that I could NOT sing, and that I had lost whatever singing ability I used to have. My loss of confidence resulted in a general low spirit that caused me to lose my knack for painting, portraits specifically. I think this is because I have Synesthesia. Synesthesia is a condition in which sensory crossovers occurs, such as tasting colours or feeling sounds. In other words, whenever I am writing music, at the same time I’m also painting a picture of it in my head, or literally painting a picture. I can’t seem to separate the image from the sounds. I used to be quite good at painting, but lately, everything I tried had flopped.
Basically, I thought I sounded like Florence Foster Jenkins. Sean refused to let me continue on this downward spiral. He took me in hand, drove me (sulking and moaning and breathless with fear!) through singing training sessions, and then took my mangled vocal recordings and did some magic with them. Then he gave me a present of a song on which I am singing with him in a duet. It made me cry I was so happy to hear me, actually singing! I thought there’s hope.
So, the end of 2024 saw the production and release of three songs on which I am singing. Oui, c’est moi! At the same time, I started painting again, literally a new work every few days. (Some of the paintings are below.)
It’s like I was half-dead, a zombie, and now I’m fully alive again. This life-line from Sean is something that I had not expected to ever receive, and it is out of scope of all we embarked on. It is invaluable, and if it had a price, it would have been too high for me to pay. And my debt of gratitude to him is as high. Consider yourself most fortunate if someone gives you such a gift from the kindness of their heart.
In answer to the question, “What is the measure of a man?”, the English writer Samuel Johnson (1709 – 1784) said; “The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good.” I can do Sean absolutely no good. I have nothing, am nothing, compared to him. Yet, he always treats me with sweetness, generosity, intelligence, and consideration, applying his formidable skills with a gentle hand – as if I were somebody worthwhile. (Apparently, that’s how he treats everyone.) I am 100% certain that if he were ever to read this, he’d be incandescent with embarrassment. But it’s the truth. I don’t lie about this kind of stuff.
The downsides
While I have grown creatively, and been ridiculously happy, and have healed mentally and emotionally this past year, there are also downsides to this job – which it now is; a job. First, it is prohibitively expensive, even if you do what you can yourself. It is seriously extremely expensive, particularly if you want only the best and most brilliant. Secondly, there’s not a snowball’s hope in hell of me making money from it. Nope. Nada. I look at my Spotify Wrap for the year and it’s more like a Spotify Warp. Yes, everything has increased but it’s an increase from nothing to not quite nothing.
And ironically, the tracks that get streamed the most are those weird and idiosyncratic experiments based on Google’s sound visualization, that I wrote for the Painting Music album in 2022. *Sigh* Point is, I knew the world was full of people like me who produce music on DAWs. I did not know that the ecosystems of specific music genres are basically closed to newcomers, independents, and novices. The world of professional music is populated by artists and producers with lifetimes of experience and impeccable skills, often in a specific genre, who all know each other and work with each other. It really is an ecosystem. If you want to get into it, there are things you can do, or pay for, but you might not want to or you can’t afford it.
Music is (unfortunately) personal
One more downside is that I found out what the tagline used on Spotify, “Music is Personal”, means. It means that literally everyone hears or listens to a song differently, as differently as every reader interprets a novel. And whereas with a novel, there is a link, via the text, between the reader and the author, which makes it easier for the reader to understand the story and thus like the book, in today’s music there is no “author’s voice”.
The meaning in the melody and the lyrics (what you are trying to say) is often transcribed during the process of giving a song universality. And the artist, writer, vocalists, instrumentalists, and producers are more often than not represented though pseudonyms and avatars. The listener is not connected to the real human being who created it. The listener is not hearing the original. By the time your song gets out there, you might as well be fishing for one little fishy listener or fan in the vast Atlantic. Chances of finding a match is practically zero.
In my case, I am afraid that my music has failed to appeal to my Significant Other. It’s not his kind of thing. It saddens me immeasurably that he does not listen to what I make, and that the few times I’ve made him listen to a new song, all I got was “nice”. (Damned by faint praise.) But it is what it is. So, it is a lonely business, this music journey. For someone like me who is in any case a loner, it has become ever more lonesome, if that’s even possible.
So now what?
I achieved all the objectives I had set out at the start of 2024. I have also totally blown through my budget and am as poor as a church mouse. Jokes about starving poets and artists are not so funny now. What am I going to do in 2025? Well, I’ll try every way I can to continue to make music, though definitely not eight albums! Probably just one. But I’ll keep going because without music, and without the lovely people I have met and worked with along the way, life would be quite unbearable.
A special thanks to these folks also:
