I Don’t Want to Go to Mira Lago
...I want to be foot fancy and free...
Last year I did this piece that vaguely somewhat resembled a faux radio show from another dimension that I called "Dickweeds". The name was a reference to a portion of the show that was embedded somewhere in the middle of program.
The idea was to use existing fragments I had lying around on some hard drive and then augment those pieces with new pieces or atmospheres to wrap a bow on it as one piece.
Listening back to it, there are parts I think worked well and several others that don't. There are some things I would entirely omit as they meander too much and the mix is more uneven than I prefer. But it was over half an hour and I did complete it in two weeks.
It is always interesting to discover things that you would do differently given a second chance.It demonstrates that you have learned over time. I am unclear why some people project this ridiculous notion of being perfect; as adopting such a position implies one is to unable or unwilling to learn further. My experience is that we are rarely perfect in any given moment. It would seem self limiting to adopt that position.
Whatever, I can't live the lives of others.
In fairness to my current criticisms, I do also recall that at the time that I created Dickweeds I felt, somewhat strongly, that it was somehow necessary to wildly vary the tone and pacing to underscore its somewhat remote out there amateurish feel. This audio, while posing as an other dimensional program, is also audio that is not intending to reflect how we listen to music in cars, or stereos, or on some social platform. But perhaps something closer to old school VHS recorders, modern FaceTime, or perhaps a video we recorded on our phone several years ago. Thereabouts given its other dimensional tendencies.
The mix sometimes is as it is to force a separation between the fictional world I inhabit as an artist and the one I inhabit as a biological denizen surviving on the planet. These are ultimately the same person, but each perspective differs in how they interact with others.
Regardless, I think it could have been better in places. It's too abrupt to my current tastes. Good to note. Good to know. Good to learn.
At the time I created the piece I was also curious as to how much time it would take to do something such as this from beginning to end as a team of one person. Given, I was a bit blind and laying the tracks as I was chugging down the mountain I simply placed a self imposed time deadline to deliver something over half an hour in length within a two week window and just roll with it, consequences be damned. That process included developing all of the samples I used in the piece through end of mastering.
One could spend months on something like this if one wished to such, and I also felt a time constraint was necessary for me to keep the piece cohesive. I was concerned that if I let it spill over several weeks it would be less reflexive of the moment. Most/many radio shows will, directly or otherwise, have some element of the moment of time flavoring what you may hear that day.
To insure I finished something within two weeks as a deliverable, I ran the process as an agile scrum project with a resource of one person and a budget that covered only that person's time.
Whenever I would start going off into the weeds on some lengthy, meandering, directionless, exploration of endless sonic possibilities, I would put on my scrum master hat and bring my team member to heel. If my team of one started building too many things and failed to complete backlog in a timely manner because the greedy customer got out of control with their demands, I'd go whoop my ass into focusing on the task at hand that I agreed to do and then strip away backlog like I was mowing down weeds with a front end bulldozer.
As is the case with most projects, of course we let go of some critical requirements and agreed to trade off quality just to hit a made up deadline.
I didn't start this piece out with the same deadline. I was just going to do something short, but that didn't seem to be working as I didn't seem motivated to tie bows and dot I'd on several initial ideas I had started.
When something isn't working, we should be open to change so we can find something that does work... if we are looking for solutions. I'm all about solutions if it is something I can affect.
Sometimes pieces fall apart on their own and yet you have enough time and structure that it seems a shame to put them in the dust bin.
So, I recalled Dickweeds, and though I had no desire to place a deadline on this effort, I did apply some learnings from that experience. This one is an inter-dimensional piece I call "I Don't Want to Go to Mira Lago."
The spelling and the pronunciation is as intended.
Everything in this one is loosey goosey at times with some of the obvious global tension running into and out of the piece.
I will time capsule it likely unearth it at a later point just as I did with Dickweeds.
