The Weather Report
The weather here has been absolutely gorgeous all summer, now we are approaching the fall season, and the month of March has it’s own charm in Buenos Aires. The sun has been shining every day, and the air temperature has just been perfect. I find this time of the year at this location of the planet extremely inspiring for creative work. As the hot summer full of sunlight is leaving the region, the gentle fall seems to assure us that the summer’s epilogue is going to stretch itself as much as it can.
Since my last post entry, I had to switch apartments twice. The good news is that in both places I’ve been able to pursue my recordings without any problem. I’ve been gathering some good amount of song ideas and started to work on the backbone of a potential new song. I am getting more and more used to my small nomadic recording setup. By now I would have thought I’d be at a point where I could have a new release to announce, but my time and energy went more into playing and researching new ideas than putting a complete song together.
The Ongoing Quest for New Ideas
Trying to find new ideas is one of my favorite stages in the songwriting process. I spend hours playing freely in order to gather ideas. It’s a little bit as if I was going fishing. It takes some time, it’s fun, but there’s no guaranty that enough good quality fish will be caught to put together a satisfying meal. Coming up with single ideas has never been a problem for me. That said, I don’t necessarily always have the vision and the inspiration to turn each idea into a complete song. I see all ideas not being equal in that sense. Some guitar or bass parts will act like seeds containing the song’s DNA code to create the rest of the song, and child ideas will flourish from those seed ideas. Whereas some others, in which I am not able to perceive any seed potential for a new song, will only exist as stand alone ideas and finish their existence sitting on computer hard drives. Since my rate to produce new parts is greater than my capacity to make something out of them, I usually move forward and forget about what emerged in the past. Moving always forward acts like a filter where only the memorable parts will get some attention and qualify for further development. A different approach that I could embrace in order to select the right song seeds, would consist of dedicating a greater amount of time listening to the older recorded ideas with fresh ears.
Band vs. Solo
Coming up with an idea is one thing, turning it into a song requires a different type of musical ability in my opinion. I do believe that I am lucky to have a little bit of both, which allow me to have this solo project. Although I love being able to put together complete songs on my own, I really do miss playing in a band. In a collaborative band environment, one band member can come up with an idea, and the remaining band members can see what to do with that idea. With a solo project like Black Sea Storm , everything relies on one single person. Since the beginning of me making music, alone or in a band, seeing simple ideas turning into songs in front of my eyes always fascinated me. I really don’t know how it works, but this process is one of the things that brings me the most joy out of life. I love witnessing this almost magical progress where, in a very natural way a song will write itself.
Full Albums available on YouTube
Besides gathering ideas for potential new songs, I’ve rendered nine of the ten existing Black Sea Storm albums and uploaded them on the Black Sea Storm YouTube channel. I’ve even created a playlist with all of the albums. It’s obvious that a lot of people use YouTube as their favorite music player. Having the Black Sea Storm albums available on YouTube could help the project reach new listeners, and make Black Sea Storm more convenient to stream for people whose main music listening platform is YouTube.
The Full Circle
Along with being fascinated by the song writing process, I also find self publishing and being able to distribute my music digitally all on my own truly amazing. Knowing that the music that came through me is being streamed in cities that I never had the opportunity to visit, is absolutely a fantastic feeling. It’s as if the time of a stream, I am able to exist in a place where I have never been to before.
Spotify has been putting a lot of effort lately into providing artists with data related to the consumption of their music throughout the world, making it possible to see from what cities people are listening to the songs. Looking at these stats and seeing the name of the cities allows me to travel to those places within my imagination. Making music is a fantastic experience in itself, and when people actually do take the time and listen to the music, it motivates me even more to pursue this fantastic adventure.
Buenos Aires