Music can be a home-cooked meal
I'm making music again! I recently recorded a cover of It Only Takes A Taste, from the musical Waitress. More info about the cover itself over on that post.
It's been roughly five years since I've posted any personal music project publicly and I wanted to talk about that a little.
Let's pretend for a moment that my cover here is some kind of food. What kind of food is it? It's not the musical equivalent of restaurant-quality food, or even food-truck quality food, or even dive-bar quality food. This is like when I made a sauce from leftover liquid from a lamb roast, leftover bits of Chinese takeout fatty pork, and the sweet red pepper dip that had been in the fridge for two months.[footnote 1] It’s definitely not a carefully planned dish with a recipe and meticulous measurements; instead, this is a product of the things I had available to me at the moment and my desire to make something immediately. Which is not to say that it isn't good. That sauce was very good. I also like my cover a lot. Sure, there are lots of things that could be better, but this is mine. I'm not a professional musician [footnote 2] and this isn't a polished work. It's a home-cooked meal.
This metaphor - to make something just for yourself without worrying about global scale or commercialization - is ripped from a blog post I saw a some months ago, An app can be a home-cooked meal. Coincidentally, this post also contributed to me making my semaphore decoder, so it's apparently cemented its place as one of the single most inspiring things I've read this year, possibly ever. You should read the whole thing sometime, but I'll quote some parts here.
The exhortation "learn to code!" has its foundations in market value. "Learn to code" is suggested as a way up, a way out. "Learn to code" offers economic leverage, a squirt of power. "Learn to code" goes on your resume.
Ha, if only this were true about making music. I think there's a couple other directions to go here instead. If you're going all-in on music, you can become a rock star and tour the world, selling out stadiums of your adoring fans. Or alternately, you can create true art, perfect your craft, and ascend to become one of The Greats. Maybe you even end up with both, the Gordon Ramsay path where you win all these Michelin Stars and you get a bunch of TV shows.
But let’s substitute a different phrase: "learn to cook." People don't only learn to cook so they can become chefs. Some do! But far more people learn to cook so they can eat better, or more affordably, or in a specific way. Or because they want to carry on a tradition. Sometimes they learn just because they're bored! Or even because—get this—they love spending time with the person who's teaching them.
Back in high school, I had a little group with some friends called Fifth Avenue. I loved making these mashup covers and spending time with each and every one of them over the years: Andy, Louisa, Albert, Andrea, Angie, Joanne. I won't put words into other peoples' mouths, but I'll admit - I personally got a kick out of the little glimmer of glamour we got from local performances, photoshoots, and music videos, completely independent of the music itself.
I was sorting through some files on my old hard drive a few months ago and came across all these recordings from back in the day - incredibly nostalgic. (Especially some of the unreleased stuff, we'll see if I ever post those). Like my cover of It Only Takes a Taste, they also have nice moments as well as flaws that make me cringe a bit. In the depths of my cringing I find comfort in this interview with Ira Glass (edited for clarity here):
Nobody tells this to people who are beginners - I wish someone had told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is a gap.
For the first couple years that you're making stuff, what you're making isn't so good. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition, but it’s just not quite there. But your taste - the thing that got you into the game - is still killer. And your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you're making is kind of a disappointment to you. You can tell that it's sorta crappy. And a lot of people never get past that phase. At that point, a lot of people quit.
The thing I would say to you with all my heart is: Almost everybody I know who does interesting, creative work went through a phase of years when they had really good taste, and what they were making wasn't as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short. We knew that it didn't have this special thing that we wanted it to have.
Everybody goes through that, and for you to be going through that... You gotta know that's totally normal, and the most important thing you could possibly do, is do a lot of work. It's only by actually going through a volume of work that you can catch up, and close that gap.
I hear this and I think back to when I was first learning to cook, on the upper floor of a vaguely cumin-scented, summer sublet in Squirrel Hill. Wildly over- and under-seasoning food. Microwaving a burned, blackened hunk of meat because the inside was still raw. Occasionally giving up entirely and getting takeout from a nearby restaurant (shoutout to Pastoli's).
But as the meals and the months passed by, the food became more edible and more consistent. It was getting better - no, I was getting better. These days, I enjoy eating almost everything I make and my roommates do too (so they claim, at least). I mean, sure, if I saw some of the things I made for sale in a restaurant, I'd definitely raise an eyebrow. So it's a good thing I don't have a restaurant. I'm just cooking for myself and maybe a few others, and I'm happy with that.
And that's basically how I feel about my cover of It Only Takes A Taste. It's pretty decent. There's some good parts. I'm not that great of a performer these days - you can hear that on the recording - I'm definitely not putting in the time or effort required to really polish it. [footnote 3] But I overcame my knee-jerk reaction to throw it away, and I'm proud of that. It's way rougher than 99% or more of the music I've ever listened to. It's not groundbreaking or super compelling. And that's okay. If one other person listens to it and likes it, that's already success to me. I'm not trying to get a record deal or become YouTube famous or anything like that.[footnote 4]
One more thing: I sing on this recording. It's the first recording I've ever sung on as a main vocal, and I was a little nervous about it. In my four years in choir, my fellow tenors were so good that I didn't even try to audition for a solo until the very last opportunity (and then only just to prove to myself that I could - it rightfully went to someone else). For a lot of my friends, and I suspect for most adults, singing is something you only do in the shower, and dancing is something you only do when you're drunk. But all children sing and dance, because it's fun and they're just expressing themselves. So I will sing and think about that C.S. Lewis quote: "I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up".[footnote 5]
Working on this cover has been a reminder of how much fun it is to make music.
I have been reminded that this is something special.
Isn't it amazing, what baking can do that it only takes a taste.
Thanks to everyone involved in the music bits of my life: my family, my teachers over the years, and all the people I've performed with and seen perform. (This was originally a list of people, but then it got absurdly long and I would've felt really bad about leaving someone off, so we get this vague thing instead). Thanks to Joanne for editing on this post.
Footnotes
[footnote 1] (back to content)
This was about a week ago, if you were curious.
[footnote 2] (back to content)
Once I was playing the accordion on Embarcadero and someone threw 17 cents into my open case and briskly walked away before I could even tell them I didn't want it, but that really shouldn't count. Okay?
[footnote 3] (back to content)
I think this is why I like playing live over recording. If I screw it up, there's nothing to do but move on. Just microwave the meat to cook the raw bits and get over it. But if I do something wrong on a recording, I get to re-record take after take until I'm satisfied or exhausted enough that my standards drop. And even after that, I'll notice something off in the final version and that will haunt me every time I hear it.
[footnote 4] (back to content)
I'm not trying to get a record deal or become YouTube famous or anything like that.
Haha... unless?
Last year I went to a concert - Scary Pockets is a band that does these cool funk covers - and I was flabbergasted when the guitarist, Ryan Lerman, explained their origin story, which I will retell here with probably some wrong details because it was a long time ago (sorry). He's got a buddy from high school and they used to make music together, but it's been hard in the last several years because that buddy has been super busy being the co-counder and CEO of Patreon. But eventually he convinces him to take a few hours a week to record some covers, one thing leads to another and a couple years later they're on tour, selling out venues, and planting a new pipe dream into the back corners of my brain. Maybe someday.
[footnote 5] (back to content)
Note that this does not extend to dancing. At least, not yet. Ask me in another year or three.
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