Seems like a good day for a blog post!
One Song Everyday
Building (healthy) habits is not something that comes easily to me, so I always find “do this one thing every day of the year” projects appealing. A few years ago I made a “one second everyday” #1se video and surprised my family with it on the following New Year’s Day. (That was really nice.)
In 2018, after starting a new job, I blogged every day for the first month of the year as a bit of a dogfood exercise.
(And really, I “blog” using internal tools at work most every weekday.)
This year, I am recording a song every day.
Why and What and How
They’re all covers, and they’re all on video. There’s a bit of an About page that I wrote on the first day about why I’m doing this and what I’m trying to learn. It comes down to being OK with not being great at playing and singing, being especially poor at completing songs — playing them all the way through — over the years, and seeing this as a way to make myself accountable (to myself, obvs) for playing whole songs and trying to learn more.
And it’s working. I’m improving, learning about recording, toying around with GarageBand and considering other software, getting out old guitar accessories,
There’s an Index that lists all the songs I’ve done so far from a few different angles, too.
I’ve been meaning to go through and tag some “favorites” but that’s a lot of self-reflection, and I might not be the best judge of this sort of thing, and they’re all good or bad or mediocre or terrible for their own reasons, no favorite children, etc.
Tools and Choices
- Breedlove acoustic guitar
- Squire J Mascis Jazzmaster electric guitar
- Fuzz Factory pedal
- GarageBand, lots of things
- Nektar MIDI keyboard
- Samson C01UPRO microphone
- black cowboy hat
- lack of shame
Maybe notable: I’m not posting these on traditional “social” media much at all. I’m just not in the mood this year to give all this content to Google or Facebook or Twitter, or to automate anything like that, though I reserve the right to drop a little snippet in my Insta story from time to time. I’m using WordPress.com for everything, including the video hosting. Some of this isn’t free for customers — it turns out a four-minute song video with multiple tracks is hundreds of MBs? — but I work for Automattic, so I’m using our stuff for free.
Coda
Oh, and yes, as an added benefit, I walk around every day knowing how many days have passed this year. Today is the 152nd day of the year.
Any requests?