Here beginneth the Serialisation

Photo by David Bleasdale (CC BY 2.0)

The last full album I recorded under my own name was in 2013.  Since then I’ve done plenty of gigs, produced an album for someone else, written a lot of blog and social media posts…

What I haven’t done is release any new music.  Which is odd, considering I consider myself primarily a recording artist.

So why not?  Well, paying the bills, to be honest.  And it takes so long to organise all the other stuff that I tend to try to get it out of the way first, and then do the fun part (recording music) when I have time.

Well, I realised quite a while ago that, realistically, I’ll never have time.  Not unless I make time.

So, in order to force myself to actually make time for producing new music, my plan has been to start serialising it: to release a new modern track and a new traditional track every month.  And this month, I’m putting this plan into action.

Even though… technically… I’ve sort of been doing this for a few months already.  But this is different, because this is under my own name.

That said (ahem) it’s not exactly new.  I’m starting with the 3 EPs and 1 LP that I’ve released, and I’m going to be re-releasing them track by track.  Each track has been remixed and remastered, for your listening pleasure.

Why go to the trouble of remixing/remastering old stuff?  Why not focus on something new?

Well, as each month goes by I get more and more organised with my James Bell Central duties.  I find more ways I can be efficient, be focused, cut out on wasted time.  But that said, I do still have to pay the bills, and it is much much easier to tidy old stuff than create new stuff.

Remixing and remastering these albums is also what I want to be doing at the moment, because I’m focusing a lot more on the technique of recording and I want to basically sharpen up my skill-set.

But it’s really to buy me a bit more time to actually start writing.  I find that my music needs a long time to gestate.  If I hurry it, it’s never as good as it should be.  So I will work on one track for a bit, and then move onto another for a bit, and then another, and then come back to the first one, to make sure I keep coming back to it fresh.

That’s a luxury not many people have, because most people are working to tight deadlines.  Deadlines can be the thing that makes you delivery something half-baked.  But no deadlines can mean you don’t ever quite get around to delivering anything at all.

So, new year, new commitment: time to start writing some stuff.  Fingers crossed, life won’t throw a spanner at me, and relatively soon I should start releasing new albums track by track, every month, until the money runs out.

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