Apr 5, 2022
It’s a sunny day today. I went for a nice long run. I’m going downtown today to play an open-mic. This will be the fourth time I’ve gone to these things, but only my second time being alone on stage. So since this is the fourth time going downtown I’m expecting to start feeling more confident. I already do. Last time I went downtown I had all these nervous dreams the the night before. I didn’t have any scary dreams last night. The only thing I’m nervous about is fucking the song up because I’ve written a big chunk of it only yesterday and the day before.I just played it over and over again yesterday. I remember Matt Walker talking about how practice, plus good sleep is what it takes to really learn. So I went to bed, and as I was lying there I decided to also visualize playing the chords. For some reason that had the added benefit of putting me right to sleep. I guess it was like counting sheep.
Anyways, I played the song this morning and I didn’t forgot a single word. It was the first time I was able to play it all the way through without forgetting a part.
I’m also gonna go to an open-mic tomorrow night.
I’ve been getting that excited feeling in my stomach. I haven’t really got this excitement for music since the very beginning of the pandemic. I think that’s because that’s the last time I really felt like I had an audience, which was my crush. She was someone that I was excited about playing for. Now I’ve got an actual audience right there in front of me, and I’m excited by that. It’s making me think about music in a really fun way again. It’s a whole new way of being able to interact with music. All of my experience with music has mainly centred around writing and producing songs in my room.
The thing that’s made performing seem very possible is that I feel that I can suddenly sing in key. I don’t know how this suddenly happened. I’ve been struggling with singing for like 7 years, and all of a sudden, during the last couple weeks, I seem to be getting better. Every time I’d record myself and listen back I was never in key. Now I am. That’s made me feel way more confident about performing.
I think part of it is because I’ve realized how many songs I wrote in keys that weren’t easy for me to sing. I remember noticing before that the times that I DID like my voice were when I would sing higher notes. So I’ve been doing that lately and it’s so much easier.
The other thing that got me really excited happened literally two days ago which was that Dad said I can take his guitar with me. I was planning on just taking my electric at first, since I thought it was the only way I could plug in at these shows. I didn’t know that his guitar has a cable input. I literally never knew it was right there.
So right now the thing that really excites me is getting comfortable enough on stage where I can start to have fun. Right now there’s a bit of anxiety every time and that has a negative affect. It tightens me up. Once I’m comfortable I’ll really be able to be happy and play well. Four four four four!!!
Today’s the fourth time doing it so I’m expecting to feel a slight difference.
I’ve decided to take bits of my songs and combine them together into longer little symphonic things, since so many of my songs are less than a minute. I wrote a bunch of them for instagram and TikTok where they had to be less than 60 seconds, so it’s kinda perfect. I can combine a few of them, and I’m even playing with having the song at the beginning come back at the end so that it feels very symphonic. I don’t know if that’s the right word.