Day 3? COVID 19? What?
Firstly, I don't have the virus. I call this day 3 because on Friday I started to work from home. Being a musician is not my paid job.
Friday morning (27th March), in the space I have been rehearsing in and making live videos and audio recordings, I had to set-up work stuff. For me, that basically means a Surface Pro, a monitor, a (wired) mouse and my mobile.
The internet and wi-fi quality for both my home and mobile seem to have declined and I joke on a phone call that I expect it to take 16 hours to do an 8 hour work day. Not joking, I suspect this will be the new normal. There is no set time on how long I will be working from home. The term 'indefinitely' springs to mind.
A surreal part of Friday was when my wife and I decided to go grocery shopping in the middle of the day. It took us the best part of 90 minutes. The aisle where the toilet paper was meant to be was empty. A store clerk advised us they had not received their allocation. Having seen similar pictures in recent weeks posted online and in the media, it was quite a surprise (and a shock), to see it in real life. Most other things we needed we were able to get. We worked on the premise that if we needed to be in 'lockdown' for a few weeks that we would have enough to get us through.
Social distancing is happening, with an expectation that people will stay 1.5 metres away from each other. Blue crosses in tape have been on the floor of a few stores I have visited recently.
So, when purchasing lunch and the shop attendant said 'stay safe', I couldn't help but feel emotional.
The having to work from home, empty shelves and blue crosses had made it all much realer than it had been before.
Did I mention it's around 4.30am and I can't sleep?
Last week I made a decision that the album I have been working on for the best part of 12 months is finished. At this point I suspect it will be around 10 tracks as I prepare for the final mixing. Without trying to sound dramatic, it sounds like music from another time.
I want creating an album to feel like a new experience with a learning curve each time. This album (The Value of Trees) involved using a new LTD, nylon string acoustic/electric guitar and learning to use a stripped down DAW (Bitwig 8-Track for the most part). Even within the last month I was recording new material.
So from here not only do I want to finish mixing and release a the above album, but I want to start recording a new one. At this point it feels like I want to strip things back and record the way I did my first album 12-13 years ago. At the moment, I'm experimenting with a few hardware recorders, the Micro BR (4-track) which I recorded my first album on (although it takes an SD card no bigger than 2 GB and can be unstable) and the more recent Boss BR80 (6-track) and Zoom H6 portable recorder (4-track).
Stay tuned...
