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The mighty Zoom L-12! Thoughts below.

  1. All the Sub mixes.
    Send the drummer a click? Yes. Hear my vocals dry and in all their pitchy glory but with plenty of reverb out front? Yes (I guess.😬). 
  2. Save a bunch of mixes.
    I have a playing-solo mix, an in-the-studio mix, a playing-with-a -drummer-only mix … 
    If you use tracks or loops live you need to be looking at this mixer.
  3. It’s a really great DAW interface.
    Seriously. I was not expecting this. Real convenient. I actually just put my UA Apollo in the drawer/ to-maybe-sell pile. I use it with Ableton.
  4. Sounds great.
    It is very transparent, and it will only sound great IF you spend some time with it. And not even that much time. 
  5. It’s light.
    If you are a gig’ing pro or you rearrange your home set-up a lot (daily?), which should be everyone reading, this is huge. Real livable.
    Easy-to-manage wall wart. Etc.
  6. Bonus:
    Record every show and roll tape the next morning. How was the the gig really?
    Great for practice too. 8 gig cards hold a lot, and how many of those do you have sitting around? 
    **Also, you can go semi-old-school and occasionally step away from the DAW.**

I shopped around for a year. Real satisfied. Please ask questions etc. 

-jd

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What a great, breezy book. Jeff Tweedy emphasizes the writing-of is the thing, not necessarily the One Song itself. Love of the process, which is its own reward, is more important than the goal.

How to Write One Song reads universally enough so that anyone can ape this do-your-first ethos for whatever it is that you want (but have yet to).

Before 2016, I’d written maybe 5 or 10 songs total, but I definitely (ridiculously) considered myself a songwriter, even though I would never have told anyone. But luck intervened, I randomly joined a song writing group, and now I’m in the 100’s. It took me over 45 years to start in earnest.

I needed a push. This book is a great push.

A total delight.

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Well, the release-all-the-songs project hit a bump. Turned into an album, and that’s 12 max. Focused!

More importantly, we have a cabin that’s due to go up in flames, Covid, new high schooler, work, …

There will always be other stuff. I have heard so many artists at house concerts we put on talking about not being able to write due the current climate.

Has there even been a better time to write, practically speaking? But still almost no one is writing. Almost no one. I am. Latest demo here:

But I have work and am busy. So, for me, things are a bit closer to normal. And I am also seeing, a these house concerts, full-time musicians are fragile. And a lot of them need just-right conditions to create.

Also, art is hard in a vacuum. So if you write and are used to feedback and not getting it, the adjustment is the issue.

There are infinite insecurities when trying to decide what makes the final cut. It’s hard to get past them, and more often than not, when you see good artists lose the muse, one glaring culprit is themselves; the devil on the shoulder/ monkey mind.

It’s also tough when all hope is lost. What do musicians have to look forward to? They gave it all, and any hard-won success was stripped away. All 9f this with no real way to make $$ besides live shows (with physical product now extinct). And now what of plan-b options without going waaaaay back to the beginning?

But the songs are floating there, if you can get to it. But how? That’s the big question.