I had a Friday afternoon off, so Lisa and I did a bike outing. On the drive to our starting spot, I plugged in my iPad to play what was supposed to be our album. This was the first time she heard it. After a couple songs, we both had an unpleasant feeling.
Boredom.
Lisa said it first. “No one is going to listen to this.”
My first reaction is to defend our work because I’ve spent a lot of time mixing it. Lisa didn’t have the same investment as me. Of course she sang on it, but that was all. I spent hours tweaking this and that..
But Lisa was more objective. She heard it fresh.
We were discussing this later on, and I had an idea. I played her my old recording of “Amazing Day”. The one I made a year and a half ago. After about 30 seconds she looked at me with an excited face.
“Yeah! Can we make an album that sounds like this?”
What was the difference? The production. My original had a full arrangement as opposed to simple voice/guitar. At that moment, I realized the obvious. Some songs sound great with a simple approach, but some songs need more. The answer?
Let’s do more.
If a song shines with just an acoustic guitar and vocal that’s what we’ll do. But if it needs more, we’ll give it more. Thanks to fiverr, it’s easy and cheap to hire whatever instruments are needed.
So that’s why we discarded our original idea of a very simple album. It was an experiment, but we weren’t happy with it. It was too simple. Some songs needed more.
So we’re excited. I think this will be something we feel great about.
Spencer & Lisa 