On May 26 2012, 3:06 PM. I opened a Google Doc titled "Pas Le Second" with a track list of 9 songs. Only two of those would become full-fledged songs and only one survived to the final iteration. Nevertheless, this Google Doc represented my ambition to make my second musical work after I made my first album in 2012, "A Hodgepodge of Sounds." I had gotten feedback from a teacher that my album was "too derivative" and focused on "pastiche," so I was interested in doing something more experimental and stretching my boundaries a little. On December 25, 2014, I released a version of that album to Bandcamp. Disappointed in the quality, I privated it at some point afterwards.
The songs from this project have haunted me for more than ten years. It went through multiple iterations and is basically unrecognizable from its original form. By the time I gave up on the project, there were 8 songs in varying stages of completion. I still liked those songs and often fantasized about "fixing" them. In 2023, I began the serious work of re-recording the vocals and re-mixing the songs. I thought it would be relatively easy to do, but I found that I was unsatisfied with somg of the arrangements and had to change them up. Some songs were relatively easy to do (Rain or Shine is almost unchanged except for the vocals). Some were big reworkings (Way Down In Tennessee). I also made the decision to focus on having the songs be sonically cohesive even if it meant removing some songs. Two completed songs (Kamikaze Heart and Humachine Soul xChange) were thus removed because the electronic sound did not mesh well with the otherwise organic-sounding songs. Several songs were too unfinished to include (Hydra Heads, Something New, Go for the Gold) and I prioritized getting something out over re-writing lyrics and arrangements.
I decided to complete this project as a testament to my teenage self's ambition. I was in a very different place back then - much of what I knew about music theory was intuitive and based on studying songs. I hadn't seriously begun learning music theory yet. I knew very little about mixing music. I was recording in a room where I could not be as loud as I needed to due to neighbors. I was relying entirely on random free VSTs that I found online. At a critical point, my mixing console was damaged by lightning and I could not continue recording. I remember these things when I cringe at some of the lyrical choices, or ask myself why I recorded something a certain way. The circumstances were less than ideal, after all. It was also soon becoming evident that music was not going to be able to be a career for me, and I naturally switched focus to something I thought would.
Despite all this, I still loved the music I made, and I stand by the quality of the compositions. Now that I have a job and my own place, I decided to give re-recording these a try. I could belt as loud as I needed to! I also knew more about mixing, which was still one of my biggest weaknesses (and I still want to fiddle with some of these tracks... but enough is enough). If someone heard these songs, I would no longer feel ashamed about how poorly they were recorded. I much prefer the new vocals to the old ones and the new mixes to the old ones. The only way for them to get better is to pay a professional, and I'm not quite at the point at my career where I can justify paying a producer to mix my vanity project for several hundreds of dollars. :)
I learned a lot from this project that I hope to carry with me to future projects. I still love the sequencing - rock to tin pan alley to reggae to a ballad. The songs are all different from another, but still have a common identity that ties them together.
I hope you'll enjoy learning more about this project at this page!