A musician's way of gaining accountability.

I got to the island a little over a year ago. A year and two weeks to be more exact.

Since then, I’ve tried to figure how to carve my own path in music. I mean, the whole child star turned cool kid turned major superstar wasn’t gonna work out. So, timing was definitely a factor in the equation. Do I start bombarding artists with emails until I get someone to tell me to shut up and play the damn song? Yes, this mean was justified, though I felt something missing. Why would you listen to me? How would I stand out from the rest? Clearly, the songs themselves hold their own, but I thought they needed some sort of proof of concept. A supporting argument, if you will. Enter the gigs.

I started playing gigs with a friend (Landy Cabrera, you should check him out, and book him for a gig) a few years back. We were both college students at the time, and had met by getting selected to sing for the university’s latin band. He had bought some equipment, and started playing at a local bar. (El Garabato, for those who know what I mean). Together, we sang for our fellow students while they danced to salsa, and chugged beers. It was awesome. Did I mention the free booze? Yes, booze. Free.

Naturally, we got together shortly (same day) after my arrival, and he offered to get back at it. At first, I thought of it as an income entry to get by. So, I accepted. We played a few gigs at the now deceased Dorado del Mar Casino, and something magical happened.

Landy was just finishing off Marc’s new hit song, and he looked at me.

“Why don’t you play an original? I need a break.” No shit, I thought. Marc can be vocally demanding. I took out my guitar, and decided to play the one song I had carried through all those years in college as an anthem for all college students facing the adult world. By facing, I mean struggling with. (Check it out here)

I remember striking the first chord after a short story of how the song came to be, and people listened. Not only did they listen, but they enjoyed. I saw the barman laughing, the audience clapping to the beat, the waitresses giving glances and talking between themselves probably wondering who the cute guy with the guitar was, right? Right.

But the real magic didn’t happen that night. It happened two weeks later when we had our next gig at the casino.

“Hey, dude,” said the security guy as I entered the casino holding a bag with equipment (we are our own staff).

“Sup?” I said, not sounding cool at all.

“Can you play that song you did last time? The one about not having any money?” I blinked.

“Sure.”

As I kept walking through the casino, others from the staff stopped and requested the song. And then, when I started playing it, everyone was already waiting for it. There were cheers, claps, shoutouts, and even singing along. I was in a happy place.

That was a year ago, last Saturday I had the opportunity to sing with a friend a song I had written for the occasion at a local theater, and I could feel all those times I had sung at local bars, hotels, private events, and even karaoke coming back to me. I felt the confidence that was built upon repetition and persistence. I also felt the crowd’s silence, and knew it was from apprehension. (This song –  Será)

So, I’m playing gigs to let the audience, my audience know what my songs are about. Yes, I do covers. Yes, I sing salsa, and other genres as well, but the focus is always what new song I’m gonna be performing. I’m playing gigs because they are a key strategy for getting myself heard. I’m playing gigs so that people let their friends know who I am so by the time that the guy receiving my spam fill of emails decides to click the Play button, he knows that the product is solid, that it attracts listeners and that is worthy of the three-minute listen.

After I left Seattle to go back home, I did literally just that. I moved back in with my parents. This granted me enough of a safety net to readjust my lifestyle, gave me enough time to focus on music, and finally, allowed me to spend time with the people that I missed the most while I was abroad: my family.

So, after living in the US, and in Germany (more on Europe on my next entry “Ein Helles, bitte”), I was once again playing dominoes, and eating my mom’s not-so-a-la-carte delicious dishes (“delicious dishes” repeat it fast). Life was good. Yes?

Well, as an independent self proclaimed songwriter, I had gotten used to certain, uhm, rights, and easy access to certain types of, um, recreation that just didn’t fit with house rules. I had to store away parts of my personality that could only be unchained on weekend sleepovers on friends houses in the city. I also missed Seattle coffee, and Seattle hipsters more than I should’ve. I was an excellent double dutch amateur which is not that popular a sport in PR (I can still do a double jump… I think).

Still, I have a few extra pounds to show that being here has its benefits. One of those benefits was a gift that changed everything. Here’s how the story goes.

I’m setting up my recording equipment on a separate room on our backyard that my father rents from time to time depending on the island’s economic status (more on that on “Unsealing my lips”, an upcoming entry). I’m so excited that I spend more than one night up late cranking up and down my studio monitors, and singing new songs either to practice or for self indulgence.

One day, I’m all up in my world, headphones on, music blasting my ears, and my vocal chords feeling like Hendrix’s guitar at Woodstock, when someone taps my shoulder. It’s my father. He’d been listening in for who knows how long, and has suddenly decided to make his presence known.

“You’re off key, and don’t yell when you reach the high notes, it’s annoying,” says my 50 year experienced life long music teacher.

“Yeah, cool,” I spit out excited that I’m getting some advice. I’m about to resume my concert when he clears his throat.

“So, I was thinking, why don’t we build a studio? From scratch, I mean” he says.

We? A studio? Granted, the idea had been thrown around before when I was in college, but it was always just readjusting an old house or shifting the furniture so I could get more space for my equipment. Building a studio from scratch was as exciting as it was scary. I would benefit so much from just having a workplace that didn’t bother neighbors, had good acoustics, and the right set up to record and reinvent my own music. It would also mean that I could invite people over to record, and just be creative for creativity’s sake. Also, my better quality demos could give me an edge on the local gig scene.

“That’d be awesome, daddy-o.” No, I don’t talk to my dad that way.

“Good, I’ll call the contractor so he can start next week.” My jaw drops, and I panic. How do you even build a studio?

I fumble around with the help of friends, look for design ideas, and a little too hurriedly decide what’s to be done. I decide on two rooms separated by a wall roughly the same shape (square) and size in a 10’x20’x10′ building. Acoustic experts will by now start thinking there’s something wrong here. I didn’t. Because I didn’t do my homework right. Because even when I was worried, I didn’t do my research as good as I should’ve, and didn’t assess my constraints. Because I committed the crime of passing on to others my own responsibility for fear of failure which led me to the wall problem.

Just a few days before starting to build some awesome sound isolation walls, I call up an expert (a bit late, huh?). You know, to “verify” everything is being done right. In other words, it took anxiousness and nightmares for me to call up a second opinion.

The first thing the expert said was that the ceiling was high, and that was good. The second was that the rooms were basically two small squares, and that was horrible. The third thing he said was that the best thing we could do was bring down the wall. The fourth thing I didn’t hear because my ears were ringing with the alarm that should’ve gone off two months ago.

Long story long, I had to make serious adjustments to my acoustic designs, and literally change my room if I wanted, at minimum, a decent studio. I also had to tell my father this after he had spent on construction what I had roughly spent on equipment which was our initial deal. Hell, we had $500 worth of wood stored that we didn’t need anymore, and it turns out getting rid of that much wood isn’t easy when most of the houses in PR are built with solid concrete. And it was all my fault.

If you read the previous blog entry “A Wasted Year,” this is the moment that kicked off all the rant and realization about needing to get my shit together and forming a plan, a real one. Right now, as I write this on board of a plane on my way back home after spending some fun time with my nephews, I cringe at my own foolishness.

“Dad, I have to bring down the wall between the rooms,” I say as a doctor announcing cancer.

Silence.

More silence.

“You will hold the hammer, you will clean the room, you will throw away the debris,” he lectures, something my father really never stopped doing to his offspring well past its deadline.

More silence.

Fast forward to a Saturday morning, I’m banging away all my frustrations against a wall the represented all the mistakes I had made, all the procrastination, all the fears, all the anger, all the passion, all the pain, everything. Hitting that wall over and over again, picking up the concrete from the floor, throwing it out was cathartic, metaphoric, and as real as the calluses that were left as reminders.

The aftermath is a determination to carry on, and take it all as a lesson learned. Bringing down that wall was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, but it gave me a chance to etch-a-sketch my wrongdoings. It showed me I can fail, and be better for it. It taught me there’s not that many walls I can’t take care of with a good hammer.

There is a another good side to all of this, I did write a song about it. #winning

P.S. Special thanks to the friend that took turns attacking the wall with me.

The house is a museum of memories. The ratio between the good and the bad is alarmingly leaning towards disaster, and you can see it. Yet love is still there trying to break through the seams of routine. 

You get home and she’s waiting. An exhibit pops up, and you long for the face that used to greet you. This is not that face. This is the look of someone that’s already left. She hopes the eyes tell most of the story without having to verbalize it, but you are stubborn, in love, and angry. You decide that if she’s leaving, then you won’t make it any easier; you won’t sanction retreat.

I was reading a magazine (more like skimming the cover) and there was this article about tips to make camping trips easier. I played around with it, and the first thing that came to mind was a voice saying: “I’ll make it easier for you.” I thought of a person opening the door for the other to leave.  Then, I figured that’s been said and overdone, and searched for something more honest, truer.

“I won’t make it easy.” Yeah, that sounds more honest. I can see myself standing right there, not giving an inch away waiting for her to blurt out the words she’s probably practiced n-times (where n tends to infinite), and watching her struggle between the feelings and the facts: I don’t want to go, I can’t stay.

The song has to be angry at first, but then fall into some sort of resignation. A change of pace similar to that of a fight you realize you’re losing. A rocky blues? Maybe.

The room is quiet. The patient is almost a negative of the picture on the bedside table. Your bag of optimism is almost empty, but still you try to paint a picture of what could be. She’s still beautiful, isn’t she? 

You pull out an image of her running up the stairs, and the wind playing with her hair. You follow closely, playfully, and laughter turns to whispers as your hands navigate to her waist. It’s quite a scene. 

She smiles.

This one came to me as I was reading a book about improving lyric writing. It explained how telling a story from a second person’s point of view can be tricky and may not seem real. Instead of trying to narrate events, I decided to use the second person to describe a better place to the one the speaker is talking to.

It’s something we try to do for someone that’s unable to leave a certain situation in their lives, be it a room, an illness, a state of mind, or all of them. The whole idea revolves around recreating a world in which memories and possibilities merge into something that feeds the person’s will to continue, and reaffirms that they are not alone.

Both of these songs have a common theme: honesty. They address moments in which we are vulnerable and our reactions as we deal with them. Art is to tell us how things should be, and in a way, being true to our emotions is exactly that (granted they are valid, rational emotions). Having the will to continue and improve when all seems lost is how it should be; being besides a loved one when they are not well, and encouraging them to carry on is also how it should be.

For this post, I wanted to dive into the thoughts that go through my mind as I try to come up with new songs. This helps me understand the why and how of them, and allows me to better grasp my creative process. Especially when my mind draws a blank.

I’ve had difficulties trying to find the right angle, the chords, the melody, and the words to express the things I have to say. I’ve also had problems figuring out exactly what I want to say. While trying to compose a song, I had forgotten something very simple that became clear a few days ago through a routine pep talk.

“I’m gonna give you a bass line and you play to it,” said my roommate. As he kept changing the bass, I found myself enjoying figuring out where he was going. I could even imagine melodies to go on top of what we were playing. Then, at the precise moment when I was having the most fun, he stopped.

“Have you played around the house like a crazy person?”

“Uh, no.”

“Then there’s something wrong, isn’t there? You’re trying too hard to compose and are not jamming, not having fun. Loosen up. You’re reading and trying to fit songs into boxes.”

That was it. A pentatonic scale is just a sequence of notes if the string isn’t bending and the guitar isn’t crying. So, now I’m taking what I’m learning, and putting that in a box. I’m going to loosen up, and let the things that I have to say come when they please as long as there’s a beat I can jam to.

Our world (In progress)

Wind in your hair

As you run up the stairs

You feel beautiful

My hands on your waist

Don’t hesitate

You are beautiful

Let these words take you

Let my words take you far

This is our world

Let’s reshape it to our liking

This is our turf

Let’s loosen up the bindings

I’m here with you

I’m here with you

Out of these walls

Following stars

You feel beautiful

The stairs

Grit – a positive, non-cognitive trait, based on an individual’s passion for a particular long-term goal or endstate coupled with a powerful motivation to achieve their respective objective.  -Wikipedia (the most reliable source in the planet, right?).

I find myself attempting to dig a hole with a spoon.

It’s been three weeks since I started this quest of mine, I’ve finished a book on independent record labels, gone through half of another one about writing lyrics and have written drafts for two new songs. The problem is that when I compare this with the amount of work I set out to do, it just seems like no progress at all. And then there are the times when I sit in front of the piano or holding a guitar, and nothing comes out. The hours lying on the floor thinking of what to say, how to say it and how to play it with nothing to show for it but the traces of carpet dust on my face.

Unproductiveness leads to anxiety; anxiety leads to frustration and frustration to fear. Am I really cut out for this? Do I have what it takes? After all, the music industry is one of the toughest industries to break into, and there are more songwriters than notes in Flight of the Bumblebee. As exciting and interesting as my days are turning out to be, there’s always that looming shadow of my own expectations mixed with the reality of my situation, and it chills my bones.

To rain over wet grounds, I’ve also been the perpetrator of procrastination in moving out of my apartment. This unnecessary and well-deserved stress of scrambling around with the help of a patient former roommate to get my shit from point A to point Z has left me questioning my common sense (which granted, is not so common).

Fortunately, I’ve experienced a familiar feeling before when I lived for six months alone in a small apartment in Munich, and was coming to terms with the idea of leaving my job. I gathered a few important lessons during that time:

1)   Don’t ask if you have what it takes. You don’t, not yet. Virtues are means to gain or keep values, they are not intrinsic, but are developed. Ask instead: “what is it that I need to do/learn/practice and how do I do it.”

2)   Give yourself a slap on the back. Sometimes you’re just being a wuss, and need to man up to your choices.

3)   Enjoy the bumpy ride. I prefer wood roller coasters for a reason. They’re fast and bumpy. They shake you and make you think you’re going to get rocketed out of your seat at any moment. The thrill is part of the ride.

Suddenly, the spoon doesn’t feel that small and the pile seems to be getting bigger if you just keep digging. And that is what grit is all about. It’s purposely moving forward understanding that there are no shortcuts, that unearned achievements are not achievements at all, that effort precedes happiness, and that mastery only comes with experience.

In better words:

As man is a being of self-made wealth, so he is a being of self-made soul. –Atlas Shrugged, Ayn Rand

So, now that I’ve finally moved out, gotten my books on a borrowed bookshelf, and retreated myself to focus on nailing those blues chords and verse structures, I expect there will be more times like these. Times where I’ll hit my head against the frets or the keys trying to come up with anything worth listening to, and maybe for an hour or ten, I’ll freak out. But I’ll remember this blog, the goal, and the people that have helped me out, keep calm, and carry on.

The Spoon

It’s great when a plan comes together… even if it wasn’t much of a plan to begin with.

A week ago, I had a badge, a company provided laptop and a great apartment on one of Seattle’s best hills.

That was a week ago, today is a different story, but let’s not go into that just yet. Let’s start with context.

I was born and raised in Puerto Rico, which means that I’ll probably spend the rest of my life trying to explain to people that it isn’t paradise, although I miss it on rainy days. I graduated from a Computer Engineering degree and moved to Seattle for a job offer that seemed pretty nice at the time.

Parallel to this, I had been studying music almost by default since my whole family seems to have been sorted into the music house. I played a few instruments, but nothing really stuck, until I started making up my own corny lyrics and melodies. That, that was love at first write.

So, for the subsequent years, I alternated between code, and melody lines somewhat dreading going back to the PC and looking forward to sitting at the piano. That was until I read this quote:

“But you see,” said Roark quietly, “I have, let’s say, sixty years to live. Most of that time will be spent working. I’ve chosen the work I want to do. If I find no joy in it, then I’m only condemning myself to sixty years of torture. And I can find the joy only if I do my work in the best way possible to me. But the best is a matter of standards—and I set my own standards. I inherit nothing. I stand at the end of no tradition. I may, perhaps, stand at the beginning of one.” -Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead

Had I chosen the work I wanted to do? Did I find joy in it? No, on both accounts. By the first year working, I realized that I was spending my days doing something I didn’t really want to do, and that I could die right now. This thought crosses a lot of people’s mind, but most of them don’t really know what they want to do in the first place. For me, the answer was as clear as a nylon string.

No amount of philosophical guidance or planning could get rid of the fact that I was about to make one of the hardest decisions of my life: to leave a secure, well-paid job to become a songwriter.

There was one part of the plan that I hated the most… the waiting.

I wanted to leave as soon as my epiphany came, but I knew that I had to be smart about things, so I decided I would work for a company to get a reasonable amount of  experience, and then move on to pursue my goals as a songwriter. Two years, that’s what I begrudgingly promised myself. Two years of performing to my best at a job I can’t say I hated, but just like back when I was in college, always looking forward to sitting at the piano.

Which brings us back to today. Today is the start of the rest of my life. Today, my choice has produced actions that have caused drastic changes in my lifestyle and in my state of mind. Today, I stare upwards at the path and welcome it.

I’m writing this blog because my greatest fear is laziness. It’s easy to do nothing when you have nothing to do. I plan to do this weekly to remind myself of what I’ve done and what remains.

I plan to spit out the thought process that led me to this on future blog entries for those of you who have a dream, an unexecuted plan, or in need of a change. Hope this helps you get going. 🙂

Roberto Soler

Soon-to-be Songwriter

The Perfect Space