Mandelson Monday Musings #3 - WHOAMI

Mandelson Monday Musings #3 - WHOAMI

Oct 17, 2022

Glad tidings and good health, fellow adventurers!

It is indeed time for the third installment of my biweekly mind fount.

Today, I wanted to talk about something that's been in progress for a VERY long time. My second studio album.

Yes, I do have a first. Back in 2015, I had the opportunity to record a few songs I had written. It was provided for free in order to be a sound engineering student's senior project at Clemson University.

While I haven't actively gigged in half a decade, for a while I was decently known in the upstate South Carolina and Boston area as Beardby.

I performed with only a loop station as I would build my songs live by recording each part with a cappella vocals and beatboxing. I did a mix of covers and originals and was always well received.

I always enjoyed it, I don't know exactly why I stopped.

Maybe the part of me that is an introvert was terrified of going to open mics alone. Maybe the part of me that is hypercritical was afraid of the possible mishaps of live looping. Maybe I've been so unsure of myself I'm hesitant to performing in front of new people.

Whatever the root cause or cocktail of the aforementioned, I've always held myself back. Something I hope to remedy soon by starting to post music online as often as I can. Be it little diddies, remixes, tunes living in my head rent free, or a daily exercise.

As I listen to my first album(which is still on Spotify), there's such overwhelming nostalgia. I wrote the songs in middle school, but recorded them in a very pivotal time in my college life. Both very different mindsets, additionally foreign to my current brain state.

I never stopped writing songs, but over quarantine I had an exorbitant burst of inspiration. Most while in some measure of intoxication, I started to record on my phone some of the things I was improvising. My voice memos of my phone began to swell with a gaggle of little vignettes, fragments of songs.

Over time, I cemented chords, wrote additional verses, and brainstormed the texture. As of now, I have 6 tracks ready to record, all brewed from those quarantine musical monologues.

I am planning to name my next album "whoami". I chose this for a few reasons. First, I discovered more about myself in the last two years than I had ever known prior. Secondly, subtle nod to the significance of Jean Valjean to me. Third, it is a Windows command. It identifies the current user signed in. IT has been in my life as long as music and has played an equal part in shaping who I am today.

To carry on the theme, I plan to title all of the songs after commands and tech terms for significance.

-/all (Overture) - when used with "whoami" it details all the attributes and permissions of the signed in user.
-delete (Hope it's a Hit) - self-explanatory.
-127.0.0.1 (Sasquatch Take Me Home) that IP address is a loopback address that references the "home" computer.
-chkdsk (The Beast) this command runs a health check on a storage volume and reports any corruption.
-[A] (Please Do) this letter is used most often to choose the option "Yes to All" when confirming a command.
-ping (Still Around) a simple test of sending 4, packets to an IP address, and seeing if you get a reply.

Each term has significance to the song it titles. Between each song I intend to insert unedited musical monologues from my voice memos that didn't make it to the album. Some are funny, some are dear, all are a part of understanding the change I've gone through.

The last part of this album that I wanted to challenge myself on to make special was the texture.

I plan to have every instrument on the album be derived from human sounds. I can edit and splice them to heck, but all original samples will come from singing, speaking, beatboxing, stomping, and clapping.

I have attached a rough demo of ping (Still Around) for you to get an idea of what I mean.

I am SO excited for this album, and I am thrilled to introduce myself to you. ✨💜✨

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