The (hi-)story of DrScythe – Part IV: The Struggle

This entry is about my inner struggle with making music. In May 2012 I bought a DSLR and immediately began taking photos every single day. It became part of my every day routine to sneak around in the garden of my in-laws with the macro lens on. The results are on 500px: http://500px.com/dredwardscythe

During this period I rarely played guitar or bass. Sometimes I wouldn’t grab an instrument for more than 10 days. After a trip to the USA and a reportage about the Orient-Express I considered selling all my guitars except for the acoustic one and just give up. Photography was way more productive. I saw the results instantly and I got tons of feedback. Even better: mostly very positive feedback. That was something new for me when doing something that I enjoyed myself. Of course I also got feedback by my fiancée and my band mates while making music but on 500px (and somewhere else too) it was just a lot more. And when one of my photos got tweeted by one of the official 500px accounts I was really full of joy.

It somewhat felt like all my efforts learning to play guitar and bass, to sing and even some basics of piano, recording and mixing were for nothing as the bands always dissolved before something productive like gigs or recordings happened. It was really weird to feel like this as I had the urge to make music since the beginning. It became something necessary like eating, drinking or breathing. Not on a daily basis but at least twice a week or so. And suddenly it wasn’t important anymore. I still liked the act of playing an instrument but there wasn’t this satisfaction doing it.

So I came really close to putting my musical career out of its misery. Just play some songs at home once in a while and enjoy trapping light on an SD card. I cannot quite remember what made me go through all my song ideas back then but somehow I suddenly felt that some of the songs deserved to be ‘real’ instead of just MIDI. I even created some sort of running order for an album. I grabbed my copy of ‘Mischen wie die Profis’ and read it once more. In combination with doing bodyweight exercises for a few weeks and so having learned the first lessons in how to fight my inner laziness the fire was sparked again. At first I just produced this joke song for a contest but I definitely wanted to build experience and then move on to record the ‘real’ songs.

Although I technically would’ve been able to immediately begin recording the real songs after that I decided to practice mixing first with random riffs a little longer. I did that for almost a year while trying to graduate from university. This took longer than I anticipated due to various problems within the administration of the very young university. So I did another weird Christmas song.

As this song was written, recorded and published within just three weeks I noticed that I again had found an excuse not to do what I wanted to. Even things like ‘just one more practice riff’ can be something that holds you back. I admit that I prioritized the university after this revelation as it was something definitely necessary. And after it took me another 8 months to graduate I finally felt free to record the real songs. Which I did as you might know if you read this.

I still don’t know if there is any measurable success ahead. But I already learned a lot about myself on this way. How to win against my laziness. What my creative priorities are. How to finish something. Just like this post. More on motivation will follow in a non-history post. So long,

DrScythe

The (hi-)story of DrScythe – Part III (Meinthat Part II)

This blog entry is about Meinthat falling apart after the guitarist had to leave. With him gone we also decided to go for a little bit more metal in the songs and began rehearsing a song by Amorphis. To be honest I don’t recall the exact chronological order of the events so I just try to group them by topic.

The shortest part is definitely my own failure to write new songs. I love listening to metal but forced creativity never worked for me (and it still doesn’t) and the ideas were rough and rare. So we had some ideas and riffs but nothing new to keep the band together or to recruit new members easily. Sadly this wasn’t the only problem because that could’ve been solved by someone else with songwriting skills.

What really ‘ended’ Meinthat was the endless search for new members. When we found a new guitarist, the bass player left and meanwhile we also had two different drummers and so on. Frustration kills any motivation and you’re really annoyed by playing the same songs for weeks and not moving forward.

During the first phase (last blog) we had some weird guests for the tryouts too but the people who wanted to join us after the guitarist left and after the style change really took the cake. Trying to kick other members without being a member, trying to kick out my fiancée because relationships in bands don’t work, collect 20.000 bucks in advance for promotion before playing a single note or checking out a dozen bands because of being so ultra-skilled that everyone wants him – those and many other reasons made us say ‘don’t call us, we call you’. Just FYI: those are not made up! Funniest moment was the 20.000 Euros guy; we all were students so I don’t know what he was thinking. Looking at it retrospectively you can laugh your ass off about what people say and do but if you’re trying to form a band it’s really counterproductive. Your already stressed motivation drops lower from week to week which doesn’t help with writing songs either and so you’re slowly approaching the point of having the insight that it doesn’t make any sense anymore. Before we finally gave up we had two members (in addition to my fiancée and myself) left, one even writing songs. The last ‘arrow to the knee’ were our timetables. Even if your motivation rises and you got ideas to play with you can’t do anything if you cannot find a date to rehearse.

And so when I got a job and rent the apartment I still live in (with my fiancée) in 2011 it was finally clear that ‘Meinthat’ was no longer. On the one hand it was sad to end this on the other hand it was just a relief to do whatever I wanted as a creative person again.

The whole time I collected ideas that didn’t suit the band’s style and always had the idea to record them someday by myself or with someone I don’t even know in real life. Well how I ended up doing the solo-artist thing is part V so you’ve got to wait till then if you’re interested. What I took away from this story is an attitude. If you really want something to work you’ve got to make it work. It was up to us and I am quite sure that none of us was really into it enough to overcome the lack of motivation.

The (hi-)story of DrScythe – Part II (Meinthat Part I)

As I already mentioned before this is the largest part of my history as a musician so I have to split it up. Together with my fiancée I began playing songs by the German band ‘Schandmaul’ and soon we decided that we should do this as a band and try to write own songs. Within a few months we had the luck to find a rehearsal room, a drummer and a bass player. Although I want to add a complete chapter about band practice including optimizing rooms I just want to mention now that the room was quite weird. In the cellar of a WWII bunker, two by eight meters and cold. Nicely cool in summer; freezing during the winter months. With no heating included...

We began by playing cover songs and kept looking for a guitar player. As I was the lead singer in this band I restrained myself to playing rhythm guitar, mostly strumming chords and even that took a while to get used to while singing. But nowadays I still feel weird singing without a guitar in front of me. While you get the impression that there are hundreds of guitarists available for every band we struggled to find someone. The genre of medieval inspired folk rock seemed quite off the charts for many but you would think that out of those hundreds of guitarists in forums someone would say ‘okay, let’s try that!’

Our first candidate was able to play the basic stuff but couldn’t handle a very simple solo. And that was one of my main requirements: whoever wanted the ‘job’ had to be able to play solos better than me and I am still not good at playing this instrument today. So back then it was relatively easy to be better. But at some point we found a guy and we began playing our own songs. Before we could record one of them we had to kick out the drummer. His only cymbal was his hihat. We bought him a triangle as a joke but he immediately promised to buy a ride and a crash. Then he told us that a neighbor had his packages and after a few weeks we were a little disappointed because of the lies. We weren’t the typical ‘friends since elementary school’ that some bands are based on but at least we wanted to be honest. Luckily we found a new drummer very soon and he used an electrical drum kit which was great for lowering the overall volume. Why was this great? Well...did you ever hear an electrical violin really loud?...

This drummer also had recording experience and so we recorded our first song. You can still find that song on YouTube (Meinthat – Die Mühle) if you want to hear the unexperienced DrScythe shouting his lungs out. While recording our second song (‘Das Schlachtfeld’) our guitarist wasn’t able to play his solo. Which he wrote himself. After only a few minutes of practice I could play it so we agreed on giving him some time so that he would be the one playing on the recording. That didn’t work and kicking him out was the beginning of the end of ‘Meinthat’. We then tried dozens of guitar players but most of them had different ideas of how bands work (I still had the illusion of a democracy being an option) or even suggested to change our genre…

From there the band didn’t move forward anymore and what happened then will be featured in the next episode of (hi-)story. As this series will come to an end I feel the need to explain that those are just building the background for me reflecting on bands, equipment, creativity and more. So don’t wonder about missing opinions or results here and there. That’s it for this week.

Until next time

DrScythe