DrScythe Thoughts - Part V: Status update

Well…six months already. Eight songs done. I intended to stay motivated. I knew that my self-discipline is quite strong after more than two years of pushing myself through bodyweight exercises that became more and more difficult. But I also thought that I would struggle after the first two or three songs. Instead of struggling I sped up to release the 3^rd one just to allow myself to enter the D’Angelico endorsement contest. And that resulted in a third place and two fantastic guitars being lent to me. What a boost!

So month after month I kept my focus on finishing recording and mixing on time although my overall mood isn’t too good: looking for a job, no money – the usual sorrows. But what else should I do? Can’t apply for jobs all day long, there’s not even enough offerings for that. So making music is quite a thing to avoid wasting time (or: use it purposefully).

Eight songs that roughly outline where the whole DrScythe-music is headed with more to come that brings new nuances and colors to the project.  The first song just hit 500 views. That’s not a large number compared to other YouTubers, that’s not even a large number compared to some other musicians in the region. To me it’s incredibly cool. I don’t have hundreds of friends who watch the videos. It’s not even a dozen of people I know personally who watch the videos. So 500 is quite a milestone for me. Obviously I’ll celebrate the 1000^th one when it happens.

Before I give you a small status update I want to tell the story of ‘Home’, the 7^th song and ‘Mind Pirates’ the 8^th. Let’s begin with the latter one. The main melody goes back to 2005 or 2006. It just lay around for a while and then, during the Meinthat-era, I played around with it and the idea of using a violin. Then the band split up and the idea was buried until I began sorting out the songs for the DrScythe project. I instantly thought: ‘how could I ever abandon this?’ So it made the list. And I recorded it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1VrKJn66Uw

My fiancée has been asking me for years if I will ever write a song for her. I always said no, partly because I didn’t want to disappoint her, partly because I feared I wouldn’t be able to pull it off. When I finally came up with the idea for ‘Home’ I tested the ‘riff’ out of context and she liked it. So I began writing the rest and here we are. To cover up the recordings I pretended to work mostly on ‘Mind Pirates’ so that she wouldn’t notice the progress until it’s almost done. And it was successful. She suspected nothing (at least she said so), was quite surprised and loves it. Mission accomplished.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgbOwBKYBUM

So what’s the next mission? Keep on releasing one song per month! Try to gain more fans by doing so. Improving my mixing skills, improving my videos. Releasing the first 14 tracks as album. And then, depending on what’s going on in my life and how much the number of fans grows, begin looking for musicians to perform live. But for now it’s more like trying to promote my stuff as much as possible without being annoying. What seems to be impossible...

On the one hand it’s a great experience to receive a lot of positive feedback and even get a manufacturer of fantastic guitars interested in you especially because every release is accompanied by the typical artist’s mixture of feeling: doubting oneself and exposing your soul. On the other hand is the stagnation of response to that. Only few new followers/subscribers, only the initial larger amount of views which quickly dies off to the slow increase over time. Don’t get me wrong here: I am incredibly thankful for what I achieved so far and I will keep releasing songs. But it’s a little weird to be encouraged to go on and nothing happens. I know that consistency is key on YouTube, but I fear for my computer breaking every time I boot it up – and that would be the end for the whole project for a while. No spare parts, no money, nothing. So my job situation is becoming a larger problem every week and drawing away my attention every time I make music – because I fear to be stopped by defective devices…

Well…that’s it for this week. Happy with the project, happily in love, anxious about the usual topic: money/job. Just like everybody else…

Small extension to the first FAQ

Downloads

I will definitely enable free downloads for the album. Until then I don’t want to spread the ‘not-on-spot’-versions as downloads out of context.

The future of DrScythe

Welcome back! To conclude the blogs about my personal story I want to tell you what’s going to happen with DrScythe. I will sort this by topic as it seems the most logical structure for this – a kind of prophylactic FAQ.

Overall

Release songs, grow the channel/fan base and see what happens. I have thought about a lot of stuff (see below) but for now I will just keep going no matter if win or lose listeners. That sounds arrogant but the objective was to release my songs and be happy if someone likes them. If someone has good ideas or constructive criticism to offer – great. If someone just likes pop or death metal better – not my problem. As easy as that.

Songs

There are about 30 almost fully written songs left and according to my plan of releasing about one song per month I got material until 2018. Considering that I will write new tracks on the way you can expect a new song every month for three years straight from now.  The first 13 to 14 tracks are intended to be an album called ‘Light People’ which will include two exclusive interludes. Although I plan to release this until the end of the year I won’t stop my own creativity. So if an idea strikes my mind and it also got some relevance to things going on in the world right then I’ll release it instead of the planned track.

Videos

As I was already asked about that: there will be a video for every song. There are several reasons for that choice but mostly I want it to be more personal. As I do everything including the singing I feel better showing myself doing so. Also other platforms are focused on remixes (not intentionally) or lack the option to really communicate with listeners which I want to do. So YT was the obvious choice. And as I don’t like lyrics videos at all I chose to do this kind of performance videos. And I’ll keep doing this.

CD/LPs

There won’t be any. At least not if I don’t become super famous or something like that. As I live in Germany it’s quite complicated and/or expensive to release physical stuff containing music and it’s just not worth the effort for now. I might reconsider it one day in the future (under certain circumstances and with help of kickstarter).

Live

You might notice the difficulties of playing live for me alone. So it’s not an option right now. But I enjoyed playing live in the past and if the interest is large enough I will try to get this on the stage. As there are a lot of different scenarios I cannot predict how it will be. A slowly growing fan base and musicians I keep working with might lead to something like a classic type of band that just had a different beginning. Exploding numbers of fans all over the world would definitely require some hired professionals who can play the songs after listening to them once or twice. So: live – yes! How and when – no idea.

Merchandise

It’s never been easier to sell merchandise. If the demand is high enough I am prepared to use the logo and variations of it (thumbnails on YT, album cover) for that purpose and then team up with someone who is able to design proper stuff.

Covers

Not gonna happen. I enjoy playing other peoples’ songs but on the downside are tons of covers already out there and the licensing here in Germany is just a mess. So as long as I live here and I don’t have the best idea ever there won’t be any recordings of me covering famous songs.

Vlogs/Reviews/Tutorials/…

Basically videos that are not songs. Will happen if the requests for that emerge. For now it’s not really adequate and would cost too much time.

Next blog will be some band advices. So long,

DrScythe

The (hi-)story of DrScythe – Part V: Decisions and Motivation

This last part of the (hi-)story series is about two things (as you might have guessed by now). First I’ll describe my way of getting to the point of trying it as a solo-artist and then I’ll give you some hints of how I stay motivated.

So let’s just begin with the decision. After music won the battle against photography and I recorded the first test song I still had to make a choice whether I wanted to record some demos and then try to form a band based on that or if I’d try something else. While battling the university’s administration in 2014 I continuously practiced mixing by experimenting with riffs and ideas as I mentioned last time. While doing so I became more and more confident that I could do it all alone. And with the second complete song I gave myself no excuse left for not doing it alone.

I didn’t make a written list of pros and cons of a full band vs. just me but the key differences were limitations. Limiting myself to my own instrumental capabilities or limiting myself to the time and motivation others can/want/will spare. As you already know what I ended up doing I will just lay out the reasons why I went for the solo-thing.

1. Freedom. No one to ask, no one to wait for, no excuses. All options, full responsibility. Whenever I want, however, whatever. The price is discipline. As long as I got a few followers no one really cares about a week delay – or at least I can answer questions immediately. But maybe the day will come when a bunch of people ask ‘where’s the new song dude?’

2. Self-fulfillment. This is part of Nr. 1 but from a different angle. I don’t have to ask for other people’s opinion on songs or styles. This too asks for some discipline. Not choosing the simpler version of a track although the better sounding one is more complex and/or difficult. Keeping the distance to criticize your own work. There’s a difference between just doing what you want and knowing what you want (to say) and doing it.

3. No excuses. This was actually a reason. Part of motivating yourself is having no excuses. Or at least easily to differentiate from real reasons like graduating type of excuses.

4. Getting sh*t done. I managed to record several songs and even released two of them. That’s one more than all the bands before were able to achieve. So I was pretty confident that I can really finish something this time. And so I did…

I knowingly headed into the risk of repeating myself or missing out really talented musicians who could lift the songs to next level (if there is any; as rating music is 100% taste…). But I wanted to get something done this time and this was the better way. More on that topic on a future post about the future of DrScythe.

As I already stated there is also this huge aspect of motivation. Although this post will be a little blown up I think my motivation is easier to understand if you can see the connections to the reasons for beginning as solo artist. But let’s begin at the core. Your core. Our core. We’re all lazy. Not always, not in every way. Nonetheless it’s just a fact that we all tend to do the easiest thing. Which often enough is nothing at all. So getting yourself to actually begin with something is definitely the hardest point. And the more excuses you can find the smaller the chance you get to the point of overcoming the laziness. I am not talking about doing something the easiest way possible but the very decision to do something at all.

But how to defeat that voice in your head? How to resist temptation? Self-discipline. Some got it as a kind of default setting others have to fight hard to use theirs. For years I wanted to do some sort of sport again to lose weight and regain physical fitness. I tried several things until I bought a book in 2013. This is not an ad and I am in no way connected to the author it’s just part of the story. This book was ‘You Are Your Own Gym’ by Mark Lauren. It was exactly the thing I needed back then. No excuses left. Just stand up and train. No machines, no memberships, nowhere to go - nothing needed. Except you and your body. And by forcing myself through the first weeks of muscle soreness and beating up this voice in my head again and again I not only regained my former self-discipline I strengthened it a lot. So that I was able to graduate and to go through the recording, mixing and mastering of a song without excusing myself.

Not matter how pumped I am when I just wrote a new song or got a great addition to an existing one – it always comes down to work finishing it. So it’s always this kind of self-discipline that needs to kick in. I cannot tell you how to train yours. In the end you need to find the weakness of your personal laziness yourself. This weakness is where your determination is louder than the tempting voice. Where you can easily identify excuses and get rid of them. And after you learned how to win against the ‘devil on your shoulder’ it’s easier to beat him everywhere else. It’s not like the struggle ends. After more than two years I am still tempted to say ‘no training today’ especially when new or very hard exercises are involved. But I know the rules of the fight now.

In the next post I’ll give you an overview of what to expect in the future by DrScythe.

So long,

DrScythe