I never had anything fancy with which to record my songs, so often times they'd just live in notebooks and my head for months. Once I inherited my own computer, though, I decided that it was time to start experimenting with recorded sounds. I didn't have much to work with, and what little I did have was meant to be used for far different purposes than those for which it had been appropriated.
In the middle of my senior year in high school, armed with some mediocre songwriting, a few guitars, some pedals, cables, and a faulty pair of headphones, I set out to record my first real album, 9 Songs.
The recording program, Sony ACID, was meant to be used for DJs, not recording musicians. The guitars and vocals were all recorded through a direct input into my computer - sometimes without even using an amplifier. And how's this for ingenuity - the drums were actually sample sounds from Wikipedia, frankensteined together into beats that often sounded processed and robotic. As bad as it was, however, it was still done. Although I've disowned it now, I was proud of it at the time.
The entire album was recorded under the philosophy of turning a mess into music. Obviously, I was not endowed with fantastic technology, progams, even songwriting. Everything was done in my bedroom, which isn't exactly Abbey Road.
Inspired by Paul Westerberg's 49:00 of Your
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