The journey through the musical fog continues; it has cleared up slightly, but perhaps another denser gust is lurking behind, I’ll find out this April. I pitched “I Can See” to many curators; there were both compliments and critiques, and naturally, I’m going to dwell on the critiques.
“Riffs are too cliché”—I can agree with that, especially regarding the opening one. “Vocals aren’t mixed well”, debatable. “Drums mixed poorly”—in one part, they actually are too quiet, almost disappearing. “Vocals too weak for the backing track”, debatable, but a fair point.
Those were the general critiques; the only one I didn’t accept was from a curator who took it for granted that I used AI to compose. Specifically, they didn’t just assume it; they claimed it’s so “compressed that I must have used AI for the composition” and even wanted to know how I used it and with which tools. The answer is simple: I didn’t use AI, and I won’t use it in the future. Everything is played in some way, whether it’s cliché or original, played well or not-so-well in certain parts, it’s all my own work. I don’t do the mixing myself, but I give the final approval, so it’s still my fault if the mix isn’t a masterpiece. However, I want to reiterate that I organize, develop, and record the songs myself; the only tracks I don’t record are the final vocals (except for demos for the singers) and the drums. That comment pissed me off because you put time, money, and mental and physical resources into every song, and being accused of using AI to compose a track feels humiliating and disrespectful. I have always recorded my tracks manually, and I will continue to do so.
I have a piece of advice for those who, like me, are trying to find influencers and music promoters: evaluate carefully who you send your tracks to, especially those with high sharing rates. You might find yourself in playlists of terrible music and encounter “jokers” commenting in Spanish, “vivan en los mediocres del mundo” (long live the mediocre of the world), so be careful. Those with a low sharing percentage might have a more “elite” user base, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll gain more followers if a curator with a 4% sharing rate decides to share your song. It’s all down to… I don’t know what. Should we call it luck? Chance? Or destiny?
The fact remains that after a massive campaign in March, I haven’t gained a single new user on Spotify or my site, and only a few on YouTube. It reminded me why I had given up on these platforms. Shares here, shares there, but what did all those shares actually do for me? I’ll try again in April and May with two songs that are already out and had a good response when they first dropped; then I’ll evaluate whether to stick with that platform or leave it again.
On the bright side, I’ve finished my composition work and I’m fairly satisfied. I tried to do new things and experiment. Now I need to get them recorded by singers, but I’ve caught them at a time where two out of three are busy and two aren’t suitable, so they are only recording one song for me right now. It’s no big deal, though, as they won’t be part of the new album I’m launching in June.
Gigs? Nothing. It’s not the right time, and I don’t know if it ever will be. For now, I want to keep pitching my music and releasing new material starting in June. It’s a complicated situation… I just hope I’ve finally made it clear to those friends who periodically try to set me up with someone “for my own good” to mind their own business and accept my celibacy, just as I’ve accepted their life as a couple. There are those who can live well alone and those who can’t; neither is better than the other, it’s just about a love for freedom.