Music Archives - Melissa Dinwiddie | Create the Impossible™ | Innovation Keynote Speaker & Consultant

June 22, 2016

LCN 062: A Conversation with Renaissance Man Chris Wesley

The Creative Sandbox Way™

LCN 062: A Conversation with Renaissance Man Chris Wesley

00:00 / 1:17:51

Today you get to be a fly on the wall for a conversation I had with one of my artist peer-heroes: Chris Wesley.

It’s a pretty long conversation — over an hour — and we actually spoke last year, way back in September. The reason it’s taken me so long to publish it is that I originally planned to publish conversations, oh, maybe once a month, but I realized pretty quickly that if I’m going to do any editing, and put together any kind of comprehensive show notes, it is just way faster and easier to do a monologue!

I honestly thought that episodes with guests would be faster — after all, I don’t have to come up with content — the guest provides the content. Our conversation just becomes the content. Whereas with my monologues, I put a lot of time into writing out what I want to talk about.

But after recording, conversations are a lot more work.

In order to create show notes, I have to listen to the entire conversation again and take notes. And honestly, my perfectionist tendencies kinda go wild.

Yes, I’m a card-carrying imperfectionist, but what that really means is that I’m a recovering perfectionist. I am completely transparent about the fact that I am not fully recovered yet!

For my podcast, I had visions of editing my conversation recordings into really tight, streamlined, narrated, This American Life kind of productions.

And that is just crazy time-consuming. Like full-time job time-consuming.

So I have a lot of interviews, recorded conversations, that have just been sitting on my hard drive!

I finally realized the only way to get these recordings out onto the podcast would be to [Read more…]

August 9, 2012

Telling the Inner Critic Gremlin to Suck It

That damn Inner Critic Gremlin is a sneaky beast.

Not only is it a bald-faced liar, but it is a master of disguise. Some of its favorite disguises include:

The Voice of Truth

The Voice of Reason

The Voice of Rationality

When four hours of free studio time landed in my lap late last year, I didn’t let my Inner Critic Gremlin stop me from taking advantage of it and recording 7 original tracks of me and my ukulele.

I didn’t even let my Inner Critic Gremlin stop me from getting the tracks mixed and mastered.

But then my Inner Critic Gremlin, disguised as the Voice of Rationality, convinced me that I needed to hold off on releasing my music into the world.

The Inner Critic Gremlin speaks

“You should wait until you can put your songs out with more instrumentation than just you and your ukulele,” it said. “People will be bored by just you and your ukulele.”

“And,” it continued, “if you’re going to go through the trouble of adding more instrumentation, you really should wait until you have a full CD of 12 or 15 songs. And really, you need to find a producer to collaborate with on the arrangements. And since a producer/collaborator and more musicians means more expense, that means you’ll need to run a Kickstarter or IndieGogo campaign to fund it.”

It all sounded so… rational!

The thing was I didn’t have time or energy or “bandwidth” to deal with finding a producer/collaborator or running a fundraising campaign. Which meant putting my music out into the world would just have to wait.

I speak back…

But wait, I thought. These stripped-down tracks are the perfect thing for my vision of a UkeDiva.com website, with tutorials of all of my ukulele songs! Maybe I ought to just release them as-is…

To which the voice that I thought was the Voice of Rationality replied:

“Ah, yes, it’s a great idea to make these tracks part of your UkeDiva.com ukulele-tutorial-website vision… but really, you should wait to release the songs until the website is built….”

And of course, I didn’t have time or energy or “bandwidth” to create my dreamed-of UkeDiva.com website, either (that one’s been off the stovetop for over a year, relegated to the fridge for now). Which meant, once more, that putting my music out into the world would have to wait.

This went on for eight months!

That’s how long it took me to recognize that what I thought was the Voice of Rationality was really that sneaky rascal, the Inner Critic Gremlin. So that’s how long my Inner Critic Gremlin was dictating the fate of my music album!

The Inner Critic Gremlin Unmasked!

The thing about the Inner Critic Gremlin is that once you’ve seen through its disguise, it’s much easier to roll your eyes at it, kick it out of the proverbial driver’s seat and grab the wheel again yourself.

Aha, thought I, all of these reasons for not putting my music out into the world are really not rational at all!

Hunh!

I had a little talk with my Inner Critic Gremlin. Then I sent it off to get a pedicure while I uploaded my music to my music website, melissasings.com, where you can find it now (and where hundreds of people have already listened and/or downloaded — it’s “name your own price,” guys!).

Yes, the Inner Critic Gremlin had possession of the driver’s seat for 8+ months, but I unmasked it in the end. The sales I’ve made, and the emails and tweets that I’ve received from appreciative fans have touched my heart, and motivated me to record more music and get it out into the world!

Comments like:

Oh!! “My Ukelele” gives me goosebumps!! VERY 100% FAB!!!! Yay Melissa!!! 😀

and tweets like:

https://twitter.com/jody_macdonald/status/233242351408148480

Ha! Take THAT, Inner Critic Gremlin!

In short, for this round, at least: Melissa – 1, Inner Critic Gremlin – 0

Where have you unmasked your Inner Critic Gremlin lately?

xo, Melissa <3

Hey! Want some Gremlin Training Techniques?

I’m so glad I’ve learned special Gremlin Training Techniques to adequately deal with Inner Critic Gremlins (even though sometimes it still takes me awhile to recognize mine!).

Gremlin training is an ongoing process, because as long as we keep pushing outside our comfort zone, those Inner Critic Gremlins will keep popping up.

Thankfully, I’ve got a slew of really useful tools, and will be teaching a 90-minute Gremlin Training Lab in the not-too-distant future. Sign up for my insiders newsletter to make sure you get notified when I offer the class!

PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

May 13, 2012

My Mom, My Hero — A Mother’s Day Tribute

Some of my most magical memories from childhood are from the couple of times my parents took me and my brother to the Renaissance Faire.

I was captivated by the Elizabethan costumes, the revelry, colorful ribbons everywhere, jousting matches, funny signs (such as the bathroom sign, which said “Privies,” hand-painted in what is sometimes referred to as “Olde English” lettering. Hmmm… Now that I think of it, the Ren Faire may have planted — or a least helped to fertilize — the seed that would one day lead me to become a calligrapher! But back to my story…)

photo by celebdu at Flickr — Photo by celebdu at Flickr

Both of our visits to the Renaissance Faire found the family spending quite a bit of time at the harp booth. Not because either I or my brother had any great interest in harps (though I found the mini lap harps charming), but because my mother had harbored a dream to play the harp since she was a little girl herself.

I remember Mom asking lots of questions — How much do they cost? What size would be the best for a beginner to get? How hard is it to learn to play? What is the difference between this harp and that harp? — and she looked longingly at the beautiful instruments that the harp-seller played for her. But ultimately, she walked away.

“I don’t have time to learn to play a new instrument right now. But maybe someday…”

As happens for so many of us, someday never seemed to arrive. My mother tucked that dream away on a hidden shelf, and life went on.

But one day something changed. I’m not sure what made my mom decide that it was time to stop putting off her dreams, but over a decade later, when Mom was 50, I walked through the door to my parents’ house to find a beautiful, blonde, full-size Celtic harp in the living room, and Mom beaming with excitement about the lessons she had just signed up for.

My mother understood that learning to play an instrument doesn’t happen overnight. She frequently voiced her frustration at how long and steep the learning curve was (not to mention how sore her poor fingers were as she built up those necessary callouses that all players of stringed instruments know so well.)

But she kept at it.

Mom didn’t let her frustration stop her. She just got more determined. She committed to her daily practice time and guarded it as if it were her very life. She bought a “travel” harp to take with her whenever she and Pop went on a trip, so she would never have to skip a practice session. “I have to keep up my callouses!” she would say.

Inspired by my mom’s new musical passion, about 6 months after my mom took up the harp, my dad came home with a flute. “Now we can play the Mozart Concerto for Flute and Harp!” he announced.

I believe Mom’s response at the time included much rolling of eyes and head shaking. “Honey, that concerto is one of the hardest pieces ever written for harp,” she protested. “It will take YEARS for us to get that good. Don’t hold your breath.” [Correction: after reading this post, Mom said her response was more like “Yeah, right — in your dreams!”]

Undaunted, Pop started taking flute lessons, and now their commitments fed each other — they could help keep each other on track, and the goal of performing as a duo added fuel to their fire.

Mom started off performing with the “beginner’s group” in the annual recitals put on by the harp studio where she studied. There was mom, with maybe one or two other adults and a gaggle of little kids, plunking away at the simple tunes arranged by the studio master.

It’s not easy to stand up and declare yourself a beginner as an adult, especially up on stage surrounded by kids (who always seem to be zooming past you!), especially when you’re not a ham (like your daughter!) and playing in public makes you incredibly nervous, but Mom did it.

And she kept doing it, year after year. She kept putting in daily practice after daily practice, and performing at those annual recitals, sometimes with my dad making a cameo appearance on the flute. (What a treat, by the way, to be able to go to my parents’ recitals and concerts, after they went to so many of mine when I was growing up!) Every year she got a little better and a little better, and got to play more and more complicated parts.

My parents also started taking their show on the road, performing here and there, getting gigs by word of mouth. Over time, their gig schedule filled up with concerts for senior centers and retirement homes, and the occasional church service or wedding.

All because my mom followed her dream, baby step by baby step.

Mom in her wedding dress at the 50th wedding anniversary party — Mom in her dress - isn't she gorgeous?

Two years ago my parents celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. They rented out a restaurant and threw an enormous party. Mom pulled her wedding dress down from the attic and found a seamstress who altered it to fit her 21st century form.

(I should hasten to point out, because I’m sure she’d want you to know, that my mom weighs exactly the same as when she and Pop got married in 1960… it’s just that gravity has shifted things around a bit.)

Pop rented a tuxedo like the one he wore back then. (Which I don’t think was quite the same size as the one he rented before, but who’s counting?) They even hired a designer (guess who!) to create beautiful invitations, and a jazz singer (guess who!) to sing during the cocktail hour.

It was a lot like a wedding, but without the ceremony part. (I made them the book in the photo below, 50 Reasons Why We Love You Mom & Pop.)

50 Reasons book, hand-made and calligraphy by Melissa Dinwiddie — 50 Reasons Why We Love You, Mom & Pop

My favorite part of the whole evening, though, was after dinner, when it was Mom and Pop’s turn to play. They had arranged a medley of songs that represented the sound track of the last five decades of their life together, from Around The World In 80 Days (their theme song, since my mom literally left on an around-the-world trip with her own mother days after their first, very romantic meeting on the campus of Scripps College), to When I’m 64, by the Beatles, and a bunch of others. It was delightful.

The real tour de fource, however, was what came next.

It makes me tear up even now, remembering how beautifully my parents played that Mozart concerto. They’d gotten private tutoring with a master harpist and worked for hours and hours to learn the piece. And now, some 60+ years after my mom first dreamed of playing the harp, and over 20 years after my dad set his sights on playing the Mozart concerto, here they were, celebrating a lifetime together, through thick and thin, past untold obstacles, sharing their dream with everyone in the room.

Mom (and Pop, too), you are my hero. Happy Mother’s Day.

Do you have a Mother’s Day hero? Share in the comments!
xo, Melissa <3
PS — Pssst! Know someone who might benefit from seeing this today? Pass it on!

Roses photo by Charles Sporn at Flickr

Women: ready to answer the call of your heart and bring your own dreams to life? Join me in Time to Glow, a 4-month program to get you from dreaming to doing, living the fully creative life you really, really want. Click here for details about the program, and to sign up for a free Q&A info session on Thursday, May 17.

July 3, 2010

Behind the Scenes of Making an Independent Music CD – Part 4

Ever wondered what’s involved in making a CD of original music? At the end of 2009 I recorded and self-produced my first “official” release, Online Dating Blues, and here’s a glimpse inside the process. (Originally published 1/18/10 on ketubahdiva.com)

Part Four: Support from Unexpected Corners, and Finally In the Studio!

I’d done my homework: thanks to suggestions from friends I’d met at Music Strategies, the email I sent to my fan base included links to a web page tricked out with PayPal buttons for donations and pre-orders. I have a modicum of html skills, and thankfully PayPal makes it super-easy to make a “buy now” button, even for a non-techie.

I also offered people the option of sending a check, calling me up with a credit card, or giving cash if they preferred (which turned out to be very wise), but I wanted to make it as easy as possible for people to donate on impulse!

Would people contribute? My guitar teacher, Carol McComb, had raised an unbelievable amount for her CD 10 or so years back, but I think her list of (incredibly loyal) students was a lot bigger than my list of fans (about 500 strong), and being a performer with an erratic (to put it mildly) gig schedule, rather than a performer and teacher with multiple ongoing weekly classes, meant that I didn’t have quite the loyal following that she did.

(But then again, with a budget of about one-twentieth of her last CD’s, I didn’t need to raise as much either.)

Still, there was a fair amount of fingernail biting. $2,000-2,500 isn’t enough to bankrupt anyone, but without outside contributions it would certainly be going to debt…

And then there’s The Economy… I knew I wasn’t the only one with a lot less disposable income to play around with these days.. Was my whole idea just completely crazy?

Then lo-and-behold, 52 minutes after sending my email my first contribution rolled in, for 100$! Talk about validation.

Especially validating, and surprising, was that it was from a friend from the calligraphy and book arts world, Carol, who has never seen me perform, and whom I hadn’t seen in more years than I can count.

Within 24 hours, I received eight donations and pledges, to the tune of $285. Not a bad start!

******

Now that money was actually coming in, the pressure was on. This CD project was becoming more real! I was going to have to deliver a CD, and one that would, I hoped, satisfy all of my contributors!

My first recording session was scheduled for December 21, and as the date drew nearer and friends left and right were catching colds, I felt as if I were holding my breath, praying that I would stay healthy. I recorded myself singing my songs and playing my guitar and uploaded these “scratch tracks” to a page on my website and sent the link to the guys in the band so they could get a (rough!) idea of what we’d be recording.

Into the studio!

The morning of the 21st I packed up charts of all my songs and drove an hour to my drummer John’s garage studio, Idea Room, in Concord. John spent the next hour setting up mikes and plugging in cables until the tiny space was a tangle of black cable.

With a drum kit, an upright bass, an electric keyboard, music stands, mikes and various large boxes of sound equipment, I had about a 2-foot square space to stand in. The four of us were in a for a long day of very intense work, in very close quarters. And honestly, I can’t imagine much that would be more fun!

After much fussing with cables and computers on John’s part, we all had big (tight!) earphones on, through which we could hear everyone: John’s drums, Doug’s bass, Jake’s keys, and my voice.

We spent a few minutes on sound checks, trying to get the mix right in the earphones, so everyone could hear themselves and each other. After all the sound checks were done I pulled out my charts and we started practicing.

We hadn’t met to rehearse, so this was the first time the guys were playing my songs. Being the consummate professionals that they are, however, they took my ideas and ran with them. Until that moment my songs had mostly lived as ideas in my head. I played them in my living room, but (inexpertly played) acoustic guitar and voice give a completely different feel than a full jazz trio!

I can’t tell you what a delight it was to hear a band bring my music to life!

And the guys had fantastic ideas! It was like being in a creative stew pot, with ideas popping up like dried corn kernels in a hot pan. Over the course of our two studio sessions we worked out intros and endings, where breaks would come in the music, and what kind of groove each song should have.

Doug started playing a “Killer Joe” intro to Online Dating Blues and we all said “let’s use it!”; Jake suggested a straight-8s feel for I Need A Vacation (brilliant); John used brushes to create a mystical, dreamy intro to Geary Street; Jake pumped out a Gospel feel on the keys for Married Men (a hilarious contrast to the content of the song) while Doug created a “overweight marred men in Dockers” solo.

Here’s how the day went:

Rehearse a song, work out feel, intros, endings, solos
Record the song
Assess our performance, make notes of what to change, and record the song again
Repeat as needed, until everyone was ready to move on to the next song
Start process over with another song

I have to confess that there was no point during our 11+ hours of recording over two Saturdays when everyone was 100% happy with his or her performance! If we’d had unlimited time I suspect we’d still be working on it today (or at least until we all got completely sick of it! A certain amount of perfectionism is the curse of being an artist and wanting your work to be the best it can be).

However, I did not have the budget for unlimited studio time, so (thankfully) we didn’t have that luxury. Instead, we moved on whenever we felt like the song we were working on was “good enough” for the CD.

Understand that with four professional musicians, “good enough” is a difficult determination at best, and a little distance can turn something “awful” into “not bad” or even “pretty damn good – hunh!” Jake was convinced he needed to re-do his solo on one of the songs, but when we reconvened the following week and listened again, he decided it wasn’t as bad as he’d thought.

Musicians’ memories of our own performances are rarely reliable… This truism came back to haunt me in the mixing studio, but more on that next time…

—

Next: Mixing and More

July 1, 2010

Behind the Scenes of Making an Independent Music CD – Part 3

Part Three: Scheduling the Sessions and Raising the Money

Once again I was faced with the question of how to produce the CD.

I toyed for awhile with doing a live CD recording concert, reasoning that I perform best for an audience. Plus my radio show was live, and I got a handful of acceptable tracks from that, so surely I could do the same again. Also I could ask for donations in advance and at the door to help cover production costs.

Finding a venue I was happy with, and actually making it happen, though, proved harder than one would think. I was blocked again, though I couldn’t say exactly why.

Weeks went by…

Margo, my voice teacher thought I should “do it right” and hire a professional producer. She’d been working with this guy for months, was impressed with the performances he was getting out of her, and I figured why not at least meet him? Though I expected working with him would be pricey. And would I encounter the same issues I had with the first producer?

All my concerns ended up moot, because somehow, although the producer in question was apparently interested in meeting me, and Margo was willing to make the hour-long drive with me to facilitate an introduction, nothing happened.

Weeks went by, I didn’t follow through, and suddenly I realized holiday shopping season was right around the corner, and damnit, I wanted to get a CD made NOW! No more waiting!

It didn’t have to be professionally produced (no matter what Margo said) – my home-burned radio show CD had proven that! Hell, if it was better than my radio show CD it would be a clear win, and for that all I really needed was a way to record me and my band.

A Cheaper Way to Record…

A year before I’d gotten together with a trio in my drummer’s garage studio (John Lazarus – Idea Room) to rehearse and record “just for fun.” My big goal at the time was to get a recording of my first song, He’s Just Not That Into You, to use as a soundtrack for a video I wanted to make. Now it suddenly occurred to me – DOH! – perhaps the most expedient and cost-effective way to go about this would be to record in John’s studio again.

I shot off an email asking if he and his band, The Big Beat Trio, would be interested and available, and how much they’d charge.

Within a couple of days I had two five-hour recording sessions scheduled (at $30o a pop; $100 for each musician per session), and two mixing/mastering sessions with an engineer John recommended, Nick at Earhythmic Studio, who only charged $50 per song for both mixing and mastering.

(To give you an idea of what a deal this was, $100-200 per song is not uncommon for mastering alone, and mixing is way more involved…)

Great! It may not be Capitol Records, but given my time and budget constraints (did I mention I was broke?), I managed to let my inner perfectionist take a breather and remember my goal to just make this CD better than the last one. Not an impossible task, which also had the added benefit of making a future CD that’s even better than this one seem achievable as well. Baby steps…

Paying For It All…

Wow! Blocks busted! No more paralysis! I was moving forward!

Now, how to pay for this thing..

Although I was doing this on a shoestring ($150 per song is a helluva lot better than $1,000 – see Part 1: Background – but that didn’t include the costs to replicate the actual discs), it was still going to cost more than I had on hand, especially given that this was December, the deepest, darkest depths of cash-flow darkness for my mostly wedding-related art and design business.

My estimates were at least $2,000-2,500.

I had met artists at Music Strategies who had raised CD production money from their fan base, and knew of still others who’d done the same. Earlier this year I randomly sat next to my guitar teacher, Carol McComb, on a flight. I spent the entire time picking her brain about her phenomenally successful fundraising campaign, which brought in something like $40,000 from students, friends and fans. !!!

Carol sent me a copy of her fundraising letter, from the days before everyone used email and paypal. Ah, technology! No stamp-sticking for me: as soon as I’d scheduled the recording sessions I composed an email to my fanbase, using Carol’s letter as a skeleton, asking for their support and offering certain “premiums” for different levels of support.

(I had a lot of fun with this: since my songs are mostly themed around the trials and tribulations of dating, I offered different kinds of [totally platonic!] dates with me for each of the $100-and-above levels. I wasn’t sure how this would come across, but the comments were all positive – as I’d hoped, people got a good chuckle out of it.)

I accepted pre-orders for $10, and here are the “Executive Producer” contribution levels I offered:

Executive Producer Levels:

$25 – Web Executive Producer
Your name on my website and 2 copies of the CD

$50 – Web&Print Executive Producer
Your name on my website AND in the liner notes, and 3 copies of the CD

$100 – “Coffee Date” Executive Producer
Your name on my website AND in the liner notes, 4 copies of the CD, and a coffee date with me!

$250 – “Lunch Date” Executive Producer
Your name on my website AND in the liner notes, 6 copies of the CD, and a lunch date with me!

$500 – “Drinks Date” Executive Producer
Your name on my website AND in the liner notes, 8 copies of the CD, and a date for drinks with me!

$1000 – “Dinner Date” Executive Producer
Your name on my website AND in the liner notes, 10 copies of the CD, and a date for dinner with me!

I sent the email off and waited to see what would happen…

—

Next: Support from Unexpected Corners, and Finally In the Studio!

LCN 062: A Conversation with Renaissance Man Chris Wesley