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I'm going to be releasing a new album soon. Multiple albums, in fact. I've found that expressing myself through music is a great way to connect with the listener and enter an environment of diverse soundscapes. I think musical composition is field worth dipping into. The limitations of the audio format are also the strengths of the audio format. When limited by physical constraints, art usually finds a way to exceed or surpass itself, and that's certainly the case when all you can do is listen.
The recent rise in ASMR is a testament to this, and a surprising one given the sensory gluttony of the Internet age, although I would credit the most innovation in sound design to the radio programs of the 1930s and 1940s. Listening to a serialized adventure with the Green Hornet or Lone Ranger is unfathomably exciting, despite having no visual graphics whatsoever. These shows were insanely low-budget, just some voice actors standing around a microphone and creating sound effects with soda bottles and coconuts and whatever was lying around the studio, yet they capture all the fervor and storm of a two-fisted action tale, all due to the talent of those who voiced the iconic characters.
It's my belief, then, that budget is rarely an issue when creating something- that one is only limited by one's own imagination, one's own innate talent. Nobody needs the most expensive equipment, nobody needs an entire studio to record in. If one has an idea, and is dedicated to bringing that idea to fruition, you can run a pencil along the ridges of a tin can and create a funk masterpiece, or bite into an apple and use the resulting crunch in a smooth rock ballad. The world is full of sounds, and if one is resourceful, one doesn't need a guitar, piano, or even a drum. All one really needs is a means of mixing random sounds together into something listenable, the mental faculties to do so, and a decent singing voice. Though even that is optional.
Since I began recording onto tape I've been more conscientious of the work that goes into basic album construction, which is a separate endeavor from individual song composition- which songs should be first and which should be last, which placements are satisfying, how each song leads successively into the next, and so forth. I've also been excited by, again, the limitations tape offers. 45 minutes per side may sound like a lot, though fitting all the content of a single album into only 90 minutes with mathematically determined interludes is a Herculean gauntlet, and requires constant attention.
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