Zenith
By Cosmic Cairns on December 22, 2020 9:48 pm
Wow. Another year down the hatch. And what a year this one was. Congratulations to everyone who made it to the finish line. And if you didn't make it to the finish line but participated in any capacity along the way to still deserve congratulations for being creative this year. Any creative productivity is good. So congratulations!
I'm happy I managed to do all 52 weeks again this year. I even managed to pull off a little fun game with my song titles. I noticed there are 26 letters in the alphabet, which happens to be half of 52, so it would be possible to start a title with every letter of the alphabet twice. So I started with a "Z" song in week 1, worked my way backwards down the alphabet until I hit "A" in week 26, did another "A" song in week 27 and then went back up the alphabet ending with another "Z" song in week 52. It was mostly an exercise for fun, but it actually proved kind of useful to my process and inspiration as it gave me a direction to follow. In past years some weeks I was kind of like "what the heck do I want to do or write about this week?" This year I knew whatever I was doing had to start with a specific letter and since I sometimes like to brainstorm song titles in advance anyway I could pick something off the list that began with the letter I needed. In some cases I was able to give some pre-thought as to what a song with a particular title might sound like so I already had some vague ideas before I even started. Also it was another way to kind of know where I was "at" in the year. I realize week numbers work pretty well, but it was another way to visualize it. I knew I was over the hump so to speak when I was working my way back up the alphabet and knowing how far up or down the alphabet I was gave me a good sense of the year's progress. Anyway, it ended up being useful for me and maybe I'll do it again next time.
So what are your plans for 2021? Are you burned out on music? Need a break? I was feeling like I had gotten into a good creative rhythm as the year went on and initially I thought I'd just try to keep it going into the new year. But as the end of the year approached and I started looking back, I realized if you do all 52 weeks you end up with a LOT of material and there's definitely some stuff I did this year that I really liked. I think I'd like to put together at least two albums utilizing songs from this year. Rushing a track out every week is great for productivity, but objectively speaking, they could certainly use a little polishing up. I've decided I want to devote some time to trying to improve my mixing skills and then I want to pick about 12 songs for album #1 and do complete start-from-scratch remixes on them. After that I'll probably take a break or work on new music or other creative pursuits for a bit and then later in the year I may try to compile and remix a second album. At least that's my plan for right now.
In the meantime, I'd love to continue to support everyone in your creative efforts, whatever they may be. If you've got anything you want me to like or follow or listen to or whatever, let me know in the comments. I'm not the biggest fan of social media and I generally would prefer less of it in my life as opposed to more, but I also see it as kind of a necessary evil. I finally broke down and got a Twitter account just recently. It was actually because of a fiction writing project that got me to do it, but I'll use it as my music account also. I was going to name it after my writing persona "Wuckster" but someone else already took it. @CosmicCairns was available so I grabbed it. I've had a band page on facebook for a while now, although I haven't done too much with it. I'm not on instagram as of right now, but I suppose I could join it if it seems worthwhile. I do post all my albums on bandcamp and I guess they have a "follow" feature now. I haven't delved into spotify or any other streaming sites yet, but that's something I might look into in 2021. At any rate if you wanted to like or follow any of the above, that would be cool, and like I said I'd be happy to return the favor. Here's the links for my various sites:
Bandcamp - https://cosmiccairns.bandcamp.com/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/cosmiccairns
Twitter - https://twitter.com/CosmicCairns
Jeez, this is a lot of stuff and I haven't even gotten to this week's song. I called it Zenith, both to fulfill my "Z" word title and to optimistically feel like I'm going out on a high point. Lyrically I got into a bit of a reflective mood and wrote about appreciating those that are close to us. Musically, I started out with a choir sample and reversed it because I was curious what a backwards choir would sound like. It sounds surprisingly similar to a forwards choir, but I liked the vibe of it so I built around that for the intro. Then I got to the main body of the song where the lyrics kick in along with some prominent cello, and then for balance sake I added an extended instrumental outro. Anyway WB has definitely been one of the best parts of this messed up year and has helped keep my sanity intact. Good luck on your future endeavors. Let me know where I can follow you at in 2021, otherwise hopefully I'll catch you all back here in 2022.
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All of the atoms in every star
Still wouldn't fill up the void left in our hearts
By all the things that get lost to time
Everything eventually gets left behind
But it was all worth it just to have known you
Just for the instant that we both passed through
It might all be random but I'm glad you were here
I felt less lost just by having you be near
All of our memories might leave with us
Everything eventually gets turned to dust
Even the whole universe will go
As if it never existed at all
None of it in time will even be missed
How could it be when nobody exists?
Still I'll remember as long as I can
If this is all there is I'm still glad it happened
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial (BY-NC)
