Last year, I was briefly in a prog metal band. It was kind of whirlwind, since there was only a drummer around when I auditioned, and we quickly grew to around 5 people -- all strangers to each other. Suffice to say, the band didn't work out because the group dynamic didn't work. But that's not what I'm here to talk about.
I would've been happy to just mess around, jam, and learn to play covers with the guys in the band. I'd never been in a band before, and it was both intimidating and really fun to put myself out there, trying to use the skills I'd worked on so diligently in practice over the last few years. The band members wanted to write original works, though, and so I tackled it like any project I'd face at work: I started figuring out what I did and didn't know, requested a stack of books from the library, and started trying to break down what we'd need to work on each week in practice. I wasn't a songwriter then, and in fact I hadn't really ever tried to write music to express my experiences or my emotions to others. I just liked riffing on guitars, as I said in the last post: mostly making weird sounds with fuzz pedals. Building pedals and exploring different effects had been more of a hobby for me than actually playing guitar for two decades now.
So I dove in to songwriting, and started reading and re-reading books on creative writing, songwriting, and composing music. I thought, maybe if I just chipped away at it week after week, in a year I'd be able to bring something that I thought was worthwhile to the group. The band imploded well before we really got into songwriting seriously, but I continued to read some of those books and keep the ideas in the back of my mind. What I didn't do is work on parts of it every week, and now I wish I had.
This winter, with time to think over the holidays and New Years, and knowing about the February RPM Challenge since at least 2007, I began to think about recording something. I figured I would sign up, do the punk rock thing of using what I already had, learn as I went, and just have some fun. Talking to my guitar teacher, who also has a degree in songwriting, I realized that I hadn't been practicing any aspects of songwriting for the past four or five months. I hadn't thought about recording at all. Learning to record music well can be a lifetime or a whole career! To start on February 1st would be a steep hill to climb.
My teacher advised me to just work on something simple and basic -- set artificial constraints if I needed to, but don't aim for producing my "magnum opus" the first time around. One phrase that I recall him saying was that there's "hundreds of bad songs to write before you'll get to one you like, and you just have to practice by writing those hundreds of songs."
The RPM Challenge website now asks you a few more questions when you sign up, than the last time I'd signed up there. (2008? Not sure. Pete did it that year while I failed to produce anything.) It asked me what kind of album I wanted to make: a single, an EP, something else -- I realized I can focus on just writing one song and recording it, for an entire month. That immediately lowers the bar of what it'll take to feel successful. So I said I'd produce a single. If I end up recording a second track this month, even better!
I am setting some other constraints for myself, either to keep it more within my abilities or to help me to succeed. I am mostly interested in instrumental prog metal these days, and I also don't sing. So I'll be aiming for an instrumental song with some heavy parts. I'm keeping the structure simple and not aiming for wild prog metal time signatures or polyrhythms. Just getting something interesting and solid recorded on guitar to a click track is an entirely new thing for me.
Some other aspects of that discussion with my guitar teacher are informing the idea. I don't need to make it intellectually or theory interesting just because I might find that kind of thing more interesting to listen to. Along with the "no magnum opus" admission, I don't need to have this particular song stand for anything (although it might), and I don't need to start convincing myself that I can use my music to take on the injustices of the world or to create a more tolerant society. That can come later, with experience and confidence born from trying to produce one song.
As I put in the title of the post, this all means that I need to learn to accept some limitations. It's been too easy in the past to feel like I "had to" do something the "right way" or the way someone else did it. It's hard to admit that you're not where you want to be, and to get there that you need to set some constraints or lower your expectations. But that's all part of practicing an instrument and learning to make music, isn't it?
In this case, I had an unrealized dream that had long been simmering -- to make my own music -- that I hadn't realized, and now to get there, I need an actual plan. I need to set my sights on that end goal while admitting I need to lower my expectations in the meantime. Otherwise, I'll just get frustrated and quit. All too often, I think that's happened with things I was passionate about. With some maturity and intentionality behind my actions, I now can recognize what I need to do for that long-term goal.
I've read several books about songwriting. One of the first I read was Jeff Tweedy's How to Write One Song. As a longtime fan of Jeff Tweedy and Wilco's music, I read it to know more about how he came up with some of the off-the-wall lyrics in their songs. It doesn't disappoint, but it also has several exercises that one could apply just to work on creativity with writing. Things like word ladders and other exercises that introduce new contrasts of words, or allow you to find new unexpected meanings. These exercises feel similar to the exercises I'd encounter in later creative writing and songwriting books I read. But I have found that Tweedy's exercises in this book can help unstick your brain from the literal and the well-worn thoughts, and let you start thinking in new ways. I can recommend this book, if you read any of them.
More recently, I read Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones (general creative writing and encouragement that anyone can write) and Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics (gets into the nitty-gritty of lyrics and the details that I'd hope someone would explain to me about songwriting.) Surprisingly, these books about words are all helping me now with thinking about what kind of instrumental music I want to write.
On and off, I've done the sort of Morning Pages type writing in a paper journal that Writing Down the Bones and Writing Better Lyrics both talk about, with various prompts or simply the things on my mind. Being able to explore a thought or feeling and consider how it interacts with all my senses makes me more aware of how I might translate a thought or feeling to music. Being more creative through Jeff Tweedy's random word pairs makes me think of new melodies and rhythmic patterns. It translates more than you'd think. If I actually had "something to say," I might still struggle to write lyrics about it, but I feel like I've learned a lot more about conveying thoughts and feelings from these reads than my typical writing in my day job ever asks for.
As far as the actual setup, as we close out week 1 of February 2026: I decided to stick with GarageBand because it was already on my Mac, and I didn't want to buy software for this effort. I'd tried Reaper in the past and it seems impressive, but there's far too much interface there for me to learn in this short time. I figure that if I really get into recording, after a month or two of GarageBand usage, I can justify moving to something like Logic or Reaper and learning those more deeply when there isn't as much pressure on.
I play a 7-string headless guitar from Xolo Custom Guitars, which is my favorite instrument at the moment. While I've got other guitars, the 7 string's range and the pickups both fit the kind of music I'd like to make. I'm using my trusty HX Stomp modeler as both my effects & amps, and as my audio interface. The HX Stomp simplifies a lot for me, and I don't have to worry right now about mic'ing an amp or whether it's appropriate to play at 11PM at night. I play through Sennheiser HD 6XX studio headphones. I had all of this gear already, but I'm only now beginning to learn how to use it all for recording. The HX Stomp and headphones have been an excellent practice tool for the last 2 years that I've owned this setup. As a pedal builder hobbyist, it pains me to say that the HX Stomp replaces all but a few types of pedals for me -- fuzz and pitch shifting are lacking on the HX Stomp, but everything else is superb.
I'm using a paper journal to do creative writing and jot down ideas in, and I use the GuitarPro application on my computer for sketching out ideas. GuitarPro is useful for hearing the MIDI guitar or bass play ideas, or so that I can practice against a loop. I also take down some ideas in Apple Notes app when I can't write in the journal.
After a full week of work, I don't have much yet. I've watched a video course on recording guitar riffs and then filling in drum programming, bass, and doing some mixing to produce YT Shorts-length tracks. Unfortunately, that course didn't quite start where I needed it to start teaching me, and instead expected a pretty high level of knowledge about all the tools. I was unable to replicate the track they recorded and demonstrated in the video. But I'm going to keep working. The particular sounds they were producing in the course video were in line with what I want to do (prog metal instrumental), but I don't have full Logic software or the pile of plugins they used for mixing and massaging the sound, either. I'll have to learn to make do with what is built into GarageBand and just treat it as another constraint there to keep me on track.
Am I achieving my goal of having fun? Yes, it's been a new thing and so the dopamine hits with each problem overcome. Getting realistic about all the things I don't yet know puts the single track goal into more perspective, but it doesn't seem overwhelming. I'm also glad for this focus away from all the bad things going on in the world, if only for an hour or two per day. Lastly, by knowing that I'm on the path towards something, I can be grateful for the little wins and even the struggle in it.
Until next time, keep going. That dream you had? It probably needs a little weekly investment over a long time period, not a big life change, to make it real.