3 on Thursday – 1/19/23

3 on Thursday, Aaron's Blog, New Music, Performances, Recommendations, Songwriting

Read time: 4 min

Today’s issue is brought to you by my Paper Route Watercolor Prints. A great gift for any friend or family member who used to deliver the news with their bare hands. 

I hope you’ve been having a good week. Here’s this week’s 3 on Thursday where I

  1. perform “Paper Route,” 
  2. share a time lapse video of my watercolor “Paper Route,” and
  3. talk to my fellow songwriters about shushing. 

All right, here we go…

1 of 3

“Paper Route” Performance Video

This is a video of me playing Paper Route on my studio couch. I’m playing it at the original tempo, which is quite slow. I’m glad I sped it up for the studio recording to give that sense of urgency––a kid on his bike––but it felt forced playing it that fast on the couch on a Tuesday morning. So…

2 of 3

Time Lapse Video of Paper Route Watercolor 

I love watching how stuff gets made. That’s partly why I was drawn to watercolor. So many kind painters sharing their process on YouTube, etc. In that same spirit, here’s a time lapse video of my watercolor impression of “Paper Route,” Track 3 of Up North. 

3 of 3

On Songwriting

Shushing

Songwriting is mostly shushing. You gotta shush people in your head for a good hour or two.

“Dumb idea,” says one.

“Shush!” you say.

“Stupid,” says another.

“Shush.”

There are about fifteen or so people badmouthing you and they look like your mom and dad. They look like the kid who sat behind you in math class and stuck things on the back of your shirt. They look like your relatives, people who you think would say, “That’s not really who you are or that didn’t really happen to you. I know who you are.”

And you’d think that once you become a published songwriter the validation of a paycheck for your songs would be the ultimate shush. But it isn’t. The voices come back and you gotta keep shushing.

The good news is there’s another voice that’s always there as well, except it’s just whispering rather than shouting like all the others. And you’ve gotta tell everybody else, “Stop! From now on you have to raise your hand to speak. Because I can’t hear my soft-spoken friend!”

And then it gets a little better.

But like a class of third-graders, they forget and you have to remind them all again the next day.

Ok, that’s it for this week. Thanks for reading! As always, feel free to reach out to me for any reason.

Love,
Aaron

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