With Love From the Outskirts of Tokyo (My first music video)

There are a lot of traps that an artist can get stuck in.

There is the trap of perfectionism, the trap of routine, the trap of worrying too much about what others think or of getting too complacent. Some artists don't challenge themselves and some don't have fun with their work.

I've been all of the above at some point or another.

My biggest challenge as an artist is having ideas that I don't have the skills to execute on, and waiting around for someone to come and help me. Of course I could pay someone if I had the money (I usually don't), but I really want to work with people who believe in and like what I'm doing rather than someone who sees it as a job to be done. It's not an issue of not wanting to pay, even if I pay someone I would prefer to pay someone who has expressed excitement about my work and shows some understanding of what I am trying to say.

https://img.inleo.io/DQmbEbaP52gUjjuVJxYmeFS8SgWprBiKb8zYxiA9H3dWBMt/IMG_6844.jfif

Some things I learn myself to compensate for the fact that "someone's gotta do it". I learned how to self-publish a book. I learned how to record and edit songs on ableton live. I learned some basic video editing skills. But sometimes you have higher expectations for your work.

With my novel I've been struggling to find translators, both Mandarin and Japanese, because the content is NOT EASY to convey in another language. It's very abstract at times, and not even all native English speakers understand the language I use. Most of it is pretty straightforward, but I think someone who hasn't had similar experiences won't be able to express it well even in their native language.

With music it's always been about production. I learned how to record but my sensitivity towards treble and bass, mixing the different levels of different instruments and figuring out how much of an effect is too much...I'm pretty dull. I also don't understand 80% of the software's features.

Today I released my very first music video. I did everything myself. The guitar, lyrics, arrangement, recording, production, video editing, it's all 100% me.

I had a much different vision for this song. I wrote it about 12 years ago and I always loved it, but I thought it needed more instruments and proper production to come close to what I wanted to share. As with most of my songs I waited for a long time to find someone who could help produce it.

In 2019 I finally recorded what I thought would be a demo version of it. I waited some more and not many people noticed the song, mostly because I didn't act very proud of it. I just kind of uploadloaded it without telling anyone about it.

Finally two weeks ago I decided that there is no need to wait any longer to share it, it is what it is, I'm already in a very different place in my life than when I wrote the song and so I don't need to sit on it any longer. It has not become what I envisioned for it, but it's not bad either, it's still kind of awesome, even in it's rough, sloppy version.

I decided to make a video and do everything myself with footage I already had, and not to sit too long on it. The more time I had to think about how to make things better, the more likely the song would never reach anyone.

And so I spent about a week doing a ton of editing on poorly filmed footage of beautiful landscapes, trying to dress it in clothing that said something, that brought out the deeper meaning of the song.

I am quite happy with the finished product. It's not perfect and it isn't what I was hoping for, but nothing ever is, and that doesn't mean we can't love it anyway!

I made this new channel to separate my music and podcast.

Please follow and like if you enjoy it, and I'll be slowly putting up some old live videos and eventually making some more music videos as well.

I'll leave the lyrics for you to listen to, but in case you can't make them out, I'll be posting them sometime next week with some extra information about the video and the song.

<3

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