Physical Product

After a frustrating 18 months, it looked like I was getting back on my feet until whatever it was that knocked me off them again for three months last January, triggering six months of very painful convalescence. I started recording the guitar pieces I wrote in the summer of 2020 but a flare up of the same symptoms knocked me off them again for another month recently.

I’m beginning to wonder if I’ll ever be the same, tbh. I think that the easy physical and intellectual capacity and reserves are a thing of the past - and it’s only now that they’re gone that I realise that I had them.

Another three weeks on the flat of my back, weak as water - which isn’t weak, actually. It’s essential for life.

Weak as a kitten, then, mewling and staggering.

Before the last bout, I was wondering more and more about the role of the guitar in making music nowadays, now that it’s become a heritage industry museum piece. A consequence of its movement from the centre of pop music culture to the margins has been that very good guitarists are now, essentially, having to make a living by becoming Youtube content creators. This is not a knock against them - most of them can play circles around me, they’re clearly still in love with the instrument (which is a good thing) and they seem to enjoy it.

I know I do, watching them.

(I know I’ve said that guitar culture is currently locked in a pattern that makes it a trainspotter’s pursuit rather than a vital musical culture, but I’ve also pointed out that deep in the heart of every guitarist lurks a nerd - and although I think of myself as a musician who makes music using a guitar (and whatever else comes to hand), the fact remains that I do make music using a guitar, which means that a tiny nerd must live inside me too).

I now have field recordings for each of the songs that will make up the Test Pieces album. If you’ve read about their recording here, you’ll know that I decided to record each piece in the place that inspired it, allowing myself three takes before packing up and head off to the next location.

And it looks like there’s an album there, but …

I feel that for context, and to honour the journey, the recordings around the recordings need to be included somehow. Rather than here’s me playing the guitar, and here’s me playing some more guitar, and here’s another bit of me playing guitar … I feel like those pieces need to have the story surrounding them - like the ring sets the diamond, or the frame sets the picture.

I’ll have to think about this and how to do it - an album that’s also a road trip / life trip.

There are two things that have come from that, for me.

The music for Test Pieces is recorded, even if how it is to be presented has yet to be decided.

Which is great.

But here’s the thing:

You can look at Northumbria as me playing very intricate and very complex guitar pieces.

The songs are emotionally charged. The songs are drawn from life.

But you could, if you ignored all of that, just go Well, it’s just a guy playing a guitar.

If I release Test Pieces first, well, then it’s just another album by the guy who played a guitar.

But the music that makes up Test Pieces came out alongside another set of songs. I talk about the emergence of these two different but interrelated musics here.

So, I think that even though I’ve recorded the music for Test Pieces, I need to sit on it for now, record the songs that came out with those lines, the simple ones with words, and then have them come out together - if only to escape just being guitar guy.

That’s point one.

The other thing is, I need to look at how I release both.

I don’t think it should be digitally.

Here’s why.

99% of the content that we watch on Youtube, or we listen to on Spotify or wherever was created within the last 24 hours.

99% of that content will not be watched or listened to again after 24 hours have passed - because in that 24 hours, new content will have been created that supersedes it.

Which makes content creators nothing more than mice running on a treadmill to keep up.

Imagine spending so many hours of your life pouring your heart and soul and passion into making something …

… that doesn’t matter 24 hours after you made it.

So, here’s what I’m thinking.

If I release Test Pieces as I did Northumbria, across all platforms, free-to-air, then it’s possible that it might ‘do’ the numbers that Northumbria did.

Which would be great.

My ego would get a little boost.

But as I noted with Northumbria, while it was great that so many people liked it, it didn’t change my opinion of the work - which should always be the starting point for anything you do and how you perceive it.

And if I do that, then Test Pieces and those other songs will, essentially, come and go within 24 hours.

So I’m wondering about the feasibility of producing and release these albums as physical products - a vinyl album, a CD, a tape - and limiting the production run to 25 or 30 units.

We value what we put value on, is the point I’m making.

Youtube content creators give their content away as loss-leaders. Rick Beato, Tim Pierce et al are broadcasting but then pointing you in the direction of their book, their course, their whatever.

If you give something away for nothing, people treat it like it’s worth nothing.

If you pay for something, anything - a shirt, a house, a cup of coffee, a book, an album - it’s because you really want that particular item.

And if there’s only 25 of them in the world - and that’s all there will ever be …

Well, that’s different.

Regardless of the value that I personally put on it, that would then have material value because there aren’t that many of them.

Something to think about as I learn to walk again.

©℗ A. I. Jackson

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Origin(al) Stories was first launched to show some of the thoughts, decisions and processes that went into the writing, recording and release of the Northumbria album.

Following the launch of The Landing Stage, which brings together some of the things I do, I’ve continued adding to Origin(al) Stories.

Origin(al) Stories has none of the features beloved of self-help and influencers: how-to guides, lists, essential hacks.

Drawn from my personal diaries and journals, the posts might often seem unconnected, elliptical and fragmentary. Showing, as they do, my explorations of ideas and approaches and processes as I do things, they are best viewed as glimpses of my workings.

They show my mistakes, the false trails I’ve followed, and the blind alleys I’ve gone down - all of which are intrinsic parts of finding a path through to doing something.

If you’ve liked an Origin(al) Stories post, or it’s helped you with something you’re doing in some way, please share it to your socials, and give credit. All content on this website is under copyright and attributable.

None of my work will ever appear on platforms or social media, for reasons I talk about here, but which can be summarised as: platforms don’t pay or sustain people who make things.

Buying an album or a book direct from me helps me to make the next one.

So please do.

Thanks for reading. Have a great day. Tell the people you love that you love them. Be a positive force.