I once heard a pilot talk about something they learned in flight training: trust your instruments and your training, especially when you're experiencing vertigo. If you feel like you're upside down but your instruments say you're level with the horizon, don't start jerking the controls. (wheel? helm? Only fighter-planes have a stick, so what's that thing in a commercial jet called?)

The bottom line is that despite what Star Wars fans might tell you, you can't always trust your feelings. Or, put more clearly: our feelings are real and purposeful, but they can't be our final decision-makers.

I guess that's not a super popular idea in 2020, but then again, was it ever? And on top of that it probably sounds pretty weird for an artist to say it. Aren't us creative-types supposed to feel even more deeply than other people? I don't really think that's true, but sometimes I sure feel like it is. But feeling deeply doesn't mean you always let that drive your life. And on the flip-side, doing your best to make wise decisions doesn't mean that you don't still feel deeply.

I wrote "Spotlight" while singing in the car and thinking about being honest about my experiences. To be more specific, I was thinking about how honesty is what people always say they want from a musician, but there are a lot of different ideas about what that means. Occasionally as an artist there are those people that just seem to want your ugly or nothing at all.

I want to be honest and genuine, I also want to help people. I want to help them move "onward and upward" past just their immediate emotions. Ultimately, I get to choose what I give my focus to, no matter what I'm going through. I get to choose what to give the spotlight to in my life, and that's true for everyone.

"I got up on the stage, and it did not feel a thing like it was supposed to."  There are a lot of ideas about what performing music is supposed to be like. Sometimes the real thing meets those expectations, but other times it doesn't feel that great. I've played concerts where my stage mix barely sounded like music, instead it was more like a bunch of instruments that just happened to be playing (loudly) at the same time. Maybe I was just hungry, hot, or tired from moving equipment, or maybe I really needed to go to the bathroom.

In those moments I have had to fall back on my training: Breathe. Listen for the queues. Don't oversing or overplay. I've  thought I performed terribly, but then had an audience member tell me how much they enjoyed it. In weird little moments like that the irony often felt thicker than the relief.

"I can't trust the feelings that are screaming for the spotlight, 'cause if I had, would not have made it here. You can say that everything is crashing for a moment, or shut your mouth and then say something clear."

Life can sometimes feel like vertigo or a noisey stage. That's when we have to go back to the Word of God and live by the truth of wisdom.

Angry at someone in traffic or the person that did you wrong? You still gotta forgive 'em. Already made a commitment, but something else came up you'd rather do? You gotta go with your first word, or ask to be excused knowing that the final decision isn't up to you. Attracted to that person, but know it's a bad road? You gotta move on. Know what God says about it, but your feelings are running the other way? Dig your heels in.

I go a little deeper in the second verse, which I haven't talked about much. And you may be surprised to hear this, but God can relate to your feelings more than you've probably ever realized. But we'll talk about that stuff next time in part 2.

Onward and Upward >:)
-SD

I'm always looking forward to the next adventure, but it's worth talking about all the good things that have gone on this year.

Have there been challenges?  Yeah, there have.  I spent months standing in faith for a job.  I got a lot of rejections, and feelings of futility and worthlessness tried to come at me in multiple arenas of life.  But my life is an adventure, not a tragedy! (and I'm happy to report that I got a great job that still allows me to do all the stuff I need to do as a musician and artist).  So let's get to the good stuff.

I released The Spark Recharged ( I just got on spotify to check my own release date and make sure it was actually this year!).  It was such a cool project to see come to maturity.  I really enjoy all different types of music, and I wanted to explore an electronic sound.  I got to dig into everything from EDM to chillstep, and I'm really happy with the result.

I very much believe in "Recharged" AND the original "Spark" EP (plus Look Forward!).  You have to understand, I was a kid in his basement writing, recording, mixing, and mastering everything, knowing what he wanted to see and hear.  Of course there are things you look back on and say "knowing what I know now, I could have done this or this better, or perhaps differently".  But still. I'm very happy with what's begun, and I believe in these songs.  I want more and more people to hear them. I'm thankful that God gave me the skills and equipment to create with, and I'm always excited about going to the next level.  Share it with your friends and lets get this in everyone's ear!

And these things have been on the RADIO!  I got to be a guest deeJay on WAIF's "Silent Witness Radio", and came back later in the year to do an on-air acoustic set with Michael (Peet) and Larry.  I got played on 96Rock Cincinnati, WEBN, and "Cincy Music Showcase" 100.7 and 106.3FM (also known as "The Project").  I got contacted by some web-based radio for permission to use my stuff as well.

Now, I wrote the song "Time to Live" right before a bunch of this radio stuff happened.  Interestingly enough, here's the pre-chorus lyric:

"How many times have we just let the monster tell us that
We'll never make it on the radio?
It's just a lie and I won't let that sucker hold me back
'Cause they'll be smart enough to play me though"

I got to do some great interviews with Iain Moss of JesusWired.com as well as Don Thrasher of Dayton Daily News!


More production came to the stage show, including props, wardrobe, and video. 

HOURS and DAYS were spent figuring out live video production, making clips, auditioning solutions, and drafting ideas for stuff that could be built.  Time went into picking out and customizing wardrobe for the stage.  We even got together and built "The House Chunk" from the Premonitions painting.  It has a much deeper meaning than you've seen yet, but one day soon it will all make sense!  I'm building more than just music here, there's a larger universe at play that, if you look, you'll see clues to all throughout my work in multiple mediums.

As far as the video is concerned, some great donations by several people on and off my tech crew has made it possible to bring a great production value to the stage.  Oh yeah, and I just got some scrims!

We played some great concerts.  Just look at this stuff.

I screen printed a lot of shirts, and got a nice setup put together in the basement.  That being said, it takes time!  The screens, the ink, the tape, the shirts, the colors the sizes.....my goodness.  So in the future, I'll probably give some of that work to a local business.  But still, if I want to do a special run on the fly, I can!

Peet and Sarah got married.  It's great having them on the music team, and we enjoyed going out to Maryland for the ceremony!  Peet (ok, his actual name is "Michael") was on the frontlines with me in college jazz band, and it's cool to be able to share that history as we take to various stages.  And Sarah is always willing to come help at concerts, which is very much appreciated.

I got my Master's Degree. It was quite a challenge, having been a music major in Undergrad, stepping into a Master's program made up of Business MBA courses and Communications Department courses.  After all, most of the people there had already spent four years in those fields.  But, I had success!

Onward and upward.  I'm thankful for my support crew, which has grown since this began (Mom, Grandma and Grandpa, Aunt Teresa, Tyler, Missy, Austin, Sarah)  It takes more hands than just mine to load gear, set up a stage, and plug everything in.  There are conversations being had right now about things to be created and done this year.  New levels.  I want more people to hear the music.  I've been performing with my live band both onstage and on the web.  What a time to be alive, when we can set up in front of my computer and play a concert for someone in Norway.  There are concerts to organize, videos to think about, new contacts to become acquainted with, images and art to create, and as always, new music to develop.  There are new adventures to be a part of, and people who need to know that THAT is how it's supposed to be.  And you're gonna love it.

Recently, I posted this to social media, "Not fishing for compliments, but thankS to any1 who encouraged me in singing. My voice was a source of self-conciousness for a LONG time."

Much to my chagrin, Twitter's 140 character limit forced me to use webspeak to articulate this post (and we just won't talk about my outright capitalization faux pas).  However, you get the point.

It may come as a surprise to you to hear this from a performer, but it was true.  Before I made The Spark, I tried time and again to come to terms with the way I sounded behind a microphone.  Take for take, there was always something.  Weird enunciation.  Glottal noises.  The vocal fry didn't want to fry that day.  It sounded too too immature.  Too something.  I knew how I wanted to sound, and it wasn't what I was hearing.  Mostly, it was just the timbre of my own voice and the tinges of colloquial accents that I just wanted to be different.  Because I KNEW what a really good singer sounded like. 

And then there's the voices in your head that come with being a music student.  Knowing so many spectacular vocal majors and theater students that could probably tear apart my breath support.  My diction, vibrato, head and chest tones.  And at the end of the day, even if I had gotten ALL of that right, I still didn't even know if I liked what I heard.

I was comfortable in the realm of the instrumental.  That's what I had buried myself in for years.  I picked up the piano, the saxophone, the guitar, bass, and drums.  Composing, arranging, mixing.  Assuming through all that time that singing would just be easy.  Because everybody sings.  It was just that the further I went, the more I knew what I wanted to sound like,  I wanted to just be more than a "great songwriter and an ok singer", and felt so desperately hindered by what I heard on playback, despite 25 takes full of good intentions and full-bore energy.

And even in the spheres of instrumentals and post-production, I could feel the constant mental barrage of "what-if" criticisms.  Because again, being a music major or even just a professional, there was always going to be someone who could legitimately tear apart saxophone tone or pitch.  Someone who might know what I could have done better with guitar sounds or articulation, or who could call me out for using parallel intervals in my part-writing for strings. 

But the voice.  The voice remained my biggest stumbling block.  And it wasn't that I never sang publicly, my vocals drenched in the maw of loud instruments and messy live sound.  It wasn't that I didn't have those moments singing in the car when I thought,"MAN!  If only I were doing a vocal take right now instead of singing to the dashboard!  I'm ON IT right now!".  But still, getting behind that ever-demanding microscope of a studio condenser just seemed to always leave me frustrated.  Should I have taken more voice lessons when I was younger?  Should I have taken them in college?  Should I just keep waiting for my voice to change some more?  I didn't just want to sound like another high-note yelling guy.

As always, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, back when I started recording, I did not have the "proper" equipment to be doing it.  I was literally recoding full-on songs with a computer mic.  A Packard-Bell, "oh look, you can use this in an AOL chatroom" computer mic.  With it, I would mic a Roland keyboard amp (though which, I became mad-skilled at playing keyboard drums for a 12 or 13 year old, or whatever I was) that belonged to the church or an Esteban lunchbox practice amp and record into Sony's "Acid" music studio, which was quite literally $60 at Best Buy.  Recorded right onto our dell lookalike.  I eventually graduated to recording guitars direct from a pedal and using an interface, but i was still using that clunky old program.  And to give you an idea of just how clunky it was, EVERY take created a brand new track.  And was stuck that way.  And if you were using plugins like reverb, delay, distortion, etc., you had to MANUALLY copy those settings for literally every take you did.  Even just volume and pan.  EVERYTHING.  Needless to say, I I ended up with projects with well over 100 tracks in them.  And even back then, I couldn't just record songs with bare bones rock bands.  I was working those keyboard string and synth sounds for everything they were worth.  But I did the best with what I had.

In high school, I got ahold of Mackie's Tracktion.  I could finally record multiple takes on the same track.  Listen, I know that's not a big deal, but it was huge to me.  Mixing wasn't so much expertise to me as it was making each element sound "cool" and hoping it all worked together.  And I was still mixing on hyped computer speakers from Best Buy (but hey, they had a cool sub).  Which, to be fair, was a step up from the dinky plastic "welcome to Windows 98" ones I started with. 

It was during those days (or perhaps more often, nights) that I wrote so much music.  Night after night in the basement, out of the sunlight and a few degrees colder than I liked it.  With no one but the immediate family and the occasional friend really listening.  For years.  YEARS.  Grabbing the guitar and playing concerts for future audiences in an empty room.  I could see them.  I could see the stadiums.  Sometimes it was exciting, but other times, so frustrating.

It was during those days in high school that I made Premonitions.  Writing and recording were one in the same thing.  No physical person around me knew how to teach me to do what I was doing, to give authoritative answers to questions technical or musical.  My family supported me, bought me things (for which I am very thankful), but if I wanted to learn something, into the internet hole I went.  Into the abyss of forums, not knowing the term for what I was trying to do, and wrangling through search queries until I finally figured out what "it" was called.  And you know what?  Even now, as a 22 year old who holds a music degree, I am still enthralled by the music that came out of those times.  There's stuff I wrote when I was 14 that I still plan on using.  Because I was doing the best with what I had, and it was still good.

In college I made the transition to Logic, and finally met someone who could teach me things about something I sort of thought I knew.  Damon Sink took me under his wing in the areas of studio mixing and composition. 

It wasn't always ideal though.  We were both horribly busy in the music department and were doing this stuff as an independent study of sorts.  We often met in his office and just hooked my laptop up to a couple of mini monitors to talk about mixes I was working on for other bands.  Sometimes though, we'd meet at his home studio, which was much more conducive to sonic learning.  But hey, did I mention that by this time I was doing work for other bands?  Which was sort of astounding, given that I knew so little technically, but thankfully have been blessed with a good ear.

Through all this time I had experimented with vocals.  Never happy with them.  Yet, by some miracle, I was mixing the vocals of other people, and that stuff seemed to work.  So what was the deal?!  So I decided to put my foot in the door by doing guest vocal spots on other people's albums.  it was a way to see what people's reactions would be.  And if listeners didn't like it, then hey, I was just a guest vocal. 

That was the first step.  That was first time I forced myself to do it.  But there was a sort of merit in that.

Eventually I told myself something.  I told myself  that all my personal excuses (all based in self-criticism) couldn't continue to stop me.  I told myself that if I didn't make myself do it, it wouldn't get done.  That I had to give it what I had, even if I wasn't totally satisfied with it. 

It was hard, because with every take, with every edit, I felt the weight of history.  I know that sounds really overdramatic, but in my head it was like, this could be the take that ends up on the recording FOREVER.  And that was such a huge deal to me.  And sometimes it still is (I'm working on that...).  But realized that I had to swallow that, at least temporarily.  Long enough to jump off the high-dive.

Now, don't get me wrong.  You should do what you do with excellence.  Don't use what I'm saying as an excuse to do something half-baked.

When I was working on The Spark, I'd spend hours doing a bunch of vocal work, then come back the next day and not like it at all.  It was infuriating.  The only thing that stopped me from putting a hole in my computer was that, if I did that, there would be a hole in my computer. 

But slowly, something started happening. As I let people listen to the demos, they told me they liked my voice.  Not just the music.  My voice.  I almost didn't understand.  Because often, I didn't like it.  I could have cried.  It was like finding out your dog hadn't died after all.  Sometimes I almost had to stop myself from disagreeing with them, saying something like "well yeah, I really like this part too, but I need to re-record this, this, and this....." 

And I guess you could say the rest is history.  When I listen to The Spark now, I hear places that I can improve.  But that's what happens.  And I don't want to just rush on to another project.  I want more people to hear this.

I find myself writing vocal parts that I KNOW will challenge me live.  And I've listened back to live footage in recent months, sometimes disappointed at an issue like pitchiness.  But I can feel and hear myself getting better and better.  Really.  And I realize that if I hadn't put it out there to begin with, I wouldn't have had a foundation to get better from.  To challenge myself with.

I recently got to headline at the Underground, and I was listening to the footage and getting so excited.  I was impressed.  By me.  I was getting so excited in the car, so genuinely happy with what I was hearing.  Sure, there were off notes here and there, sure, my ear caught everything that needed improvement, but man, I enjoyed listening to it so much.  And one of the things that propelled me was others telling me the same thing from one performance to another. 

And I'm just going to keep getting better.  I'd love to do other professional singing in the future.  Maybe in theatre or movies.  And one day maybe I'll take some more lessons.  Become one of Brett Manning's clients, hire a vocal coach for the road or something.

When I was little, my parents never lied to me.  Not even about stuff like Santa Claus.  You should have seen me, trying to inform all these delusional kindergarteners that no jolly old elf made an annual squeeze down their home's exhaust pipe.  But the comfortable ignorance of the masses just wouldn't tolerate the strains of one lone truthbringer.  Anyway, mom always told me, "At any specific skill/task, there will always be someone better than you."  It wasn't a slam.  It wasn't even a discouragement.  She was just being honest, and would teach me to just do my best, because my worth isn't determined by a skill.  Some days, knowing that was liberating.  Other days, perhaps not so much.  But you know what?  It should be liberating.

Look, there are people who really aren't called to do things.  We've seen them.  The people that are just so convinced that they think they want to do music or acting or ANYTHING (doesn't even have to be "artistic") and you watch them and think, "Man, I'm glad they like doing this and everything, but they just ain't got it."  It can can make you cringe.  But when you know you have the gift, take what you have and use it.  Even if it doesn't seem like much.  Start with it.  You may know that people may be able to criticize it.  And YOU will almost certainly be able to criticize it, but ENJOY it too.  I personally, LOVE listening to my own music.  Not out of some deep narcissism, but because I just genuinely like it. 

Do the best with what you have.  And grow with it.