And just like that, there can be a breakthrough…

Open a session. Sing one verse. Then another. Suddenly, you’re making progress…

You know that Nike slogan, “Just do it”? I mean, yeah, of course, but sometimes it just isn’t that simple—is it? I plan all of my days with an agenda in mind and a schedule laid out. Even on the rare occasion when I decide that “today is going to be a recharge day”… I still plan out how I’m going to "recharge." 😂

So I started out the week with this intense desire to get something meaningful done. Not just admin stuff, and not just fancy webpages, and not just a livestream concert… but some actual proof that I am making progress and, more importantly, I’m making music.

I decided to narrow down the songs that I was considering for my next recording project, and then I did the unthinkable: I actually started working on it!

I created a new session in Pro Tools. I sat back and listened and considered what it was that I wanted to do next. And then, I vocalized and got my ass into the vocal booth and started singing.

Did I finish the vocal? Not yet… And no, this is not another case of perfectionism. It’s a case of being authentic with myself. I got a vocal. I didn’t get the vocal… Yet.

The ghost of my father visits again…

There is a specific occurrence that happens frequently that I attribute to Daddy visiting. And no, I’m not going to share it with you. I’m not going to share it with anyone. It’s between us, and I know it’s him letting me know he sees me and watches over me.

But I digress.

On occasion, when he visits, I hear my father’s voice in my head reciting one of his “Daddy-isms.” This week it was, “You heard the term KISS? Keep it simple, stupid!” Followed by my Dad’s chuckle at finding himself so clever. ❤️

So you might remember last week when I talked about how I have a really difficult time walking away from unfinished things because of something he said when I was a child. But the KISS acronym has actually really helped me in the past, and it certainly did the job this week.

Remember when I was talking about stems? And how infuriating and frustrating an experience it was trying to move forward when I had this gigantic stem obstacle placed in my path? If not, read last week’s recap…

Anyway, after hearing Daddy remind me of KISS, I decided to do a little bit more research. Turns out that music supervisors don’t always need stems initially. It also takes months for boutique sync agencies to review your submissions. And to get even one song accepted is a huge deal.

Why was I holding myself back? And why was I stressing over the future scenario I created in my head: I submit. A song gets accepted. They need stems STAT. I'm deemed unprofessional. I never work again...yes. I am dramatic. Instead, why not just put myself out there and see if anything even got chosen to be represented?

Keep it simple, stupid.

I decided I was gonna work with what I had… I had plenty of newer songs recorded on the new system. In fact, I spent an entire day exporting stems and creating a lead sheet for a song that was recently recorded—win!

The more important component is that most of these boutique agencies only accept three songs at a time anyway. Why not just submit what I already have ready? And on the off chance that they needed a lead sheet, I could create one then.

Then it hit me. The bigger and more important realization was: I was scared.

I was afraid of putting myself out there and the potential of rejection. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in an environment where true, flat-out rejection was a possibility, and I realize now that my anxiety was really what was preventing me from moving forward—not the inability to create stems on older songs.

I swear, once I made this realization, everything just seemed to start falling into place.

My Great Aunt turned 102!

I’ve talked about my great aunt many, many times. And I will probably talk about her for the rest of my life. She is a constant in my life. She has always been a part of my world, and she’s one of the last living beings who carries some of my family’s history with her, though these days, her memory is starting to fail.

What brings me joy is that I don’t even have to say who I am when I call. I just need to say, “Hello, my Mimi,” and she always responds with, “Oh, Marci! How are you, my darling?”

Anyway, she turned 102 during Week 18. She lives over 1,000 miles away, so I wasn’t able to be with her in person, but I did call first thing in the morning because I knew it was just after breakfast and just before she goes to exercise.

No, that’s not a typo.

My now 102-year-old great aunt goes to exercise class every morning at 10 AM!

I know. She’s remarkable. 🥰

We had a brief chat, and then I realized her daughter and granddaughter—my cousins—were with her, which made my heart very happy. We decided to keep the conversation short and call back after dinner so that we could sing “Happy Birthday” when Gianni came home and do it on FaceTime because my cousins both had iPhones.

I set an alarm for 6:30 because I know that she starts to fall asleep and gets ready for bed around 7 PM.

Well, we started a FaceTime call singing “Happy Birthday,” and then realized they hadn’t even eaten dinner yet! My cousins live out west, so they are a few hours behind. I guess eating at 4:30 regular dinner time would be like eating dinner at 2:30 their time. LOL.

Anyway, it was good to see my great aunt’s face and sing to her and just love her with every atom in my being. ❤️

The world lost Kay Pere, and what a loss it is

I made the mistake of going to Facebook, and there it was.

It was like a punch in the gut and the chest all at once.

Dear, sweet, kind, thoughtful, talented Kay Pere had passed away.

Did I even know that she was sick? I hate that sometimes I feel so swept up in my own little world that I lose touch with the outside world, other than peeking around social media once in a blue moon.

The announcement came from her loving husband, Bill, and I can only imagine how heartbroken he is. When you met them, you knew instantly that they were meant for each other. They were partners and a force to be reckoned with. Activists, musicians, caring, wonderful humans.

I hadn’t spoken to Kay in several years… But her impact and essence linger, and I have thought of her often throughout the years.

It sure puts things into perspective when someone has such an untimely death. 💔

Light at the end of the tunnel…

Sometimes you have to create forward motion, and sometimes it takes a heartbreaking occurrence that stops you in your path to suddenly clear the air.

I had this moment of clarity where I decided that I would give it one more try…

OK, I need to recap the recap here just to give you context so you don't have to wade through previous recaps…

About three years ago, we upgraded our recording studio and planned on maintaining a “legacy system” that would enable us to access older sessions that we had recorded.

Why do we need a legacy system?

Because as operating systems progress, software and plug-ins grow obsolete. The only way to truly protect everything is to have a legacy system that you can go to.

OK, so I’ve been talking about these stems for weeks now. I needed the legacy system in order to access older recording sessions and create stems for songs that were older than three years old.

The problem was, the computer that was the brain of the legacy system crapped out on us three years ago. We just kept moving forward with the new studio setup and didn’t think a lot about it.

Which leads me to the present day.

I realized that with all the machinations I went through, I could not create clean, professional-level stems for songs older than three years—which are not in the dozens; they’re kind of in the hundreds.

Which meant that I could not submit them for any kind of sync licensing. I know you’re probably really tired of hearing about stems at this point… But I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t bothering me. After all of my clarity and realizations, I just couldn't let those slightly older songs go...

So hopefully this makes some sort of sense, and if it doesn’t, you can just skip this whole next part…

I had one last Hail Mary to try.

Gianni came home one night from a really intense day that had started at 4 AM and went until past 6 PM. He had mentioned to some of the guys on his work team the issue we were having with the old recording computer because he knew they had a history of working at the Apple Store.

They told my husband about a computer repair place about an hour from us that only had a $50 diagnostic fee!

OK, that was doable.

But then it occurred to me… Could we diagnose the problem before we schlepped out there with an old computer?

The answer… maybe.

That was good enough.

I’ll take a long story and give you the highlights: We were finally able to run a true diagnostic and determine that we were pretty sure that the computer was not dead—the hard drive was. And that we could probably get a new hard drive installed for about $300–$400.

But then I thought, how hard is it to replace a hard drive?

Answer: Super easy!

I ordered a new hard drive and the necessary adapter (sled) it would need.

Now onto the fun part… Installing the new hard drive and seeing what happened.

I won’t take you through the nine-hour day I had because it completely drained my brain, and there’s no reason to do the same to you.

Long story short… I say that a lot, don’t I? LOL…

OK, back to focus.

Long story short, the computer had two hard drives. The first one contained the operating system and all the applications. The second one contained all of our recording song files.

Guess what?

The primary hard drive was not the problem.

It was the secondary hard drive that we already had a backup of.

So, we removed the faulty secondary hard drive, and poof.

Just like magic.

The entire system booted up as if it had never had any issues. 🥳

That’s not the end of the story.

Many hours were spent restoring the software that we use for recording so that I could open up the old sessions in order to create the… I know, I don’t even want to say it at this point, but I have to…

Stems.

There were a multitude of issues, like licenses that weren’t being recognized and an actual dongle required to verify software, but I won’t bore you with the minutiae…

I got it functioning.

But…

No sound…

Because we have to reconfigure the interface that we use to create sound, and I couldn’t even audition or hear it out of the computer speakers because the original song files were recorded at such a high, pro-level sample rate that the computer can’t play them. It just doesn’t have an audio card that can handle it.

In the end: Everything functions. We’re not there yet, but the finish line is in sight.

We saved a few hundred bucks by not having the computer repair place do the install. The new hard drive that I bought will now become the secondary drive (because when recording, it’s so delicate that you have to record the song on a drive separate from the one you’re running the software on)…

And I know that we will figure out the audio issue.

And yeah, my brain hurts just reading this too.

Oh, and one last thing:

I manifested this outcome.

Like seriously.

Like, I seriously envisioned pressing the startup button on the old computer and having it start up…

And it did.

I’ll leave it at that.

Because alongside breakthroughs, breakdowns, and loss, there can always be triumph and a little magic. ❤️