diamondhead tracklisting and a new blip

I finalized the tracklisting for Diamondhead a little while ago. So I thought I'd share it here. Even though the songs aren't 100% finished, it's fun for me to view this EP as a finished project. That's one of the reasons I like to mockup the artwork early, and play with versions of the track order.
 

Along those same lines I've been working on little video Blips for the album. They've been super fun to play with. It's tricky, because while Bill is working on the music production and arranging, I only have my rough demos to work from. I'm looking forward to when the album is closer to being finished and I can make more blips from the final audio.
 

diamondhead blip004 from pete mitchell on Vimeo.

Printing out books of notes

In the book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron talks about getting three pages of writing done as soon as you wake up. She calls these "morning pages". I've never been confused for being a morning person, so I do my daily writing at odd times, usually at 2am. But nonetheless, a routine of writing three pages of free-form text is a great habit.

Recently, I've started collecting my daily writings into books, separated by year. I then print them out using various print-on-demand services. When they arrive in the mail, I am gleeful. There's something really magical about getting a book in the mail, and it's full of words that you wrote. But then, I've always loved seeing my stuff in print, whether it's artwork, text, or even a manufactured CD digi-pack of my music.

But the real benefit of this process, for me, is what I can do next. Having a printed book allows me to review old ideas, categorize, rank and sort them into useful bits. I can highlight or underline. I can make new notes on the old notes. It's somehow easier to work through all this stuff in a book than it is as pixels on my screen.

I talk a little more about this in today's vlog.

If you haven't tired it, I encourage you to. Here are some resources below, that I use:

• 750words.com: an online version of morning pages. it even tracks your streaks!
• Lulu.com: a solid print-on-demand service, especially or books of text.

Diamondhead Blips begin

Years ago Radiohead released a bunch of super cool video Blips for their album Kid A. I immediately fell in love with the idea of these tiny music video clips and thought "someday, I want to make a bunch of these." For some reason, I never got around to doing that for No More Kings (I have a bunch of unfinished ones on my old hard-drive). So now that I'm about to release my first solo album, I decided to make a bunch of them.

As my friend Bill Zappia is furiously working on arrangements and production for the album, I decided to use bits of my demos as the soundclips for my first few blips. I'm hoping to switch over to using the final audio once I get that from Bill, but for now I actually like using this early stuff.

 

Diamondhead

I announced my new solo album today! It will be my first solo album, and it's called Diamondhead. It's a six-song EP that I wrote while in my hotel room on a trip to Hawaii. I'm really very excited to release it and find out what people think of it!

I sketched quite a bit while I was there, and I filmed a ton. As I've been working on the album more aggressively these past few weeks, I've been drawing more. I've been peeking through the footage I shot to find interesting Hawaii stuff to draw. I did this watercolor and pen and ink drawing of the Diamondhead crater itself. I'm thinking of using it for the album cover, and then maybe the long version for the wraparound digipack.
 

I've still got a ton of work left to do before the album is ready to go, but I'm super excited about it all. It will be my first solo album. It's quite different from anything I've done with No More Kings. It's a lot moodier and more electronic. There's some dance stuff, there's some introspective stuff. There's even an instrumental track, which I'm sure is surprising to a lot of people since I'm primarily a vocalist.

All in all, I can't wait to be able to share more of it.

A couple covers

For some reason I've had Katy Perry's Dark Horse stuck in my head for a few days now. So I decided to cover it. I thought it'd be fun to slow it down and make it a bit moodier. I think I might do the full song at some point. Maybe when I'm ready to record my first full cover album.

A while ago, I got a new plugin from Tim Exile called Flesh. It's a ridiculously cool plugin, and as I was playing with it I accidentally covered Ben Folds Five!
 

I've done a bunch of covers over the past few years. When I'm ready to make a full-on cover album, I'm sure a bunch of these will end up on it. Check you my YouTube playlist of all my covers so far.
 

the importance of changing location

today i reinforced some discoveries i made years ago about myself. if i am blocked on a project, it's a good idea to start something else. either a new project, or just a small unrelated creative activity. i think that's why i started making break glass lists. things to do in case of a creative emergency.

the other thing was the importance of changing location. i often have a problem of not feeling in the mood to work on something. sometimes grabbing my ipad and going to a burger place can help.

i think a lot of people buy into the myth of inspiration. and few know the truth of simply getting to work. when inspiration does strike, it can be very cool, and it's important to be able to act on it right away, with no barriers. but for the rest of the time, we simply have to work on something.

so these are the things i was reminded of today: the myth of inspiration. the importance of changing location and the benefits of starting something else.