Music is a voice of reason. It is a voice of calming advice to those in the midst of turmoil, and a voice of love to someone far from home. It can bring great people
together, and bridge gaps that we never thought to be surmountable. It is a voice of excitement and a voice of joy. But first and foremost, it is a voice. It is a way for
those who wouldn’t otherwise have a chance to speak to get their words out. It is
their story, it is their anguish, and it is everything inside of them. Right here, right
now, you are hearing a story. This story is mine.
Thirteen years ago, I got a Dixon acoustic guitar from my grandpa. He took my
cousin Brian and I down to the garage in the back yard of his house, where he gave us each one of them. Ten years later, while in my freshman year of school at Ball
State, I decided that I would finally learn how to play it. It was very ugly at first,
but within a year I was playing relatively well. By the middle of my sophomore year, I had started writing songs. My first really good song was one called "Help
Me Up." I wrote it in a couple hours and, once finished, played it for a friend, who instantly loved it. Two months later, I wrote a song called "One More Time," in tribute to my favorite teacher at that time, Maude Jennings. It went over very well. In fact, a friend asked me for the chords to the song so she could sing it at camp that summer. All these events excited me, to the point where I wanted to keep writing. I wrote whenever I could, wherever I could. Often, these songs were kept to myself, because there was not much of an audience to hear me. Gradually, though, the songs got better, and I started getting people to listen to me. And they liked it. The reactions I would get inspired me to continue on with writing. Eventually, I even became strong enough to perform entire sets with only my original music to stand by. In doing this, I was learning how to put a song together and make it shine on stage.
I had always been a solo performer, bringing just my guitar and my harmonica. I began imagining what my songs would sound like if they had other people playing behind me. I knew this would be a distant reality if I waited for the band to come to me. So instead, I began experimenting with multi-track recording on my computer, laying extra instrumental parts over those of me and my guitar. As this was happening, I was getting further and further into the Production option of the Telecommunications major. My class at the time was Advanced Audio with Stan Sollars. One of the projects in that class was to record a band and mix the recording into a proper-sounding album. This made me think about doing something similar. I began looking at what songs I would use, and learning what all the equipment in the studio did. I saw a great opportunity arise in front of my eyes. I would take myself into the studio, record all the tracks by myself, and mix them together to create my own demonstration recordings of the songs I had written. I knew how to make a band sound good. Now, it was time to figure out how to make myself sound good.
That is where this project comes from. Throughout the course of a four-month period in the winter and spring of 2001, I recorded, re-recorded, mixed and remixed five songs until I got them to a level where I was happy with them. Completing this project was more difficult than I'd ever imagined. I had no one in the studio to push the buttons in the control room, I had no one to tell me whether or not a take sounded good, and I had no one to help me calm down when I became frustrated with myself. However, I was determined to succeed. I took all the knowledge I had gained from my audio classes, and mixed it in with a little common sense and a little bit of self-motivation until I started making progress. Every step I took made me more confident in myself. I had to learn quickly how to connect all the wires in the back of the mixing boards, how to deal with uncooperative electronics, and how
to make dead air live. Instruments that wouldn't always work, and a voice that wouldn't always go where it was supposed to go. Through all this, I learned a lot about being a musician, and about being a record producer. I don't know if I'd ever realized until this that there is so much that has to go into a song between writing and releasing it. But now, I have a much better idea.
Within the five songs highlighted here, I hope you will find me. These songs, while not always directly from my life, have been inspired by little things that have happened around me. It is often hard to speak my mind when something comes up, but in song, I can talk to the world about those issues that I am trying to deal with. I no longer have to bottle up those emotions that weighed me down before. The artist is protected by the song. But then, they are also left wide open by it. Everyone can analyze it, looking for the hidden meanings and messages. With this recording, I am opening myself up to you. As I said before, I hope you will find me in here. And if we're lucky, maybe you will find a bit of yourself in here.
Kevin Ross
May 2001
