Don’t know if I’ve shared this yet, but my family has moved from my hometown in Hoffman Estates, IL (a suburb of Chicago), to Grove City, OH (near Columbus).

This doesn’t really affect me since I spend most of my time in college, but I am home right now in my family’s new house for winter break .

Since I’m usually pretty busy during the school year, I really want to get some music work done over break. At Cornell, we have a pretty lengthy break actually (over 5 weeks). Hopefully I can get a lot done in that time, while also spending some time relaxing with family and friends.

Currently, I’m prepping a space in the house for top-notch recording quality (yay, for audiophilism!). Anyhow, I thought I’d share with you all some pics of the “studio” space. It’s pretty ghetto (or so I think).

It’s a bit hard to tell from the pictures, but basically I’ve taken a decently-sized closet and cut it in half by inserting a “wall” of cardboard boxes (something of which my family is in no shortage) in the center. On one side of the wall is the mic surrounded by six home-made acoustic panels and on the other side is a space for my laptop and audio interface.

Hope this makes someone smile.

Happy Holidays everyone !
Ray

I first want to sincerely apologize that I haven’t released any new music lately. I’ve been pretty busy with school. But now that I’ve graduated from high school, I’m going to have plenty of free time to work on new music over the summer!

Hopefully I can finish a new album, or perhaps just an EP before I head off to college!

Anyhow, this new song is something completely new and different for me. It is the first song I’m publishing that has vocals in it. And I had a lot of fun experimenting with vocal effects and overlaying my voice (hopefully I didn’t overdo it!). To be honest, this could probably be classified as kind of a soft/alternative rock-ish song. But for those of you who are fans of my instrumental stuff, don’t worry! I plan to continue making instrumental/orchestral pieces also. This is just me trying to expand my musical horizons (plus, I love singing).

Lastly, I put a lot of passion into this song. It is more personally significant to me than anything else I’ve written before. I really hope that all of my emotions come through in this song.

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Note: This is still a BETA version of the song. My compulsive self will probably change it a bit before publishing a final album version. As such, I welcome all feedback! If you have any suggestions for improvement, I’m open to hearing them and just might use them .

Questions for you:
1. Could you tell what I was singing before reading the lyrics?
2. Do you think the section from 5:10 – 5:16 (the bit between the last chorus and the alternate chorus where I narrate “can you spin time in reverse”) is a good addition, or does it seem out of place?
3. Do you think the vocal overlays are overdone?
4. General thoughts!

Thanks for listening , and please leave a comment!
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Lyrics:
I was young
I was foolish
I was blind
I was blinded by you
And I lost myself
In a sea of desire
Someone could have told me to be patient
Why wasn’t I?

[Chorus:
Why'd I have to do everything, everything, everything wrong?
Why couldn't I be the one who was strong?
Why'd I have to choose to push you away?
Why'd I have to lose everything, everything I never had anyway?]

It’s times like these I feel like my life can never move on
You tell me to forget, but it’s not that easy
I’m searching for a switch to shut out these thoughts
But I can never forgive myself for what I’ve done
Now I just want to cry away all these tears
So you will never have to see my distorted face

[Chorus]

Now it seems my life is running
I can’t slow down
As soon as I’m alone
It all knocks me to the ground
I close my eyes and try to sleep
But I’m already drowning, in regret
And tell me, have you ever tried to sleep while underwater?

[Chorus]

Tell me did you ever even want this to work?
The number of times you looked at me
I can count them on one hand
But still
I was the one who had the stake in all this
I should have been stronger
Put up with everything for longer
And I need to know now, could this have ever worked?
Did I push us apart,
Or did you write me off from the very start?

[Chorus]

[Narration:
Tell me, can you spin time in reverse?]

[Alternate Chorus:
I tell you,
You were everything, everything, everything to my childish mind.
You were everything, everything, everything that seemed too good to be mine.
And you're still everything I cannot climb past.
And I'm trying to take back everything, but I can't undo anything, anything, anything.]

(No, no…)
I can’t forget,
everything.