It\u2019s May 2019, and my debut EP \u2013 or as I\nhave been calling it, my \u2018pre-EP\u2019 \u2013 has been out in the world for about six\nweeks. It\u2019s strange how much that fact has changed the way I feel about myself\nand my music. It is a thing that I crafted, nurtured, and put out into the\nworld all on my own, and no matter what happens next, no one can ever take that\naway from me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never really planned for Colours to turn\ninto such a big project \u2013 I was just looking to put together some basic demo\nrecordings, and I thought I could probably do an okay job of it with the gear I\nhad at home. But once I got started I realised that I was doing fundamentally\nthe same thing as anyone else with a home studio. And while I was definitely\nlearning as I went, I was also prepared to put in the time and effort to get\nthings right.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
(That makes it sound so simple \u2013 there were\na lot of mistakes, and do-overs, and whole days\u2019 worth of material that I threw\nout because I am still a recovering perfectionist. But yes, let\u2019s go with that!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And the more I listened to the results the\nmore I wondered whether what I was doing was really any less legitimate than\ngoing down a more established path to recording an EP (you can all judge that\nfor yourselves now of course!) <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The project also kept escalating because every time I learnt a new trick or had an idea I thought might make things sound better, I\u2019d find a way to do it. And once the music itself was finished I just really carried on with the same approach \u2013 taking whatever seemed like the logical next step. After all, if you\u2019re going to spend all this time on your recordings it makes sense to work out how distribution works so you can get them online. And then it makes sense to talk to some local radio people so that there\u2019s some chance that people will actually get to hear your work. Oh, and it makes sense to have a launch, just something small as a way of celebrating the achievement (although actually if you are going to the effort of organising a launch maybe you should think about promoting it\u2026)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I look back on the past few months and I still\ncan\u2019t quite believe everything that\u2019s happened. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I left my safe and stable full-time job to\ntry to make a go of the whole singer-songwriter thing in February 2018. It was\na ridiculous decision, not least because I really actually wasn\u2019t ready. I\u2019d only\njust gotten all the bits of a PA together so that I could start doing covers\ngigs, and the first time someone offered me a 3-hour spot I had to run home and\nspend the next week learning songs because I had confidently told them that I\ncould play for that long. I knew I had some good songs, but my writing was still\na bit hit-and-miss and I had no clue how to actually progress as an original\nartist. But I was tired of feeling like I wasn\u2019t able to focus on my music the\nway that I wanted. And I felt like I would never really even have time to get \u2018ready\u2019\nunless I carved out a bit more space for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A bit over a year on, to be honest, I\u2019m\nstill not sure that I\u2019m ready. But I know that I am improving all the time. And\nif you were to ask February 2018 Lisa what she thought of my progress in year\none of #musiclyf, I think she\u2019d be reasonably impressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a way I think the most important thing for me, though, is that I have finally started to live my own authentic life. For a long time, Colours was definitely not my favourite of my songs. After all, it talks about carving out your own path and leaving behind the things that make you unhappy, and it wasn\u2019t until around a year after I wrote it that I actually followed through on those things myself. But that\u2019s what made it such an important song for me, and I\u2019m so grateful that I\u2019ve now been able to share it with so many people. I have an inkling that at different times some of you have probably ended up in a place you didn\u2019t really want to be, because you also forgot to take your eyes off your feet to see where the path led. But you know what, I promise, it\u2019s not too late to change things. Leave the path. Follow your dreams. And let your colours fly!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lisa Maps xoxo <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It\u2019s May 2019, and my debut EP \u2013 or as I have been calling it, my \u2018pre-EP\u2019 \u2013 has been out in the world for about six weeks. It\u2019s strangeContinue readingChapter One: Colours<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":334,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333\/revisions\/334"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisamaps.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}