Hello there!

Almost a year since my last entry here! Wow!

First of all, I hope you, your friends, and your family are all right and aren’t having any major troubles because of the f**king COVID-19.

I’m okay, and I can actually say that my family is okay too. That’s great! I think we had COVID-19 at home, but I’m not sure. In March, my wife had problems related to this disease, and then in Spain there was a lot of spread and sick people… She couldn’t get a test (my country, Spain, is handling this crisis terribly), and we had to be mostly separated at home for three weeks. Fortunately, though my wife had some serious symptoms, everything was going well and she is actually okay. If I had the disease, it wasn’t much.

Next week, my country will have been under strong confinement for two months, and I’ve spent 99% of my time at home. Fortunately, I can work from home, but I spend most of my time in front of a computer preparing video lessons, teaching, replying to messages, and so on. I’m a teacher, and this is now my life. Computerized teacher! Hahaha!… Not so good 😛

The music:

I didn’t write anything here for almost a year because my activity with music has been minimal all this time. In 2018/19, I was mostly inactive because of lack of time, but also because of a growing lack of interest. In the first half of 2019, I started to be a bit more active, releasing the «Spirit» EP and working again on music for CAUTIVA. In summer I didn’t do much, but I was there, working from time to time on CAUTIVA… But in September, everything changed: I got a new position at my job which I had applied for a few months earlier. This position, for a whole academic year, has been very demanding. I knew it would be demanding, but the reality was, for a number of reasons, much worse. Since September, most of the time, literally, I have been working… morning, afternoon, evening, sometimes at night… Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday… Usually every day of the week, including Sundays! I’m demanding with my own work, and maintaining the level I wanted has been really tough. Literally, I’ve had one day off per month, not more! In this context, it has been really difficult to find time and energy for music, and for this reason, most of the time I didn’t have any activity at all!

The good news is that I’m finishing this situation, and I won’t repeat it. I’ll try a different position, a “normal” position, so I can relax more and live a healthier life. This is good for my music because I hope to have time for it in the future.

The real music:

The only pieces I could finish during the last year are two electronic tracks: an improvisation I made last November and a track I’ve been recording from time to time over the past months, which I have dedicated to all the victims of COVID-19. It’s not much, but I think it’s good music, and I’ve decided to release it as an EP at the end of this month. The idea is this: to release the EP, to finish my demanding work, and to start actively working on my music again. Frankly, I want to continue working on my musical projects. I always have a lot of ideas in my mind, but I have to fight against two things: lack of time and lack of motivation. Lack of motivation, because when I have had some free time and tried to create music, I’ve noticed that music isn’t as motivating, exciting, or fun as it was ten years ago, and for this reason, I finally decide not to spend much time on it.

So, I want to change this situation. Regarding the lack of time, I hope to solve this problem by June. Regarding the lack of motivation, I’m going to make some changes to rediscover the pleasure of creating music. I think the main problem over the last years is that, when I created music, most of the time I acted like it was a job and pushed myself too much to do my best. So, I’m going to change some aspects of how I’ve created music in recent years:

-First of all, maybe goodbye to the “Electronic Years.” I think it’s a good moment for a “change of period” to new styles and methods (as I do from time to time). I want to try new things, fresh ideas… Let’s see if I do it or not!

-Second, more hardware and less software. In the last few years, I’ve concentrated much of my work on the computer to get the best possible results, which is very booorriiinnnggg most of the time… Very powerful, but boring. I enjoy playing real instruments and touching real knobs much more than working with a mouse. So, I’ve decided to focus more on real instruments in the future and not depend so much on computers.

-Third… Well, we’ll see in the future! I have more ideas, and I’m now in a period of reflection (not only in music, but also about my life and the past), so… we’ll see. I think about some changes, and they motivate me, which is good!

Well, too much text, and I don’t want to bore you… In summary: 1) very stressed and lack of time because of my job as a teacher over the past year; 2) I’m releasing an EP this month with the two tracks I could record; and 3) I hope to restart my musical activity this summer with interesting changes and new ideas!

Best wishes to all of you and the best of the healths,