music no one else can hear: the album

It's out. It's finally out.

Several social media friends have asked questions about my new album, Music No One Else Can Hear. Rather than answer everyone individually, I've decided to cop out and write this as a blog post.

Before I go into the background and describe what this album is, let me say what it isn't. This is not an album of me singing or performing. I am not a good guitarist, and as a singer? Well, as a singer I make a good guitarist. On 17 tracks, only one includes my performing in any way; I play guitar on one track, and that's labelled as a "bedroom demo." That's why this is not branded as a "Marc Whinston" album. Rather, it's by "The Marc Whinston Project."

So having said that, I turn back to the question of what this album is. It's a showcase of my songs -- songs that I wrote (or, in four cases, co-wrote).

Anyone who knows me well knows that I write songs. It's a hobby. I've done it for a long time.* I get kind of frustrated because I'm not a good musician or singer, but I have written a few good tunes (if I do say so myself -- and I do) which I want to put out there into the world. Not that I expect to gain fame or fortune through my songs. I'm too realistic for that. But still, I just want to share my artistic endeavors.

A few years ago I had the idea of recording an album. My original idea was to take my songs into the studio and, with hired musicians, record. Maybe I'd play some guitar on it. That didn't really work out well -- primarily because I don't sing well. The next idea was to see if I could recruit bands or musicians to record my songs for an album which I would put out. I know a few musicians. And they know other musicians. Going through the list in my head, I concluded that I could probably recruit enough of them to record for me. I loved the idea of curating an album of various musicians and bands recording versions of my songs. I fantasized about titling it "Songs in the Key of Moish**" and branding it as a tribute album to me. Somehow*** the idea morphed from a various artists type of presentation to a more coherent consistent sound.

I ended up working with Toby Wilson, a freelance musician and producer in England who seemed to have a good feel for what I was getting at. In the end, he recorded almost the whole album. For a variety of reasons, a few tracks have other vocalists -- Bryony Ward, Helen Walford and Tim Patterson (all of whom Toby found) and Eytan Mirsky (a New York based singer-songwriter I know, who graciously agreed to lend his vocals to two tracks). And an old friend from grad school, Joseph Discenza, makes a brief appearance doing a voiceover. And there's one rough track, the aforementioned "bedroom demo" that I recorded with a friend in his apartment in San Francisco over ten years ago.

It took a little more than two years from when I first contacted Toby until the album's official release yesterday -- April 1, 2023. Appropriately, I picked April Fools Day. The main reason it took so long is that I didn't want to just send Toby a lot of songs with instructions to record them. I started with one. Liking what he did with it, I sent him another. In order to make it last -- to savor the process -- I disciplined myself. One track a month. On the fifteenth I would send him a lyric sheet and a link to an unlisted Youtube video of me singing a song and playing it on guitar. 

Pacing it out like that proved to be a good thing in many ways. When I started, I had a bunch of completed songs. But I found that I was still writing. So, if I had hurried it and just sent him a bunch of songs all at once, then some of the songs that are on the album would not have come about. Without naming specifics, that includes two of my favorites.

In the coming weeks I plan to write a series of posts about the songs on the album. My plan is to post them on Tuesdays as part of my semi-regular "Tunesday" series. I will go into more detail there, but I want to thank my co-writers here: Christina Zuber Crocker, Keith J. Crocker, Eric Goulden (AKA, Wreckless Eric), Scott C. Milner and Amy Rigby.

You can listen to these recordings on Spotify, Pandora, Youtube and other streaming services. Just search for "The Marc Whinston Project." I hope you enjoy and add these songs to your playlists. 

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*It's tempting to try talking about how long, but that discussion would be too long and too tangential. So, for now, I won't go into it.

**Moish being a nickname of mine. Some of my oldest friends still call me "Moish."

*** I write that as if I have no idea how it morphed. I actually know very well how and why. But that story is tangential for this post.