Maybe I want to give up....

Illusions of grandeur,... A dreamer.... a non-realist....

   I honestly don't even know what my dream is anymore... I have no concrete goal of what success would look like.

  There are many things I am naturally better at than music. Why do I insist on persisting?

  Does God want me to do this, or have I convinced myself of something I wanted to believe?

Why is it much harder for me, than many others, if this is really what I am supposed to put my heart into?



Dear God, speak it and it will be...

Declare that I am a blessed musician,... and it shall be.

Otherwise release me of my desires, and put me into something better suited

..... Clarify your vision for me

Make your purposes known.

May I find satisfaction in your purpose

In jesus name,

Amen

Familiarity: The Crux of an all-original musician

When we're grabbing coffee and our favorite song comes on, and we catch ourselves lipping along. At this point we've probably heard the song about 500 times since it came out. We associate familiar feelings with it. Maybe it reminds of us someone, or we relate to it, maybe we are "never ever getting back together" with someone and it has become our personal anthem. (not me of course, Im a guy and I don't know that song)

Many times these popular songs could have maybe hid away on track 9 of some random album that we've never heard of. Like landslide performed by dixie chics, or even Home by philip phillips (one of my favorites), but I could still easily imagine it never seeing the light of day. 

Granted most of these songs stand-a-lone well enough. You could hear them the first time and think, I kinda like that song, but most of the time you don't REALLY like a song until youve heard it atleast 10 times. 

Now I truly believe that performing live really helps solidify a personal connection that a person might have with your song. Which isn't necessarily good for guys that prefer to hide in a home studio recording their songs, (like myself)

But this brings me to my primary point: In the internet world, you might consider playing other peoples songs.

Cover songs are really popular on youtube. Nobody is searching for "Song x" that you wrote. But everyone wants to hear a Guns and Roses song sung coffee shop style. (which I heard at a coffee shop in israel and I will never forget haha) 

I write this out of self reflection because I really hate performing other peoples songs. I don't like to be compared,, First of all its kind of a losing battle for me. I don't have a soulful voice, or a raspy voice, or a sexy voice, Im kinda like Willy Nelson...... Songwriter... thats it.

But I am going to keep an open mind and perhaps I can find one song out there that I can contribute to and add a new creative sound to it!

Inching towards my goals

Well its a new year! I would say 2012 was a pretty good year for Nathan Hastings, for alot of reasons. The older you get the more solid you become about who you are and what your about. I am fantastically close to releasing my album that I have dreamed about releasing since high school.

My goals for 2013 are.

To finalize my song line up for my next release

Get my songs professionally cleaned up

And get them to a burner baby!

Anyways Im pretty jacked about this. I would also love to release some more music videos this year. Its just about the only way that you can promote your music nowadays is on youtube. Reverbnation and twitter are only good if you have a real world fan base. Trust me I know.... I have spent WAY too much time trying to make that work

FRankly it shouldn't matter if people like my music that much or whether I Get much attention.... Well it does matter alittle bit, but Im gonna do my music regardless. 

Anyways just checking in with you... Hopefully I start writing alot more blogs! 

here is the link to my latest and greatest song "Man Of Mysteries" Check it out... I was a little sick when I did so I was able to pull of a slightly raspier voice

http://www.reverbnation.com/timothynathan/song/15743625-man-of-mysteries

Is It Wrong to Want to be a RockStar?

Working on a new song... and its got be thinking is it wrong to want to be a rock star? Is it wrong to want to be famous or succeed in this natural world we live in.

As a christian, I am quite aware of the acidic nature of my religion (yes I hate that word too). It seems that we are to die to ourselves and our desires, right? This life is full of many troubles. Our only escape is heaven. So we should just be miserable until we die and than we'll be rewarded. If life is great than your probably doing something wrong. 

Problem is... I have no idea how to die to my desires. I literally don't control them at all. I didn't put them there, I didn't decide to have them. I can't seem to pray my ambitions away.

But as I age and get older what I realize is, I just don't care that much anymore.  There are only a few things I care about anymore. When I leave this earth all I really want is peace, some sense of accomplishment of my time here, and for it all to make sense.

And with those thoughts of meditation, I want to give you a sample of a song im working on that spurred theses thoughts.  

Garageband not updating or installing on my ipad, and one way to fix it.

I had my moment of horror. My worst case scenario. After updating some of my apps on my ipad, my garageband app got stuck. It wouldn't download. I was unable to even open garageband on my ipad. It would say unable to update when I would tap on it.

My first instinct was to sync my ipad with my computer hoping it would auto correct the problem somehow. Unfortunately syncing has become a very long and annoying process and I have quit doing it all together.

After giving up on syncing it was time for a hailmary to keep from losing all my garageband songs.. Or atleast I felt it was.

Heres what I did if you are having the same problem

I backed up garageband on icloud (fortunately it still seemed to be able to do that)

I than reset and deleted all my settings and data on my ipad.

You can do that by finding reset in the general tab.

It was a scary moment.

During setup I chose "restore from icloud backup"

It took more than an hour for my ipad to download garageband, but when it did everything was ok again. and I breathed a sigh of relief. There is probably a less drastic solution to fix this problem, but this is how I did it.

Coming Clean: An Ipad Garageband Artist

For the longest time I have zipped my lip about the fact that I only use garageband for ipad on my songs.

If you are reading this, perhaps you have considered using your garageband app too, for more than just messing around with.

There are alot of advantages of Garageband for Ipad. 


First of all it is very convenient to use. You can make drums, guitar, and keyboard from scratch, or you can use presets. If you aren't an instrumentalist at heart, like me, than you will find that Garageband has alot to offer.

I just want to write songs, unencumbered by my lack of instrument ability. It also corrects timing issues using quantization. It is like someone designed an app to fulfill all of my shortcomings!

A Few Disadvantages


For all my songs so far, I have used the built in mic included on the ipad. Which is ok, but it isn't a pro level mic. Luckily the app includes built in compression, but I would recommend pairing the ipad app to the garageband program on a mac combined with a real condenser mic, Neither of these items do I have yet!

Someday I hope to replace everything with a real band and real people. But if you want to get your feet wet with songwriting the Garageband app isn't a bad route.... Check out my ipad garageband album to the right of this blog!

Today was a good day to be a musician

   If I am ever good at music, It needs to be known that I was discouraged for the past 10 years trying to become ome. It is only faith in God that keeps me trying something that seems hopeless. 

   Our church held an open mic today. As you can see in the photo above, the stage was very nice. My roomie controlled the lights too.  Anyways, the musicians were phenomenal. 

  Before my turn, I started comparing myself in my head to these people who had great rhythm , technique, and voices.(higher grade of musicians than I had imagined in my head) It wasn't long before I didn't want to be there anymore.

  It was than that I started thinking. This is who I am. I started self examining myself. And I had to reaffirm to myself that I believed God wants me to pursue music. And therefore that is my identity whether others see me that way or not. 

  But that doesn't make everything apple pie. I had put myself out there before, only to walk away frustrated and alittle hurt. Part of me imagined this happening again. 

  Whether my church family knew it or not, I needed alittle encouragement. I played my 3 song set. And I was able to get some laughs which was nice. And people appreciated my songwriting, which is very important to me.

  Its nice to be identified for what you are.  Its nice to get compliments you don't feel you deserve. And sometimes just as purplexing, when you realize you have no idea how to handle a compliment.

  Everyone tonight was amazing, and I am so proud of my church. So much talent there too! I wouldn't even know where to start.  We got it all, i think. 

I wont lie I felt a little at home today