August 21,2024

Yesterday was one of those Tuesdays where Tilo and I sat together to try out some songs- with our usual duo format. Me on guitar/piano and vocal and she on vocal. I played an instrument, kept time and sang unison and harmony parts while she held on to the main vocal part. We tried 3 songs all for the first time and all of them were piano based. As we have done on occasion in the past, we recorded these on the phone. In this case, we used my new iphone 15- which decidedly was better than my old one but the sound quality was still quite marginal. It sounded fine to me until I compared the loudness to other recordings on the internet. This was a perpetual lament for me. Yesterday, the songs we performed were reasonably meaty and challenging ones. The sound balance was fine too. However, the overall loudness of the direct phone recording was still not anywhere near my expectations. To top it all, Tilo posted one of our efforts ( one of the three) of the evening on Facebook. Honestly, I thought it might get some good press atleast from the Bengali community. After all, it was a rendition of a very well-known Rabindra Sangeet- albeit with all my pop and progressive rock sensibilties. I quite liked it. But I am disappointed at the reaction ( or lack thereof) within the first 24 hours of the post. Granted it was something posted late evening on a Tuesday night- but still. It was a disappointment for me- and if I know Tilo, it was probably a bigger one for her- given her penchant for constantly posting stuff on facebook.

But then I started reflecting on my disappointment. The people that had access to the post were her friends only. I had removed tags for myself- so in fact no one on my friend list would see it. Now Tilo and I have 35 mutual friends. These all happen to be Bengalis, since even my connect with her was in the pretext of the Bengali community in Dubai. Of these 2 had reacted to the post- while 33 hadn’t. So, while it was disappointing, a more careful consdieration of the matter might suggest three lines of reasoning as to why there was a lack of reaction.

The first was that we were over-estimating the quality of the performance. I doubt it. It was a fresh take on a famous-enough song. I was not posting my effort on “Wonderous Stories” by Yes, which may not have been familiar to 99% of the folks on my friend list.  Also, I always know if I have had a performance that is average. For example, the HoiChoi gig for me was average. It did not get many brick bats and in fact got mostly plaudits but that was because the bar was very low. This one was much better- and yet the lack of reaction was intriguing.

The second reason might have been that Tilo herself is over-estimating her goodwill with folks on her friends list. Maybe most people on her list don’t actually care about her or are too envious to comment. What a hellish thought you might say.  But is it though? All of this social media stuff just reveals an amplified version of our warty deep interiors. Mostly, anyway. If this has truth to it then Tilo needs to do some reflection I would think. The worst thing for me is to post stuff and not get any reaction. Loads of people do this- and somehow are never dissuaded by it. I think that initially they are probably disappointed too, but very quickly they train themselves to think that the posts are in the main for them- in other words, they are using social media as their personal diary to record what would eventually constitute some sort of a memoir. I struggle to do this. I am already shy of posting my efforts, but when I don’t get a good enough reaction, I am immediately discouraged to post. But the fact is that no one really cares- even the ones that hit the “like” button. This fake dopamine is still massively sought after. I am not sure if Mark Zuckerberg had anticipated this when he had conceptualised the application. This is probably why it took off even beyond his imagination.

The Final reason, and probably the most likely one, is that people are tired of the same type of content as what we have been posting before. Initial posts had the novelty value- and also certainly in my case it seemed like many people were surprised to see me with a guitar on camera. That wore off as I kept posting songs on and off.  The quality of production has to be levelled up I feel. I need to work with Garageband. And then the video has to be mixed with the audio file on garageband. I tried this once but the volume of what I got was still not anywhere near professional quality. Which is why I lost interest and just kept recording and posting organic acoustic pieces without any major recording technology. At least, I said to myself, this would be fast and therefore not a deterrent. Quantity of posts would be quite high. As it happens, the quantity is not all that high- and the quality is not all that good- so in the end no real goal is being served by posting these on social media. It is still good to record- it helps with getting slightly better at the skills. But even here I sense there may be a bit of plateauing going on. And so the next post from me will need to be a far more elaborate piece of work. Which will take a lot of time and focus. If I don’t do this, I cannot expect to see a step change in my reactions in particular and my following in general. After all, it is only a game. I have a channel- and without actually pushing anyone to follow me I have so far collected 33 followers. It is a pathetically low number but then I wasn’t trying hard to increase traffic. But maybe that time cometh. Stay tuned world!