To all those who sent me well wishes via Twitter yesterday, thank you.  I’m fine.  Just need a new car now and I was three months away from paying it off.  Red light, screaming baby, 360s, shattered window, tire tracks…but…luckily no one was hurt.  Seconds earlier or later and…such a weird thought.  Why?  Why?  Why?  Those are my questions to no one.  Now to your questions…

skeeballchampions asked: I remember you mentioning a while ago that you might do another Songs album. Do you think you will? Not right now, obviously, but in the future?

VE: This past summer I was very close to releasing a digital box set spanning my first 10 years as a solo artist.  It included 5 volumes.  I was ready to do it and then I got sidetracked by new material and a new album.  Perhaps it will happen in the future.

Anonymous asked: Hi Val, hope you are still feeling the fan love with your kickstarter project wrapped up. I have a two part question: What are your thoughts on auto tune? Do you feel a musical artist loses their credibility/authenticity if they use auto tune to enhance their voice rather than using it as an artistic statement?

VE: If you have a copy of my new album Aide Memoire on CD, you’ll notice it mentions that no auto-tune was used on the album.  For this particular project, using auto-tune would have went against the intention of the whole record, which was to capture an honest representation of a band playing live. No person sings in perfect tune when performing live, so why should it be different on record?  (By the way, this is discussed in detail in the book we just released called Proof We Were Here which is available at valemmich.com).  That said, auto-tune has been used on my voice in the past.  Sometimes it was needed, sometimes I disagreed with its use.  I find that if you really enjoy a vocal take of a song—it’s filled with the right emotion and the right rhythm—rather than try to recreate it (which is often impossible), auto-tune might get you out of a pinch and save the take.  Pitchy vocals are fine and to me endearing because they are human and honest…but they can sometimes become distracting if they are way off, at which point auto-tune is useful.  But people overuse it and they fall back on it and it has served to remove talent as a prerequisite for recording music and that’s where I believe it has become problematic.  If it’s to give someone a little help, fine.  But what about making someone who is tone-deaf suddenly able to sing?  In that case, what makes that person more unique then anyone else?  Now, where auto-tune is used as an artistic tool for a purposefully affected vocal sound, I have no problem with that, though if originality is your quest, it’s time to look elsewhere for other tools.  

Anonymous asked: Hi again Val! “Again” as in I’ve dropped you a note before. I just downloaded Aide Memoire today. Absolutely love it!! The album as a whole strikes a visceral chord I can’t put into words without a few more listens. My question — when you take yourself to a certain place, for example, the angst-driven delivery of “A Punch”, have you ever lost touch with raw emotion mid-stream? If so, do you just let it rest until you can tap that depth again? Hope the question makes sense :) Nikki

VE: Recording a live performance (I make that distinction because this doesn’t apply to most modern recording which is done in stages and pieces) is akin to hunting game.  It’s about being ready and being seasoned enough to know when to take the shot.  I love animals too much to continue this analogy to the end, but hopefully you get my point.  I’ve been recording long enough that I know when it’s time to go and when it’s time to take a break and let the emotion get welled up again.  Sometimes it never comes again and what you have is what you have.  The best producers/engineers know this and thus always have the RECORD button pressed.  When you’re dealing with a time limit—as was the case with Aide Memoire—there’s added pressure.  What if the mood never strikes?  Do you wait around forever?  Or just do the best you can?  I’ve learned two things that help.  The first is that you must purposely choose to record the songs that welcome and inspire that appropriate emotion, that draw it out from you.  And that leads to the second thing, which is—to borrow a popular saying amongst writers—put your but in the seat.  In other words, put yourself in a situation where creativity/inspiration can happen.  In music, that means just playing.  If you play, things can happen and they often do.  So to answer my question from before, you don’t wait forever.  You show up and give yourself to the process and hope you’ve prepared enough that things will fall into place. 

nikalyn asked: A silly question but I will risk feeling like an idiot. Are you going to have any future competitions or such where the prize would be another phone call with you? It seems silly to hope to win a chance to call another person. But the last time we talked was right after my dad died and you honestly helped me deal. It might not seem like it but just talking to you made things SO much better. Thank you for that. It meant so damn much. I’d really like to talk again under happier circumstances.

VE: I’m flattered that our previous conversation made a hard time a tiny bit easier.  I remember feeling some pressure at the time, wondering what to say, because well…what do you say in those times?  It was good for me too, doing those series of conversations with people, because I tend to get in my own head and you all gave me a different perspective.  There are no contests on the horizon but that shouldn’t be required for two people to talk.  How about this?  If you’d like we can Skype for a bit.  Do you Skype?  Ichat?  Let me know.

Anonymous asked: Are your songs usually about certain people or situations in your life? Or do you make up the stories behind them? Also, have you ever written a song about someone and then ran up to them and was like, “Hey, I wrote a song about you! Listen to it!”

VE: All my songs are about real people and situations and yet, I also make some up.  Though, I don’t like that phrase—make up.  They are real stories though I may not be able to point to a particular person in my life or even remember where the story came from, sometimes until years later and sometimes never.  For example, I just realized recently who the song “E.S.T” is about and I discovered it was two different people in my life.  That might sound crazy to be so uninformed about my own subjects but it’s not that at all.  I am usually quiet in social situations because I observe and then I deal with it later.  Sometimes a long time later.  And though I might not have said something in response to someone’s point at dinner, for example, I thought about it and internalized it and my delayed response often comes in the form of a song.  I know listeners often wish songs to have a more definitive, simpler subject (i.e. this song is about this particular person in this particular scenario) but it’s much more ambiguous than that.  I feel when I’m writing my best work I am channeling something through me, not from me.  I’ve heard others describe it that way and I agree.  I’m a conduit.  Lest someone take that to be some religious or magical thing, I don’t mean it that way.  I just mean that I leave myself open to feel and I often do.  I figure out how I feel by writing.  Some songs—“Shock,” “High Noon,” “Medical Display,” others—are attempts to write about specific things that were happening in my life.  But some are harder to figure out.  Like psychological experiments.  The color blue calms me.  I am not sure why though I have some rough ideas.  Does that mean that my feeling about the color blue is any less true or honest or “real”?  No.  It’s about expression and communication and if YOU (the listener) feel and you relate and you connect the dots to something specific in your own life, then I’ve won.  I have thus described in a small way what it’s like to be human in today’s world and that’s all I care to do.  Because I need to know what it’s like myself.
    To answer your second question, I have never ran up to someone and told them a song was about them.  But years ago I wrote songs for girls in the hopes of winning or securing them and they knew the songs were about them.  It was pretty shameless but it worked. 

chessimprov asked: I heard a clip of “Sidekick” in a preview of the movie, Almost Perfect, at Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival’s preview party. How do you find all these movies to select your songs, or do they find you?

VE: The director of Almost Perfect produced the film I was in, Fighting Fish.  She was looking for a song with a specific feel and so I sent her that one and some others.  She liked it and I let her use it.  Did you like the film?  I haven’t seen it yet.

Anonymous asked: I recently created a Val Emmich station on Pandora but they only have your Little Daggers album….love that one but just wondering why it’s the only one they offer?

VE: I actually didn’t know the answer to your question and so I looked it up.  Apparently you have to submit your music to them and then they consider whether to put it up or not.  I guess the label that put out Little Daggers arranged to get that album on Pandora.  I’ll add it to my list of things to do and send them my other albums.  Perhaps since they already have that album up there they will accept the rest of them.  Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  P.S. Most of my albums are on Spotify, which is similar to Pandora, only you can select any song you want to hear.  If you haven’t downloaded it yet, do so.