Happy Accidents

Songwriting = 25% Inspiration, 25% Hard Work...and 50% Luck.

Sometimes when you are writing songs things just go ridiculously well.

There is an old song called "Anything At All" that's been kicking around for years as a semi recorded instrumental version. It had this sad descending guitar thing happening in the verses that I really liked but I could never get the chorus to come together in a satisfying way. The lyrics of the chorus were pretty much finished, but musically it just wasn't working...

So there it sat on my hard drive for years and years while I moved on with other, less difficult songs....

Fast Forward to January 2011...

I'm sitting in my bedroom listening to a few new musical ideas that I had quickly recorded to my phone in recent months (I record like that when I am in a hurry, so as not to forget things...I lose more good ideas by simply forgetting them than I care to think about). As I'm listening I notice that one of my new ideas has a descending melody that is similar to the guitar line from this older song, but it is laid over a completely different (and more upbeat) chord sequence. So of course when I realize this I start getting excited. It turns out that this new piece fits together perfectly with the old song and creates an exciting new chorus that changes the entire mood of the song. And the old lyrics fit in perfectly as well. Add in a nice verse to chorus tempo change and we've got ourselves an exciting new direction for this song.

And if that's not exciting enough, I also came up with an extended outro the comes in after the second chorus. It started out as an idea for a bridge, but it was so good that I just wanted it to keep building and building to an epic finale. And it does sound quite epic. It's almost like an entirely different song tacked on at the end...but it works. And the total song length is still under 5 minutes, which is good.

Anyway, the stars have aligned and a great song has been born. Now let's hope I can find the magic in the studio to create the sounds I hear in my head.

And for those keeping score at home...

1 month into 2011 and already 3 songs completely written and mostly recorded.

The Return to Songwriting

The past few years have been so focused on recording and mixing music that I have had less time to actually write it. Of course there were songs here and there that would pop up, but I never felt like I could or should take the time to finish them until I had released the ones I was already working on.

That's all changed now. I can finally focus on creating songs...not embellishing, not tweaking, not recording...just writing the very basic elements of songs. I think I must have a lot of pent up music that is just waiting to be released. Over the weekend I had the house to myself and was able to spend a lot of uninterrupted time just writing and recording. In just a day and a half I was able to able to lay down all the main components of a song ("Come And Gone") that until now had only existed on paper. I am very happy with the results. It's a great song. The recording sounds pretty awesome. There are still things I would like to add and clean up, but it is pretty much a complete song. It just needs to be finished and mixed.

When I had gotten to a good stopping point on that song, I had to figure out what to work on next. With so many pieces of music in my head and lyrical ideas floating around, there are a million places where I could jump in and start working. So I went back and listened to a series of short low quality audio clips of song ideas that I had recorded into my phone and random times over the past year or so. One particular clip stuck out to me as a simple yet poignant little chord progression with a nice melody. So I pulled out the acoustic and started strumming. The idea for the theme of the song came very quickly and the lyrics followed. Soon I had a completed song. It is a very simple song and did not take long at all to record. It's called "You Can't Go Home" and I am loving it. It sounds great as it is, but will benefit from a better mix as well as a few embellishments such as a slide guitar solo and some backing harmonies.

All in all I am very excited about these songs and I can't wait for people to hear them. It is hard to be patient and wait until they are finished.

But it just feels so good to be writing songs again. And what makes it better is that I think I might be writing the best songs I've ever written.