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.