Day 113: Guitarless & Giving Up

I've been struggling with a song (Not About The Pigs aka Brother) that's feeling more like a non starter each day  I work on it. I've been persevering because it fits in with one of my goals for this year, which are

1 - Write some more emotionally honest songs
2 - Write some fast songs
3 - Write stronger melodies

and of course

4 - write more songs

this fits with goal one so I thought it was profitable to work on even if the finished song sucks. But it's been heavy sledding and I was ready to give up. But today I broke through. I deliberately went to Shabby Road without my guitar, forcing me to sit down at the desk with a pen and paper and think through

What is this song about?
What am I trying to say?
What ideas are working and how do they fit together?

Being objective and stripping away that cool riff or nice drum beat made it easier to see the wood from the trees.

So, feeling more like a sculptor with a block of stone than a songwriter, I chipped away the chorus (lyrics, music and everything), the title, most of the harmony, all the drum patterns and reduced the chords to their simplest variations. I also slowed it down. I'll have to tackle goal 2 another time. This song just doesn't want to be a fast song.


Related Posts: NUJV
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New (Easter) Song: TU4TX

TU4TX (Thank You For The Cross) was recorded during an Easter Service at Grace Church in 2008 but never released because it needed some serious remixing. But now here it is. Seriously remixed (well refixed is more like it).

The song was written in 1996. I rewrote the chorus melody and the verse lyrics in 2005 and rewrote the verse again in 2008. I really painted myself into a corner with the rhyme scheme and structure but a few people said it really moved them and that encouraged me to finish it.

The initial motivation was wanting to try to balance out the many sanitised portrayals of the crucifixion in movies and paintings. The cross was a bloody, sickening, humiliating spectacle... Mel Gibson had the same burden a few years later.

The song also predates the substitutionary atonement 'debate' that kicked off around the same time, so the emphasis on Christ dying FOR me wasn't prompted by a need to state which theological team I was rooting for, but I'm glad to let that be known all the same.

The unusual title came out of the fact that my church already sang one song with 'Thank You For The Cross' as the title (Brenton Brown's excellent song from Vineyard UK's Holy album) and another with it as the first line (Darlene Zschech's Worthy Is The Lamb, with it's unusual “darlene darling of heaven” line). Though I felt my song covered some fresh ground the title didn't. It was a happy accident that in writing songs I usually refer to them as acronyms. 'Thank You For The Cross, Lord Jesus' became TYFTCLJ became TYFTC became TU4TX.

Free Downloads!

TU4TX Live mp3
TU4TX Chord Sheet
TU4TX Lyrics Sheet

Related Posts: The Weight of Glory (Live)
Son of God/God the Son
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New Song: The Facial Hair/Creativity Ratio Theorem

My latest song is a very silly and tongue in cheek (tongue in beard? No that sounds gross) exploration of the link between creativity and varying amounts of facial hair.

I'm still learning on the iMovie and still without proper recording gear but if you want some free downloads - you got 'em!

Chord sheet The Facial Hair/Creativity Ratio Theorem CHORD sheet 
mp3 The Facial Hair/Creativity Ratio Theorem MP3

Are you mad as hell and not going to take this anymore? Write a response song!

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Steve Vai On Touring

Steve Vai with some very honest thoughts about life on tour and tips for selecting band members...

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Day 103: Moving Beards

 

 

Feeling rough. tonight I made a video for the Beard song. It will be coming out soon...

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Day 102: Babysitting & Old Manuscripts

Phew! What about Andy Carroll eh?

Anyway.

My GLW out for the night, me at Chico's football match and then holding the fort, so no Shabby Road and no finishing The Beard Song.

Opted to go through some old musical ideas. Been working on a few posts about 'my songwriting system' and the need to have one that works. Tonight brought it painfully home.

OK I know it's inverted (thank you PhotoBooth) but what we have all on one glorious page are

• a photocopy something that is either Rhapsody In Blue by Gershwin or The Rite Of Spring by Stravinsky. I don't have the time, energy or eyesight to workout which. Why is it there? Who knows! 
• A partial line up of Dizzy Gillespie's United Nations Orchestra. The mind boggles. I do remember Arturo Sandoval can play solos only dogs can hear.
• Theme B1 (a one bar arpeggio in E major)
• Theme C1 a three bar guitar hero lick that changes key. I'm sure the first bar has a wrong note in it.
• Theme T1 (what?!) A bizarre semi-atonal lick that doesn't even attempt a time signature.
• Something marked 'sax-type idea' which is in 4/4, yet has 13 quavers and a crotchet rest in one bar. It's marked 'very loose'. Ya think?!

Well, non of these ideas will ever appear in a finished song, but it represents one more page filed away.

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Day 101: Beard On The Chin/Cold In The Head

Me and my GLW (good lady wife) seem to be playing head cold tag team. She's just given me back the one I gave her two weeks ago which she probably gave me in late Feb. But I need to get back in the writing habit so I rubbed my nose with Vick Vapour rub and headed over the Shabby Road. Last night I uploaded the finished Slow Motion Riot album so that's one box ticked but I still feel in this post FAWM fog.

Tonight I recorded a first pass at the song that now goes by the grand title of

The Facial Hair/Creativity Ratio Theorem (aka The Beard Song)

and I'll try to do a video tomorrow. I'm in two minds about releasing stuff that I've just captured on the internal mic. I did a video, but no mp3, of Fat Flish which seemed to disappear without a trace, so I don't know.

I guess I need to break out the studiospares catalogue and get ordering me some equipment...

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New Song: Fat Flish

Here's my first real post FAWM song and my first attempt at iMovieing.

I often misread books at storytime for comic effect. "Reading it funny" is a big hit my two youngest kids Harpo & Zeppo. Fat Flish was an improvised song based on some book or other composed while sitting on the sofa with my two youngest fans . I later wrote up a couple more verses and here it is.

As I'm 'between recording gear' again there's no demo yet but you can have the chord sheet if you want.

Fat Flish CHORD sheet pdf

Related Posts: The Soundcheck Song - for free
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Major Label Bad. Internet Good.

I don't think it's any secret that I think the record industry is flawed in the same way a business model built on indentured servitude and embezzlement is 'flawed'. Here are two more witnesses for the prosecution...

Tom Waits

The record companies are like cartels. It's a nightmare to be trapped in one. I'm on a good label now that's not part of the plantation system...Most people are so anxious to record, they'll sign anything, it's like going across the river on the back of an alligator.

Lowside of the Road p.456

Steven Tyler

We must have grossed about $140 mill. [on the Permanent Vacation tour] But we must have walked away with no more than $3 mill each. It’s always been that way and it just plain sucks. Right now this band would make more money selling 100,000 albums on the internet than we would selling a million on Sony. It’s sad the way it works.

Mojo Magazine May 07

Related posts: Modern day slavery in the music business

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Day 92: Switching Songwriting Diets

Dragged myself off to Shabby Road and worked on the Fat Flish song for half an hour. Boy it felt so good.

This whole year is a learning curve and here's today's insight.

It's like I've been on a weight watchers diet. Then I suddenly switched to the Atkins diet for a month. Then I stopped. And got confused.

My original plan was "go to the studio and write everyday and finish one song at a time".

My Feb plan was "write every possible moment I can, everywhere I can, as fast I can"

Then FAWM ended and I was lost.

So now I'm going back to plan A.

Lessons learned -

A songwriting plan is better than no plan.
A bad songwriting plan you do, is better than a great plan you don't do.
Two songwriting plans are worse than one plan.

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