Day 144: The Walking Cure, Going Straight & The Fear

I haven't let you know what I've been up to down at Shabby Road for a couple of weeks, but that's because I've been doing the same thing every night. Chipping away at the final rewrite* of Faithful And True. But here's 3 things I've noticed

Walk

I was stuck on a few lines of lyrics - nearing the end of a song inevitably mean I've painted myself into a corner knowing exactly what I want to say but held captive by rhyme scheme and syllable count. No great solution but I find the best way is to go for a walk and mull em over. Making a bit of a list of problem lines means I can work on it on the tram (oh Nottingham Trams how I love you), buses (not so much), anywhere

How does it go?

I'm pretty strict on melody anyway but when you're writing a worship song for a lots of people all to sing at once you have to really nail everything down. Even if you keep the lines all exactly the same length It's so easy to sing a crotchet and two quavers in the first verse and 2 crotchets and one quaver in the next. Things migrate from the on beat to the off beat seemingly at random. This is all part of interpreting it as a singer but when you're expecting hoping people will join in you have to be clear about the uninterpreted melody first. So what I did was write all the verses out bar by bar in manuscript form to compare. This is about as micro as you can get and it's mind numbing work. Singing each of 4 verse and trying to work out whether the third or fourth word should be on the off beat. Or neither. Or both. Good times.

Just Do It.

for the last couple of days I've been doing pre-production. Or procrastination as it's also known. I knew I was suffering from the fear of finishing when I noticed I was avoiding getting my new audio interface out of the box and loading the drivers. What's the problem?

I've been working on this song for so long and in such detail that I don't feel I know how to play it, arrange it, record it. I mean, I started this bad boy Bill Clinton was still running America and the Spice Girls were in charge of everywhere else. It's on it's 2nd major rewrite and I don't want to work on it anymore*. Not cos I hate it. My love and patience for it aren't running out. Just my objectivity.

Solution? tonight I put on my trust Nike Pegasus 25s and recorded a scratch vocals and guitar and real bass. Cos I know the demo that will result from my pathetic efforts to play this song will be a zillion times better than the non demo I've got in my head that no one else can ever hear.

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