Day 226: My Exquisite Corpse

I'm still doing way too much multitasking. I've interrupted the rerecording and mixing of Let's Build An Airport to contribute my portion of an exquisite corpse that we've got going on the 50/90 site. “What's an exquisite corpse?” I hear you google. In musical terms we have 11 people co-writing a song. One person writes about 50 seconds of music and then sends the last 10 seconds to the next person who does likewise. Finally someone puts it all together and we all get to hear the song. It's the musical equivalent of this...

I'm about 7th in line, and I'll post a link when it's done.  


Here's the finished song - You're Sure To Find Yourself.

The part I contributed was the 6/4 and 7/4 prog metal instrumental bit. It's after the folky 6/8 bit with the "we can do what we want" sample. Unfortunately during the edit my part comes in too early but to be fair I was asking for it superimposing 4/4 over 6/8 (If you're interested, here's how it should have fitted together).

Guest post

The second part of my series for Krown Media is up now. One of the reasons Christian's make poor artists is they spend way too much time obsessing over their motives. Here's a sample -

So, whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God (1 Cor 10:31) applies to all of us, no matter what profession. But have you ever noticed that Christian plumbers, Christian school teachers and Christian I.T. specialists don't seem to suffer the same kind of paralysing bouts of self analysis that artists do? Maybe because they instinctively realise that in context and practice that verse is about outward actions, not inner motivation.

Read the rest here

Great writing on writing

There are quite a few songwriting blogs out there that dispense really helpful advice. There are others that are so beautifully put together that reading them is a pleasure to be savoured. There's only one that I can think of that ticks both boxes and that's Nicholas Tozier's The Halted Clock. Check out his post Life Cycle of a Summer Song, Part 4: An Attempt at Self-Criticism for example.

Tozier wakes up in the morning, stretches, scratches at his unseemly body hair, and sits on the edge of the bed...He walks to the sink, where he definitely does not waste half a can of Barbasol by using the foam to make a giant Santa beard...Having accomplished a smooth jawline with only a reasonable amount of bleeding and crying, Tozier embarks upon the day’s errands.He ...buys two beverages: Lady Grey tea, because he is a sensitive poet; and coffee, without cream or sugar, because he is a total badass.
...At exactly 8:30pm he hits the stage. The audience is hushed, perhaps intimidated by his awesome punctuality.

Visit Tozier's site to see what this has to do with songwriting.

Lastly, and still on the Tozier tip, I got to round out the series of posts (44 and rising) which I've done about the Abbey Road album with a light hearted chat with Nicholas over at Beatles Songwriting Academy.

Free download: Never Be Silent
Other free songs by Matt Blick