Day 252: New Song - Still Standing (Trees)

Walking in the woods I spoke aloud

my deepest hopes and dreams

The marks I'd make on history

The great things I'd achieve 

When from above 

I heard the leaves

Their laughter borne 

Upon the breeze

The mocking trees fell quiet, the wise old oak

He spoke up for them all

“We have stood our ground 

Since Bonaparte coveted our soil

And we'll be here 

When wind and rain

Erase the name 

Upon your grave”

I'm really trying to work on melody this year and singing in my 'own' voice (not that wretched generic american one that I and everyone outside of the Arctic Monkeys and The Proclaimers adopt). So on that score I'm quite happy with Still Standing (Trees). There's a little Marx Bros influence in the lyrics of the second verse (listen to the track before you read the lyrics and see if you can guess where the song is going) and a bit of Beatles in the chord progressions (especially the minor 4).

It's just a crazy story that came into my head one day. I live in a beautiful area surrounded by trees but lately a lot of them are losing all their bark for some reason. Despite what the song might lead you to believe this make me quite sad.

I approached the writing a little differently just to break me out of my habits. I wrote the lyrics to existing tunes Fly Me To The Moon for the verse and Autumn Leaves for the chorus, then wrote new music. The odd line lengths and different rhyme schemes made my go beyond my usual patterns. I like the way the song kind of goes 4/4 then 2/4 at the end of the chorus.

I'm up to 40 songs written now this year. It's easy to get a bit down and feel I'm doing this for nothing, but I think I am getting better as a writer. Time will tell.

Leave me a comment if you like it.


Download Still Standing (Trees) mp3
Download Still Standing (Trees) lyrics

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

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

Day 170: Numbers, Numbers

Oh boy I so suck at blogging. But the truth of the matter is I've been trying to write. So that's some comfort.

Here's some catch up.

80 Girlfriends

First I did another song with a pupil. The challenge was to write something to help him learn the 8 times table in a non obvious way. The result was 80 Girlfriends. I won't be putting it on my download page but you can hear it here.

At 1 o' clock I met Kate she was my girlfriend number 8
At 2 o' clock I met Christine, she was girlfriend number 16

you get the picture

the chorus is

All my girlfriends keep on multiplying

(see what I did there?) Anyway I wrote during a half hour guitar lesson, limiting myself to the 3 chords the pupil knew.

Imagine my embarrassment when the secretary at another school was printing a rota off my memory stick and came across a file marked 80 Girlfriends. Hard to explain.

8 Posts

I've been trying to blog my way through Abbey Road over at Beatles Songwriting Academy and I'm on the home stretch and trying to rush through the 8 posts on Something.

34 Songs

Song 34 is called Never Be Silent. I'm really battling with becoming more emotionally honest and it's a tough process. Last night I asked myself and God (it called prayer) can I really say that about you? I think I can as it's only things that are clearly there in the Bible but we gloss over things so easily. Psalms is becoming a new book to me as I see in those scriptural songs things no one would dare put in a worship song. Just in case I'm getting too normal I'm also trying to incorporate some ideas from Bulgarian vocal music.

2 Free Albums

I wish I was a better blogger then I'd tell you all about Josh Garrels' free album which is cool, interesting, right off the beaten track, and far too long for me to be able to tell you whether it's any good or not yet.

I'd also tell you about the free live album from The Civil Wars which is really growing on me after I got over the frustration of having to download it 3 times before it worked properly (I'd just download it track by track if I were you) and the free track Barton Hollow which I love (after I got over the frustration of it being in mp4 format and it causing my computer to crash a couple of times when I tried to move the file). You need to scroll to the bottom of the page and enter your email address.

But I won't. I'm too busy.

The Civils are supporting Adele on her UK tour and doing two headline gigs too.

3000 Downloads

Yep that's right. I've checked my stats for the first time since mid March. Just over 3000 mp3 downloads of my songs so far. That's pretty amazing.

50/90

I'm sorely tempted. I had such a good time with FAWM but I have to work out some kind of fence around my writing to stop it spilling over into every area of my life.

Oh and Sharon Goldman at Songwriting Scene gave me plug in a post on nonsense. I speak it like a native.

Free songs by Matt Blick

Gary Ewers On Inspiration And Questions

Here's a couple of thought provoking posts I've been reading recently -

Gary Ewers quotes Leonard Bernstein in his post Between Inspiration and Hard Work, the Latter Always Wins

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long. 

The reason the Beatles wrote 200 songs in 7 years is that they never waited for inspiration to show up. Even if you do get inspired there's rarely enough magic dust to finish the whole song. You still need to graft to find a bridge or a second verse.

Maybe the muse has a short attention span?

Gary has another great post called The Most Important Question Songwriters Should Be Asking. The question is “How is my new song different from my last one?”

if you've been following my progress reports this year showing up , you may have spotted that's pretty much how I roll...e.g.

Depressing Tom Waits style sinner's prayer (O Lamb Of God)
Weird folky love song for wife involving donated animal body parts (Brother Bull)
Bizarre atonal song about fictional chinese village (Shang Ding Hong Song)
Odd time gospel blues about church announcements (If You're Here This Morning)

and so on

It's not just themes and styles, but I'll try to follow a complicated arrangement/recording with solo voice and guitar or a reworked old idea with a song started totally from scratch.

It's all part of a natural progression for me that goes like this

1 I want to be a really good songwriter
2 Therefore I need to write a lot of songs
3 If I'm going to write a lot of songs I need to have a lot of variety in my repertoire for sanity's sake, mine and my listeners!

Free songs by Matt Blick

GTD for Songwriters (pt 7)

Welcome to the final instalment. After sorting out paper & digital files let's finish off by looking at how important titles are

Songs

It's not just albums where we get to be creative with the metadata. Even if you get through a few working titles you're still likely to end up with lots of versions of the same song with the same name. I avoid confusion by labelling my songs like so

You Spoke The Stars D4R2V2M5

D=Draft

This is the version of song that I'm on. When I get the idea for a song and write it out in full that's draft one. Every time I do any substantial work on it that becomes the next draft. I may not do a fresh recording of each draft but I do want the audio name to match up with what I have written down. Lyrically a new draft is often the point where I can no longer scribble any more amendments on a sheet of paper and have to type out a new one.

R=Rewrite

Sometimes I record/perform/whatever a song, then realise it's still not the best it can be. This can happen years after I 'finished' it. A song that I revisit in this way will get an R tag though I'll keep numbering the drafts (I also stupidly put the R before the D but I think that's because my inner geek would get a kick out of seeing a song with R2D2 in the title).

V = (Recorded) Version

I don't bother using this for just capturing song ideas, but sometimes you attempt a demo for public consumption and then scrap it and try again (think of Love Me Do by The Beatles. Pete Best would be V1 and Ringo Starr would be V2 (Yes Beatles geeks, Andy White would be V3!).

M = Mix

Pretty obvious but probably the most useful. It's easy to spot the version with Ringo on the drums, but what about the one where you added more compression to the bass in the 3rd verse?

One cool little bi-product of having everything digital is it's easy to duplicate a song if you need to.

For example, you have finally completed Awesome Song. The finished article is named Awesome Song D4R2V2M5. Store it in the Awesome Song album. Then copy it and put the copy into the 'best of' playlist. Now retag the copy with the name of your real album and all the metadata you'd want Joe Public to see. You can do the same thing if an idea ends up inspiring more than one song and add a duplicate file to each album.

(another bug to watch out for is the way iTunes renames files when you rename tracks – WMP sensibly leaves the filename alone. I like it like this because sometime I can't remember which mix I chose to release).


If you didn't check it out before let me recommend the Songwriting For Busy People podcast by Graham English. He covers many of the ideas I've put forward in these posts, but fits it all in to 7 minutes!

Download all my 2011 songs for free!!!
Other free songs by Matt Blick

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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!

Download all my FAWM 2011 songs for free!!!
Other free songs by Matt Blick



[If you're subscribed to this blog via email, you will have to click on the post's title to watch any video content (the link will take you my site).

Atheists Don't Have No Songs

A funny and partially true tune from Steve Martin.

Kyle saw it first

And speaking of matters of faith, Nick Tozier just picked up on my blog post Ant Thology: Why I Love The Beatles Too Much To Worship Them

And speaking of humour - let Mark Altrogge teach you how to talk like a theologian

Download all my 2011 songs for free!!!
Other free songs by Matt Blick
 
[If you're subscribed to this blog via email, you will have to click on the post's title to watch any video content (the link will take you my site).
 

A Small Tribute To Diz & The Colonel

Happy Birthday to two musical legends.

Dizzy Gillespie music pioneer, one of the originators of Bebop would have been 93 today. He was a statesman-like musician, who championed multiracial harmony with his United Nations Orchestra, and was a model of diligent practice.

He also possessed a wicked sense of humour. At the height of the Beatles fame he asked George Harrison for his autograph and then told him he was going to sell it to buy two Count Basie albums!

Steve Cropper (59 today) was also a champion of racial reconciliation as part of the multiracial Stax records backing band Booker T & The MGs working with artists like Otis Redding, Sam & Dave and (later) The Blues Brothers.

American Songwriter honours Steve with a post about the writing of Sitting On The Dock Of The Bay


Related Posts: How the Beatles really broke the States

My latest song: You Spoke The Stars
Other free songs by Matt Blick

The Be-atletudes

As some of you may know I’ve taken on the insane task of playing through all 211 Beatles songs and then blogging about what we can learn from these awesome songs at Beatles Songwriting Academy . But I’ve also been studying their career in order to figure out how they became such great songwriters.

Because I’m such a Christian punster I call these lesson Be-atletudes and if you do these things maybe your songwriting shall be blessed too. So far we have …

Blessed are the co-writers ... for they shall write twice as much.


Blessed are the limited ... for they shall not be distracted by lots of other things. 

Blessed are the single-taskers ... for they shall work on one song at a time and not lose the plot so often.


Blessed are the prolific ... for they shall be good at songwriting because they do it a lot.

Puns aside, I'm learning a shed load from the Fab Four and it's having a really positive on my songwriting, so if you're a songwriter come and join me...

My latest song: You Spoke The Stars
Other free songs by Matt Blick 

How The Beatles REALLY Broke The States

I've never been convinced by the 'illegal file sharing is killing music' argument so I found this story from Shout : The True Story of the Beatles by Phillip Norman fascinating...

Let me tell you a story...

After four attempts to get Capitol (who after all were technically already the Beatles US label) to release a record in the States Brian Epstein finally got an agreement. They would release I Want To Hold Your Hand on Jan 13, 1964, even though the record company made it clear they expected the single to tank.

Just before Christmas an air hostess gave her boyfriend a UK copy of the single (which by then was already #1 in England). The boyfriend, who was a DJ in Washington DC, played it on his show & the listeners went wild. One of the listeners was a Capitol employee who began trying to find out who the band were, and who owned the publishing rights (Epstein had just sold to US publishing to MCA!).

A friend of the DJ taped the song and sent it to another DJ in Chicago and soon Beatlemania was breaking out there too.

Before Capitol had time to register what was going on someone in Chicago had taped the song and sent it to St Louis and in no time it was setting the airwaves alight there too.

Capitol now decided to revise their low expectations and set, not only their own pressing plant, but also RCA’s & CBS’s to work right through the holidays pressing 1 million copies of the new single.(It held the #1 spot for 7 weeks, and went on to sell 5 million copies).


I love this story! It illustrates so beautifully how ‘free’ has always been the friend of musician (and even ultimately, the stupid unwieldy dinosaur major label). It also demonstrates how badly the traditional model worked - even in the good old days.

Here’s the cliff notes

Q: What was the main obstacle to the Beatles breaking the States?
Their own record company. The very organisation that was supposed to have their best interests at heart.

Q: Who was the band’s best friend?
The fans.

Q: What did the fans need to become the ultimate uber-distribution ninjas?
Nothing. Just FREE access to the music. They even payed to copy and distribute it themselves. (And for once they didn’t get sued!)

Q: Who profited financially in a massive way from the free ‘filesharing’ and radio play of illegal bootlegs in this story?
The record company and the artists.

Q: Who was the most completely useless, and clueless, player in this whole story?
The major label. Capitol even threatened to seek a court order banning airplay of I Want to Hold Your Hand.

Explain (in 500 words or less) why you still think being signed to a major label would have a positive effect on your career? Please mention any instances of mental illness occurring in your family history.

Related Posts: Trent gives it away

If you've enjoyed this post you might want to check out Beatles Songwriting Academy where I'm attempting to work my way through all 211 Beatles songs 'borrowing' songwriting ideas as I go...

The Dangers of Moleskines & Multitasking

If you're into songwriting you might want to check out the blog of Nicholas Tozier, an independant singer/songwriter based in Maine. I've yet to hear any of his music but he's such an original and insightful writer that he could always blog professionally if the music career doesn't take off!

Check out these excerpts from The Seductive Dangers of Moleskines

When it’s time to write a grocery list, do you painstakingly select a fountain pen to use on your most expensive letterhead?

Or do you just scratch it into the back of last week’s receipt with a ballpoint?

I’ve bought Moleskines. They sit unused. Why do I do that? It’s like buying an expensive black suit when you live and work in a junkyard.

Sure, that’s the nicest piece of clothing you could buy for that amount of money… but is it something you’re going to feel comfortable wearing when you’re rummaging through all that scrap and mud?

When I buy something to scratch my ideas on, I now ask myself: “Am I going to feel comfortable when it’s time to tear this thing wide open and turn it inside out if that’s what it takes to write these songs?”... I like being able to rip something apart so I can see any two of its pages side-by-side without flipping around. I cut, I fold, I scratch notes, I mangle. I’ve got no business wearing a suit.

It's All Too Much

As I ransack The Beatles' songs and career for wisdom I've noticed that the Beatles went about recording their albums in a way almost no band does nowadays - one song at a time. I think they were onto something. You can read the third 'Be-atletude' "Blessed are the single-taskers" over at Beatles Songwriting Academy. 


Related Posts: Write like John Newton
All a songwriter needs is a door: advice from Stephen King
Do it yourself: Songwriting advice from Spielberg & Jackson



Free songs by Matt Blick

 

Special Guest Blogger - Mark Altrogge

Mark Altrogge is one of the greatest and most prolific worship songwriters alive today. Since writing songs like I Stand In Awe (You Are Beautiful, Beyond Description), I'm Forever Grateful, Faithful God and How High And How Wide in the 80s he's written hundreds more and is probably one of the most theologically astute songwriters around.

So I'm thrilled to welcome him as a guest blogger at The Beatles Songwriting Academy today and tomorrow as he shares what Christian Songwriters can learn from the Beatles.

Read part one here.


Related Posts: Mark Altrogge at work

Free songs by Matt Blick

Timely Encouragement

Got some much needed link love yesterday for Beatles Songwriting Academy my sabbatical project/mental breakdown/latest geek obsession (delete as applicable) from US blogger Matt Redmond who spends his time as Student Pastor when he's not being mistaken for the other Matt Redman and lives in Birmingham (the other one).

He said

Whether you are a Beatles fan or not, there is a reason they continue to be so popular. They were great songwriters. Created in the image of God, all four of them reflected that creativity by making extraordinary music listened to the world over.

I cannot remember the last time I recommended a blog to anyone on my blog, so that should tell you something.

Read the full post here

Matt also did a nice post on the back all the Vatican broohaha on The Beatles, Jesus & Hatred that you might want to check out.

Related Posts: Meet The Templeton Twins



Free songs by Matt Blick

Meet The Templeton Twins

this post has moved over here

 Beatles Songwriting Academy is over here

A Blog's Life

Some little blog and download milestones

First Black President has now hit 50 downloads
Great High Priest over 75
The Eglon Song edging closer to 350
Overall downloads a little under 900

at the beginning of the month page views hit 10,000.

I'm no Perez Hilton (but then I wouldn't want to be!) but thanks to every one who stopped by, commented or downloaded a song. If you haven't checked out the new download page you should do so now.

And I've also rebranded, repostitioned and generally monkeyed about with my Beatles blog.

It's now called Beatles Songwriting Academy, and is aimed at helping songwriter (worship and otherwise) write better songs by dissecting the Beatles.  tell every songwriter you know!

OK Go Again, Jazz Police & Beatles vs U2

I know Wednesday is in danger of becoming the OK Go appreciation day on this blog, but if you've seen the Rube Goldberg Machine video for their song This Too Shall Pass (and why on earth wouldn't you have seen it?) then I know you'll be interested in the new feature on their site. An interactive floor plan of the machine with videos, photo & 'did you know' sidebars. 

Unleash your inner geek.

Zach Nielsen posts more in a day than I do in a month but still manages to gig with a jazz trio. Now he has a dedicated website with free mp3 downloads. Try a tasty Message In A Bottle starter then head over to the audio page for the main course.


For the songwriters among you there's a post on the blog after 909 looking at why The Beatles were so prolific and why U2 aren't. It's called Blessed Are The Limited.

Related post: Songs in the key of Z