I’m not entirely happy with this one, but I’ve been in bed most of the day with the lurgi and I’m not in a very good mood.
I’m happy with the bass line, I should play more bass guitar.
This is possibly the last song from this week, I’m helping friends move house tomorrow so won’t have time for any music. I might be able to write a song on Sunday, I’ll see how it goes. And then next week? That’s Possible.
Song-a-day 06. I didn’t really want to write this, I felt the chords were maybe bit obvious, and maybe just a little bit Dylan-esque. It’s also a bit Leonard Cohen-ey, the chords sound quite ‘Stories of the street’ in places. And then the words arrived and I realised that I already had written it and it was too late for messing around with some new chord changes. I wish I had a 3rd verse for this, maybe I’ll write one in the future sometime. If Dylan had written this it would have 7 verses and take up a side of vinyl.
I spared you my atrocious harmonica playing, recorded but not included in the mix (that would have made it too Dylan-ish?). I think the problem was that the guitar has drifted out of tune over the week, it might be in tune with itself, but sure as hell not in tune with anything else. There is a horrible asthmatic wheezing on one track – that’s me!
Song-a-day #5: Unfamiliar Constellations. For some reason, when I do the ‘song a day’ thing (about every couple of years, on average) I end up with a ‘doomed sci-fi’ song. This is another. Don’t ask me why, because I have no idea.
This is the first one this year with synths on it, I like doing floaty interstellar pads. I really struggled with the chord changes on this, I knew it should have a key change/modulation but I couldn’t get it to sit right. In the end if was an E minor to F major change that did it.
Song-a-Day #3*: This took ages to write. In fact, it’s not even the first song I wrote today. I had a really nice chord progression and melody going first thing this morning, then had my breakfast, by which time I couldn’t remember the tune. So I had to start again, fresh chords changes and tune. I think the first one was in 4/4, this is in 6/4.
Although the singing is quite lugubrious in places, it’s a fairly upbeat song lyrically. I have no idea why. I’ll probably be back to my normal dirges by the end of the week, don’t you worry.
*I’m trying to write a song every day this week (I’ve got the week off) and record it and upload it. I’ve done this before with Ok results, and I seriously need to kick-start my songwriting mojo before it atrophies completely.
It’s that time of year (most years, anyway) where I decide to try to write and record a song in a day, every day for a week. Sometimes I’ll keep going for the next week to. I usually take the weekends off (but not this time). The quality is variable, to say the least, but there are normally a couple of songs that come out ok.
I didn’t do this at all last year, I had writer’s block for 14 months, and it wasn’t fun. Good job I don’t do this for a living.
It’s an unusual feeling, when after a musical drought, you have the feeling, you know that all you have to do is pick up your guitar and open your notebook and songs will appear. It seems to work, though.
Here are songs #1 and #2 from this week: (I started on Saturday this time, just because).
‘Unbroken’ is uncharacteristically upbeat and positive for me, I thought I’d try for ‘not miserable’ and surprisingly, it worked!
You can tell I’ve got a cold, can’t you?
I started this song yesterday – the music, at least – and was so tired I had to go to bed at 8PM. It originally sounded a bit like Calexico, but I’ve lost most of that vibe now, sadly.
The string thing at the end was a right pain, something in the mix is out of tune – I suspect the guitar – which means that everything sounds slightly wrong. I almost had English horn on it, but I was getting tired and a bit bad tempered and thought it was probably a bad idea. I did piano, though.
You haven’t missed #23, I have just been unable to finish it. I suppose it is now disqualified from the Song-a-day club. *sad face*.
#16 in my Song-a-day project. And it’s not, strictly speaking, a song, more like spoken-word with music. This is based on (quite closely as it happens) the weird dream I had last night – and I don’t usually have freaky Sci-Fi dreams, either. What if Alien life-forms were insubstantial, like flickering lights, how long before we noticed them. And could we stop them?
(There is possible ‘Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ influence, as that features ‘hyper-intelligent shades of the colour blue’, which sort of ties in with what happens here. Plus ‘sub-etha transmissions, that’s a HHG steal!)
Here is song #15 in the song a day project. This was supposed to be my day off, too. No idea where this song came from, I just picked up the guitar… and there it was.
(No, I am not really in frame, the top of my head is cut off, the video is only a thing so I can upload it to Youtube and save my Soundcloud account from being overfilled…)
I wouldn’t usually use the word ‘baby’ in a song, no idea where that came from
I’ve been writing a song every day since 21st of October, with variable results. I have decided to carry on going, just for the hell of it. Plus it’s good practice.
This is the 9th piece (if I’m including yesterday’s piano improvisation) and it suffers from bad recording quality on the voice – the result of bad microphone placement, it won’t happen again. The lead guitar and double bass have come out ok.
The video ended up weird, the camera was playing up. The only complete ‘take’ was me playing the lead guitar, with the guitar mostly out of shot. Then the batteries went. So I did that more ‘experimental’ thing, which is probably better than what was planned.
In case you are wondering where Song-a-day 1-8 went to, I haven’t blogged them yet. but I will.
What? Why Bother? 