Not Even Close To "Done With This"

I'm continually writing new material and I don't see myself stopping anytime soon. Sometimes I feel like I've only just begun. But occasionally I can't help but look back at old material and bask in my few but very pride filled musical moments of my past.

I will always remember the story behind the creation of my song "Done With This" very well. It was my senior year at the University of Maine, the last week of finals before the end of the fall semester. It was getting down to the nitty gritty of my core business classes, final projects, long papers and extremely boring group presentation sessions that everyone was required to attend. In the last presentation of the session in one of the biggest lecture halls on campus I could barely stay concious. The only thing keeping my nodding head from drifting off to dream land was my pen as I wrote down every angsty feeling that flowed through me at that moment. The more I wrote, the more I woke and the more I woke, the more I just couldn't stop.

The rest of the session flew by in a sea of words and a rush of inspiration that almost carried me all the way to the neighboring town of Old Town where my guitar waited in the small upstairs bedroom of the house I was renting with some friends. Quickly a guitar a riff floated into the air and the lyrical melody soon after. It couldn't have been more than hour after I got home when I had a rough version of "Done With This" recorded on my computer.

 I don't know how many times I've told this story but no matter how dull it may seem to anyone else, it never gets old to me. Recalling this moment in my songwriting history makes me think of why I love writing music in the first place and why I don't think I can ever stop for as long as I live.

Rock on.

The Best Laid Plans...

You can't say that I didn't have good intentions. You can't say that I don't have the skill or the desire to create. But you can say that I don't have the absolute go-getter attitude that gets things done.

In my post, It's About Time To Let The Music Flow, I mentioned on online course that I was pretty excited about that I was sure was going to get the music flowing once and for all. Honestly, it started out great. I spent the first 2 weeks jamming out a half hour of ideas everyday. With the Garage Band running I just played, not really thinking about what I was doing just basically going with the flow and letting my unconscious mind send those notes down to my fingers to be played and recorded. It was a little frustrating at first but as the sessions added up the ideas became more complete and more interesting.

By the last session I was feeling good with the amount of original material I created as well as the quality of that material. But when it came to listening back and picking out those ideas the momentum quickly faded. Those ideas that I was so excited about were few and far between and even the ones that I was most interested in still seemed dull and overall uninteresting. At that point I felt like the last 2 plus weeks had been wasted and the album that I was going to have to show for all that work wasn't even one song closer to being in existence.

Since then, things have changed a bit. I've continued to write like I always have before, letting the ideas come as they do and building them slowly into a somewhat cohesive piece. I currently have 2 or 3 songs stuck in that oh so common phase of mine that involves me playing what I've completed over and over again until it makes me sick only to be perpetually stuck without a bridge, a solid ending or an interesting enough hook.

It seems to be my curse and overall I feel like it comes down to confidence and the lack of drive to just sit down and get things done. I so badly want these songs to be completed and see the light of day. I want to share them and be proud of them. I want to jam with some other musicians and turn these songs into a complete composition. How I do that is the question of the century.

I'd really like to take a lot of these principles from the course and run with them. I already know that they have a major difference in my songwriting by the quality and number of ideas that have been arising even after I kind of gave up on the program. I know I've probably said it a hundred times but I just need to do it, as insanely hard and idiotically simple as that is.

New Song and Video - "Up The Down"

I finished this song a few weeks ago then my computer died. So in turn I totally forgot to post it up here. Overall, I just was just too lazy to do a decent multi track recording so I just shot a quick video.

The title came from an always growing list of song titles I have kicking around. I had a couple of good friends pick from the list to give me a challenge and "Up The Down" is what transpired. Enjoy.





Rock on!

New song: "Proud"

In the effort to keep the ball rolling here's another new song. Well, new to you anyway. I started writing this song back in 2006. It began as a simple as hell guitar riff, a first verse, and a nonsense words to get a melody chorus. Thanks to the Word Box and some awesome encouragement it officially became a song this week after 5 years. Hit it up in the player below.




My project this week is to start a song from scratch from a short list of old titles that my friends picked out for me. Should be interesting. Rock on!

New Song: "Forbidden"...Finally.

Thanks to some friendly encouragement the long drought has ended. I honestly don't even remember the last time I posted a new song but last night I finally uploaded my newest song, "Forbidden".

It's not that I haven't been writing, it's just that the concept of recording and getting the quality I want out of it has been insanely overwhelming, especially considering my recording limitations. (The internal mic of a iMac G5 isn't exactly top of the line recording gear.) But I've tried to deal with what I currently have and focus on the main goal of getting these songs down and out there for people to hear.   Feel free to give it a listen in the player below. Rock on!

One At A Time, Please

It's nice when things get rolling creatively. I really can't complain. Sometimes I'll go months without writing down anything significant in my book or weeks without jamming out a riff on the guitar. But when the gates truly open, there tends to be a flood and I'm helpless to stop it.

In some ways the creative avalanche that rarely comes my way is just as bad as no idea coming at all, mostly because I can never lock anything down. I'll be lying in bed and a great melody comes bouncing through my brain for one song. The next day, the bridge for another song hits me like a ton of bricks and I have to get it down.

But no matter how much work I get done, the constant song hopping is always my downfall. Before I know it I have a lyric book full of a scribbled mess of pages (the scribbled part for me is good, it's means I've been writing and rewriting and putting down lots of thoughts) but also a GarageBand folder on the computer packed with random recordings which in the end, never make much sense.

So what's my problem? I think it's focus. At the songwriting stage that I'm in, I feel I should be able to sit down and work on a song (one at a time) and bust it out. I've done it before. But here especially, there's always a distraction. Whether it's the dog needs a walk, I get an email, the tv gets turned on (the World Cup has me hooked), I think of a blog post idea and feel guilty for not posting in a month (like right now) or I simply don't feel comfortable playing as loud as I want in my apartment building.  (I get a little self-conscious,  most definitely in the early stages of songs when half the time I'm screaming nonsense words and fumbling on the guitar to get melodies and rhythms down.)

I have some ideas of how to be able to focus more and concentrate on one song at a time so I actually accomplish something, the most notable being getting out of this apartment. But otherwise, I'm not sure what to do. I really want to get these songs rolling. Anyone have any suggestions pertaining to focus and concentration, whether it be for songwriting or any other project you need to get done?

Rock on!

Scales, scales, they're good for your skills...

...the more you play, the more it kills.

Scales are one of the major building blocks of playing any instrument. I remember having to memorize and play then in high school band as warm ups every class...and I hated them. Scales are just so boring and I wasn't very good at memorizing them.

I couldn't get myself to play them when I was tooting on the trumpet back in my high school, brass rockin' days, and the same applied in my transition to the strings. Being a self-taught guitarist, I always figured learning scales were one of the best ways to learn the fret board, to strengthen my fretting hand, and to work on my alternate picking, among other things. Unfortunately, it never caught on. I skipped to the fun part, searching the internet for guitar tabs of songs I wanted to learn and strumming away.

So here I am, close to 9 years since I first picked up a guitar and the scales are coming back to haunt me. Still running with the self-teaching philosophy, lately I've been disgusted with my lack of knowledge with what I'm playing. (That and learning other people's songs. I know Good Riddance by Green Day yet I don't know some of the most basic theory!) I've written dozens of songs, I've been in a band, I play my guitar most every day, but if you were to ask me what I was playing, beyond the basic explanation of, "this is a G-chord", I'd probably talk like I just picked up a guitar yesterday.

Last week I pulled out an on old book, part of the K-I-S-S series of books (Keep It Simple Series...or Keep It Simple Stupid for someone like me.), for a starting point, something to jump start my thirst for guitar learning goodness.  The scales section popped right out at me and now whenever I'm just sitting around I tool with every scale I can literally wrap my hand around; major, minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, chromatic, pentatonic....it just goes on.

As simple and straight forward as some of the stuff in this book seems, having played for all this time, I think spending some time going over this mind-boggling music theory stuff will do me good. It's not the most fun thing in the world, I mean, let's play some songs! (Write some songs is more like it.) But that's what happened 9 years ago and I think it's time to get a little more serious, no matter how much is hurts.

Down In The Drop D Dumps

As a guitar player, it's always been fun to discover different tunings. Of course, you always start with the standard EADGBE, from top string to bottom. But from there, there is an endless array of possibilities as long as you're willing to experiment.

There's the Admiral (CGDCBC), Drop A (AEADGC), Double Drop D (DADGBD), Fourths (EADGCF), and so on. (Thanks to How To Tune A Guitar.net)

Each tuning gives your guitar a different sound and a different feel. I can't say I've really tried too many but the standard tuning has never really been my thing. I've always looked for something different. (And not too different I suppose, I stick with something that is still pretty common.)

Since I discovered it I've been hooked to Drop D tuning. It's achieved my dropping the low E string down a step to the low D note. (DADGBE) With this tuning it's so easy to play successive power barre chords by barring and strumming the top three strings. It achieves a heavier rock feel which makes little use of the high strings and favors the low end. I've just always loved the way it sounds and how the chords are played.

Within the past couple of years I've been stuck on a tuning with an even darker feel by starting with Drop D and tuning everything down half a step. (Db Ab Db Gb Bb Eb) I just love how the lower notes resonate and how I feel the range fits my vocals. But at the same time, this tuning has gotten me in a slump as far as my guitar playing skills go. I feel that I've been so stuck on these simple barre chords that I haven't been learning as much as I can by discovering what the other strings have to offer to music.

So I am truly down in the drop D dumps. Though I love the sound, I've realized that there is more to playing guitar than just one tuning or one sound. So to standard E I go! Rock on!

Another Destressifyer - Only Apart Video

I know I already made a recording of "Only Apart" (which you can listen to in the player top right if you haven't already), but things have been stressful and pretty slow lately so I made a quick video of me rockin' it solo with my acoustic. No bells and whistles, just me and my guitar.

I plan on doing this every once in a while just like I did with my old tune "Nowhere to Fall". I try to keep them raw as if I were just playing a show so you'll see me mess up sometimes and my voice may not be top notch, but I think these vids get the job done for the most part. Overall, I'm just looking to share, show off my mad guitar skills, flex the golden pipes and hopefully get myself out of this stupid rut.


Enjoy and rock on! And yes, that's a lobster holding a guitar pic. Why, I have no idea. Just go with it.