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.

Getting Out of the Funk and Into the Rock

I once read somewhere that to be a good writer, no matter what form, you need to read a lot and to write even more. Having my focus on writing lyrics, I've also added into the equation listening to a lot of music. In my quest to keep writing and become a better a songwriter I've done quite a bit of the following:

1. I got myself a library card and have been going book crazy. According to my Books on Facebook application (Yeah, it's bad, I'm even keeping track.) I've read 7 books since September 1st and many more over the course of the summer. I read during breaks at work, I read when I get home, I read in waiting rooms, I read on my days off, and whenever I feel I have nothing better to do. (Which is quite often.)

I'm a little proud of this development, there could be worse things to be addicted to, T.v. or drugs for example. I enjoy reading, it passes time and I'm doing it to improve myself. But I can't help but feel a little pathetic at times knowing there are other things I could be doing. We'll get to one of the most important things I could be doing later.

2. I love music, there is no denying that. Lately, I've been on a new music listening frenzy that is only rivaled by my book reading kick. Many of my favorite bands, and some that I just enjoy in general, have been coming out with new music in the past couple of months and I've been eating it up, hence my earlier posts, "Burn Burn" Burning Up The Car Stereo, Those Are Some "Sick Puppies", as well as posts about Green Day, Hinder, and Three Days Grace. Not to mention dropped albums I haven't mentioned like Paramore, Breaking Benjamin and Thousand Foot Krutch.

It goes on and on my friends. And I can't help it. As Three Days Grace would put it, "At night I feel like a vampire, it's not right, but I just can't give it up." It's great hearing new music because for me it's a little bit of inspiration, which leads to the determination to make something better of what I create.

But lately it's only lead to quite a bit of frustration, too much procrastination, along with unhealthy doses of constipation. Not the kind you're thinking of, more lyrical constipation, constipation of the brain. Which leads me to the one thing I haven't been doing much of at all when it comes to the steps to improving my songwriting chops.

Writing!

The most important aspect of this whole process has been totally neglected and I haven't done anything about it. I rarely put pen to paper or even fingers to keyboard. The pages have been blank and frankly I haven't known what to do to remedy it. Even this blog has seen posts that are way too far and few between. My guitar has been collecting dust in it's lonely corner, the area I like to refer to as the musical black hole of my new apartment.

Am I putting too much pressure on myself to perform? Probably. Am I not going with the flow like I always used to and just letting ideas comes as they come while making sure to jot them down and not take things for granted? Most definitely. Am I full of excuse after excuse why I can't get things done? Absolutely! But is there a light at the end of the tunnel? Yes, there is. It comes in the form of a chorus that leaked out of my brain two days ago.


Once the ball is rolling, who knows where it's going to end up. Keep it rockin', I will!

Music Video Before The Song

It's funny how ideas come to be especially because when it comes to my songwriting, they never seem to come the same way twice. One song might be inspired by a title I wrote down two years ago, another might be inspired by a movie I just watched, another may come about because I'm annoyed that there's no milk for my morning wheat flakes and banana. Because of this inspirational inconsistency it becomes tough sometimes to get things together and focus on writing a tune.

Two nights ago an even weirder scenario played out as I tried to go to sleep. As I doze off toward sleep is a common time for my brain to decide it wants to work and in turn it's one of those times where I lose what at the time seem to be the best ideas that have ever come to me. This particular flash of "inspirado" as Tenacious D might put it didn't come in the form of song, it came in the form of video.

I closed my eyes and there it was, the music video for a song yet to be imagined. I watched it play out in strange clarity as if I was watching MTV on mute. (Maybe not MTV, they hardly play music videos anymore, but you get the point.) It took me a while to find sleep as the ideas continued to cycle, adding clips of footage here and there, characters changing and camera angles correcting. But overall the concept stayed the same.

I woke the next day with a surprising remembrance of the yet to be created video for the non-existent song so I decided to take some notes and draw a picture that more or less summed it up. The exciting part is that the video that played behind my eyelids was pretty simple, a concept that actually could be a possibility for me to create. Now if I only had the song to go along with it.

That leads to inspiration idea #598 (random number here to exaggerate my point): Get ideas and write a song based on the music video for that song.

This has to be screwing with the time/space continuum somehow.

Writing From Inspiration Or On Task

As I promised yesterday, I'm going to answer a great question that a friend asked me at dinner the other night about my writing process. She wanted to know if I write my music solely from inspiration or on task.

(Again, in case you don't know what I mean, when I say on task I mean sitting down specifically to write, inspiration or no inspiration, using title ideas that make up one of my many lists, or a song that I've been commissioned to write.)

Her question made me think of a good story involving a song that I wrote back in 2005. My sister asked me to write this song for her wedding. She wanted me to write a song about the relationship between her and our dad and I was to play it at the reception for the father/daughter dance. She was to get married in December 2005 and she asked way in advance (which I very much appreciated) in January 2005, giving me almost a year to work my magic.

I had never been commissioned to write a song so I thought it would be a great opportunity to build my writing chops. Being for such a special moment for special people and being my first commissioned piece, I put a lot of pressure on myself and it showed.

I started working on the song on January 24th, 2005. Over the next 10 months the few lines and shaky chord progressions remained undeveloped and unfinished. I was too content on waiting on that call from inspiration to put me over the edge but the pressure and the time crunch locked my brain and left me with nothing to show. So instead of waiting on that inspiration, on October 30th I buckled down, and started more or less from scratch. A few lines from my almost year old start remained but everything else drastically changed to become what is now "Take Me Home". (You can check out the finished version at my Reverbnation page, track #9.)

I finished up the song with a couple of weeks to spare and I performed it at my sister's wedding reception as I promised. There wasn't a dry eye in the room and it was one of the most rewarding moments of my songwriting career.

The point behind this story is that to be a songwriter you have to draw a fine line between working from inspiration and focusing and creating things from your musical brilliance. I tend to rely on the idea of inspiration too much and it gets me nowhere. This story is proof that buckling down and writing on task sometimes has to be done, you can't always just wait for the ideas to fall in your lap. Ideally, inspiration and hard work need to work hand and hand to be at your most productive.

Like I mentioned in my previous post "Inspriration? What's Inspiration!?", sometimes it's necessary to make your own inspiration. I'm thankful that my friend brought up this topic because as much as I've written from ideas simply floating in my head, I really needed to be reminded that hard work is necessary and I need to sit down, concentrate and get writing.

Rock on and make sure to check out "Take Me Home"!

Inspiration? What's Inspiration!?

I love writing music...well, when I'm writing that is. Does that make sense? Maybe it makes more sense to say when I'm being productive. You know, when I'm on my game, in the groove, driving down easy street, pulling notes out thin air, melodies out of my ass.

It's easy to get frustrated when things aren't working no matter what you write, but I write both lyrics and music so I tend to get myself that much extra fired up and frustrated when I'm stuck toiling on a song for who knows how long with no idea what to do and no motivation to figure it out. But out of all the toil there's nothing better than getting that grand moment of inspiration, that great idea where I say to myself, "Hell yeah, this one's going to be good!" What the ever wise Tenacious D would call "inspirado."

So...inspiration, where the hell does that come from? No, really, I'm asking you, I really want to know. Totally not a rhetorical question. I'm always trying to grasp the concept, especially when I'm a little dried up for ideas. I mean, what is inspiration anyway?

In-spi-ra-tion n : the act or power of moving the intellect or emotions Merriam-Webster Dictionary 1997

Ok, took myself literally on that one. So now what does that mean and where the hell does that act or power of moving emotions come from? Let's see, example: I'm flicking through the tv channels looking to watch the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympics. I love my sports and only every 4 years can you see beach volleyball played by scantily clad, athletic, and superbly tanned women from all over the world on network television. In the middle of the day no less. So here we go, time to pick an event on the 3 or 4 channels broadcasting. I pick my first channel...commercial. Visa I believe. Ok, that's cool, pick another channel...commercial. Might have been Coke. Ok, not so cool, I don't like Coke. But I stay calm, pick another channel...commercial. By this point I'm losing my cool and my desire to even watch scantily clad, athletic, and superbly tanned men playing beach volleyball. I decide to put down the remote and settle for channel choice #3 and wait out what seems like 5 minutes of commercial. (McDonalds: Chicken for breakfast?!, UPS: Yes, I know brown can do that!, Visa: Again! I know, it's everywhere I wanna friggin' be!) Getting a little testy at this point if you can't tell. I'm a happy person, I swear.

So finally comes the action, which happens to be women's handball, Russia vs. Korea. Being from the U.S. where it's a basically unknown sport I'm a bit skeptical of the entertainment value and it's legitimacy as an Olympic sport but I remain, wary of building frustration of my game of commercial roulette. Surprisingly I'm entranced by this game, similar to many other sports, the whole point being to throw a small ball past the goalie into the opposing team's net. Right away I'm on the edge of my seat watching the back and forth action. Goal here, save there, whistle here (for what I have no idea), then there's a breakout by team Korea. The Korean player fakes out the Russian defender, leaps, cocks her arm and...commercial. Yes, that's right.

Commercial.

I sit back dumbfounded, enraged, all of a sudden broken from my glory filled, sweat coated, handball trance. I might have whispered a choice expletive, which is not all that uncommon for me. Immediately my mind jumbles around the feelings of hate, rage, sadness, and disappointment. I'm sickened by the raging commercialism that I, as a resident of the planet Earth has to deal with on a daily basis. And then....inspiration. Didn't see that coming did you? But you know this story had to have a point. Immediately I was jotting down ideas and humming out melodies, letting that emotion flow.

That's the kicker when it comes to inspiration. You don't know where to find it, it's hard as hell to look for it, and it comes to you in the weirdest places, such as, a women's handball match. Does that mean as songwriters that the world is our inspiration? Maybe. Does that mean we just need to be observant and critical of our feelings and thoughts. Absolutely.

The way I see it is that when it comes down to it and you're struggling for that killer lyric, or that grinding riff you just need to put on your Adidas sandals, grab your Bic pen and your Mead notebook (that you bought at Staples of course), walk out among the Toyotas and VWs, look through your Ray-Ban sunglasses and make your own inspiration by letting it find you.

I guess.