In With The New, Out With The Old?

As much as I like to recycle, there's always a tipping point. And I speak of music here of course. Last year, I wrote of reusing old tunes in my overall effort to rid the world of musical pollution in my post "Going Green By Recycling...Old Tunes." But lately, I've been cruising through my old Moleskines and my tried and true technique is feeling a bit over tried and a lot less true.

It is true that a lyric I wrote down 5 years ago might not have worked back then yet fits perfectly with a new riff that I pumped out yesterday. But overall, I've found that I was in different place in 2005. Not only do I now live half way across the country, but I hang with new people, I've had a myriad of experiences, and maybe most decisively, I'm not going through a colossal break up.  I bet you can imagine how depressing, boring and whiny every line of these books feels today.

Life events like break ups give major inspiration. Some good tunes come from them but from my experience, it's mostly just cry baby drivel. Who wants to hear that? I don't. And I don't want to perform it either.

So where does that put me? It makes me a regular Sly Sludge, reveling in my skills to pollute and plunder, leaving a trail of unused, discarded lyrics and guitar riffs in my wake. (Keep up with the random Captain Planet reference.) But you know what? I'm ok with that. The last thing I want to be remembered for is being that guy that people couldn't stand listening to because of his outdated, unimaginative lyrics that just made everyone want to shoot themselves. I've decided that picking a line from here and there to get things moving isn't a bad thing, but I also have to live in the now and work with events going on around me in 2010. There's no shortage.

The hardest part is giving up all that work from back then. But since I'm looking for new as well as more fulfilling lyrics in my writing, good riddance. Here's to upbeat and rockin' songs that don't make people cry. Unless that's what I'm going for of course.


Rock on!

Going Green By Recycling...Old Tunes

Going green is all the rage these days. I'm not going to lie, I'm a bit of what you may call a "tree hugger". I recycle anything I can whether it be cardboard, aluminum cans, paper, plastic, and glass, I even have a small little compost bucket that's festering in the garage; I conserve energy, I drive a fuel efficient car, I have cloth bags for the grocery store, I pick up trash on the sidewalk as I'm walking the dog. I'm not a sheep following the herd, it's just how I roll, I don't push it on other people, to each his own, I just like doing it.

My recycling doesn't end there. My green heart extends all the way to my music. Sure, it doesn't do much for the environment, but it resuses old ideas that have stalled or that didn't quite work with their original tune.

That's the beauty of my old Moleskine notebook because all of my old ideas are there just waiting for a resurrection among the wrinkled and scribbled over pages. My Garageband folder also has a long list of weird titled guitar riffs and song segments, some that I haven't listened to in years. (Fluff, Fish, Sox In Japan, and I Suck to name a few.) I've found it's absolutely necessary to take out these old "gems" from yester-year for consideration in the tunage of today.

Songwriting is just that fickle of a friend. What works now may not work in five minutes, then will work a year later in a totally different context. I never completely give up on anything and I think that's very important to the process. (Yeah, I talk about my "process" a lot. This stupid process fuels my obsession but can be the bane of my existense on my worst day.)

I love hearing examples of this same technique in the big leagues. I stumbled across an old demo from one of my fave bands Three Days Grace called "This Movie". I immediately recognized the beginning riff as a riff from their debut self titled album and a song called "Overrated". It's exciting to hear the differences and the massive improvements from one song to the other.

It goes to show that when it comes to music, nothing is set in stone. (Well, until you release that major label debut. If you steal an idea from one of those songs you'll just be seen as unoriginal.) Thanks to my short-term musical memory I'm constantly flipping through my books in my attempt to reuse, reduce and recycle into my next full tune that could end up itself being torn apart and reused somewhere else.

Though, just like most recyclable materials, it's probably good to know when to just throw it in the trash because you've gotten about all the use it held. After all, what's the point of using a over used, out of date piece of recycled music that can't hold it's shape and may even stink a little. That's not rockin', not one bit.