Last Monday I started the song title challenge as a means of starting the week creatively.
Here’s the second installment.
What title does this picture inspire?
52 Things #4 – Mother’s Been Talking To Ghosts Again
This year I’m aiming to release a new song every Sunday (well, mostly new songs. There’ll also be live tracks, new versions of old songs etc.).
Here’s number 4, a return to the steampunk themes I wrote about for my first 2 albums. It’s called Mother’s Been Talking To Ghosts Again.
Monday Morning Title Challenge #1
Titles are important – often a good title can inspire a whole song.
So as an aide to inspiration I thought it might be useful to start the ‘Monday Morning Title Challenge’.
It’s dead simple. Each week I’ll post a picture from Flickr.com that I think is interesting.
I challenge you to come up with a song title that fits the picture.
Here’s the first picture:
52 Things #3 – Last Sunlight
Here’s 52 Things #3 – Last Sunlight.
I’m releasing a new piece of music every weekend for 52 weeks. I sort of know what I’m doing up until half way through March.
This is a new version of an old song – I’ve redone some of the guitars, bass and drums and remixed it.
Enjoy!
Maybe we’ll surface soon,
Under a winter moon,
Thaw must have left weakness.
Maybe we’ll freeze again
Awaiting the summer rain,
Ice in our veins.
A ship sails on a solid sea,
A perfect place for you and me,
A moondial turns until we move again.
Last sunlight for six months,
Last movement this year.
Last Sunlight Fading,
Ice in our veins.
A New Look and a New Facebook Page.
Indiesongwriter.net now has a new look, a new log:
… and a new facebook page, which you should come a ‘like’.
What Teaching Songwriting To High School Kids Has Taught Me
I had a great morning teaching songwriting to year 8 pupils (12-13 years old) today.
I can’t share recordings with you – for various reasons I have to keep a slight distance between the school work and my personal online life – but I can share with you a couple of thoughts that occured to me:-
Experimentation is vital – the pupils that made the best progress were those who were willing to try things out and not be too precious about their work. There is a cliché in education that the classroom should be a place where pupils are ‘free to fail’ – that they should not be afraid to get things wrong because that fear can stop you trying out no ideas.
The same is true of songwriting – make mistakes, try stuff that might not work because even if a lot fo the time it doesn’t, plenty of times it will.
Originality is learned – even my most creative pupils weren’t writing songs that sounded hugely original. But that’s okay, because they were using ideas that were new to them – within their frame of reference they were being original.
What does that say for all of us? You can only be original within the parameters you know – if all you know is current top 40 pop and the X Factor you’ll write songs that fit within that. If you aim to something more original you’re going to have to expand your horizons as a listener and music fan. Listen to more – find music that’s new to you and work out what makes it new and exciting.
Songwriting is fun – I knew this already of course, but there’s nothing like two hours of songwriting with 30 lively 13 year olds to remind you exactly how much fun this artform is.
Why you shouldn’t let the fear of feedback stop you making music – Rhys Anslow and Baby Steps
Rhys Anslow is a solo bass player who just finished recording his first album ‘Baby Steps’. You can hear the album at www.rhysanslow.co.uk. He has written about the process of composing and recording the album:
Getting Started
2 weeks ago at the age of 22 I finally released my debut album. I’ve received kind words, endorsement and even a bit of money as a result and I’m very grateful for all of it. Grateful because 17 months ago I wouldn’t have considered recording a song let alone selling an album.
At the age of 21 years I suffered from the anxiety of being perceived negatively. I hated the idea of people listening to my music and thinking “Wow, that’s terrible”. I couldn’t cope with the idea of putting my heart and soul into the art form I love only to have it stamped on.
So what changed?
The realisation of what this anxiety would lead to – What if I never made music?
This hit me hard.
What was worse?
Producing music and then finding out that somebody thought it rubbish?
Or
Being in love with an art form yet never indulging in it?
Taking the plunge
Realising how detrimental the latter option would have been to my life was an epiphany. It is better to produce something and take the risk.
So I took the plunge. I recorded a simple piece, created using my bass and a looper, uploaded it to a soundcloud account, created a blog to introduce it and waited to see if any of my social media contacts would listen to it.
They did. Only a small amount but enough to talk to me, give me advice on the recording and tell me they enjoyed it.
I’d taken the bait and now knew how fulfilling the process of creating art was. I now knew that I had to take a bigger plunge. I had to create more music, but I had find a creative process that could to take a bit of advice from time to time and that deliver the narrative and writing process behind each song (because if the reader has no way to access the meaning of the art, how are they going to relate to it?).
Summer Music Project
On the 9th July 2010 I released my ‘Summer Music Project’ which took place over a 10 week period. The aim being to write and record a song every single week, then, every 2 weeks, release an update of how the process was going as well as a song from the writing period for people to listen to. I used my Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages to deliver content from the process. Although my community was limited I still got feedback, I still got conversations over my music and this made me very happy.
The ‘Summer Music Project’ finished on the week of 6th September 2010. With the final song demo finished I was all ready to hit the final recording process, but I hit an unplanned problem. That week I had just restarted University, more specifically my third and final year of Uni. The final year was thrown at me with full force and I knew that it, sadly, took precedence over the finalizing of the album.
However, it was not wasted in vain. Being a music student my year was packed with the teaching of performing and recording music which lead me to gaining experience that would benefit the recording process of my album. It also gave me time to slowly upgrade my gear. The entire of the ‘Summer Music Project’ was recorded using an Acer laptop and ‘Kristal’ software to record, as such the entire process was plagued with issues. By the time my University year ended I had updated to an IMac (which is a superior machine regardless of your opinion) and had with it the brand new version of GarageBand (which again was vastly superior).
In June 2011 I finally got back to work on the album. However, due to my time being taken away from the process, I needed to get back in touch with the songs. I took this time to enable a ‘demoing period’.
Demos and Recording
The ‘demoing period’ was quite important to me, it gave me the opportunity to record rough versions of all the songs on my new hardware. This gave me the opportunity to see where the weaknesses were in the songs, cut out any unnecessary parts and then finalize the sounds and layers. I believe this gave the whole album a dimension of strength that it didn’t have before. This allowed the final record process to go along pretty much without any hitch.
The final part of the process was mixing and mastering – the second biggest part of the album after writing it.
As the creator you want your music to sound as amazing as possible to the best standards as possible. My tips for this mixing and mastering would be:
- Find several albums with sounds you’d like to emulate. Locate that sound and really think “why do I want that sound”and “how was it created?”
- Only ever mix one song a day. Hard I know but it’s worth it. Giving yourself breathing space and a fresh pair of
- ears of each listen to a virtue, it really is.
- Once you think you’ve achieved a sound you are happy with stick that song on your MP3 player and listen to it along
- with your other music at a suitable time. I get into work at least 20 minutes before anyone else and that gave me an opportunity to listen to the track on my own with no distractions.
- Have a time limit. The same as with the writing period. Yes, you need a good amount of time to carry out this process but to much time will lead to boredom with the tunes and you’lleventually lead to missing parts from songs. Give yourself a cut off point for your album
It took me a good 2 months to get a result that I knew I couldn’t improve, but it was worth every second.
Release!
My debut album ‘Baby Steps’ (the name being a representation of the albums creation) was released on the 21st November 2011. Do I think people have listened to these songs and thought “I don’t like this”? Do I think people will listen to the release in the future and think “I don’t like this”?
When these questions arise the only real question worth asked is “Does that even matter?”. As I said at the start of this article – At this point I’ve received kinds words, endorsement and even a bit of money as a result (that’s right, there are humans in the world that enjoy my music so much that they’ve even parted with their hard earned currency to listen to it – Wow). All this is amazing, it really is. Having someone listening to and enjoying your music really is and always will be one of the greatest highlights of my short existence on this planet.
Your personal satisfaction of producing art you love is paramount. Satisfy this and you shall be happy.
- I don’t know about you, but I absolutely empathise with Rhys’s dilemma – put out music that isn’t perfect or let your fear of criticism silence you.
I’ve put out quite a lot of music over the last few years – I’ve had plenty of feedback and sometimes it isn’t 100% positive. That can be really useful, but sometimes it isn’t at all (my first solo album recieved a bad review that said almost nothing about the music). Generally speaking however, you find the fear of criticism is much worse than any actual criticism you recieve.
So – album creation stories, tips or advice? – That’s what the comments are for!
52 Things #2 – Papercut
Another weekend, and the second of my 52 Things.
(Here’s a link to 52 Things #1 – Without your Hand)
What’s that? My new year’s resolution is to release a new musical thing every weekend this year. Mostly this’ll be new songs, but the occasional live track or video might turn up as well.
Papercut is a song I’ve had knocking about for a couple of years that I have finally got round to finishing.
I wrote a couple of posts about the process of composing this tune.
Sketching a Song in Two Minutes Flat (Thanks Gary Ewer)
Gary Ewer recently linked to an article of his called ‘Five Things to Do When You Don’t Feel Like Writing a Song’ – the post contains some songwriting games you can use to get the creative juices flowing.
Here’s the first:
Take the pressure off to write a full song, and engage in some songwriting “games”: Set the timer for a ridiculously short period of time, like two minutes, and see if you can come up with a verse and chorus (with bonus points if you actually manage a lyric to go with it!) Once you’re done, reset the timer and go at it again. Most of what you’ll write will be… rough. But some of it you’ll find to be useful, so don’t throw anything out.
Which I have foolishly decided to have a go at. So without further ado, I shall get to it.
Equipment used:
Cubase
A microphone
A guitar
Notepad
My voice
a long day and not enough sleep.
Rules: 2 mins thinking/experimenting time.
one take recording.
rambling explanation after each little scratch demo.
Song sketch no.1 – The kinda things they say.
The kinda things they say to you
The kinda of things they do
The way the act as if you’re not exactly there
you’re not exactly whole.
The acts of violence that flash
Behind you’re smiling eyes
The bones that crunch when you let fly.
Speak when you’re spoken
Think when you’re told to think
the kinda they say shall not questioned
Sketch1 by Indiesongwriter.net
no 2.
Well they won’t let me go where I’m needed
And they’ve chained me under the sky
One of these days I’ll break free
I swear that will
Use the powers I have just for me
And they won’t like it when I do
Sketch2 by Indiesongwriter.net
No.3
Hold your head right back
it helps to staunch the flow
that’s what love feels like
Darling don’t you know?
keep your lips tight shut
You know what’s good for you
If I break i keep it if I want it I get
love hurts
love hurts
One day I’ll break free
by doing what he did to me
Sketch3 by Indiesongwriter.net
No.4
Well I needed you
And do still
Oh I needed you when I called
Lit fires to scare them all
And you came, darling
You came when I called
You came to me oh my sweet
Came when
Sketch4 by Indiesongwriter.net
No.5
Season broke
Year turned
Dust grew
silent hand
Never say always
Never say done
Sketch5 by Indiesongwriter.net
Are these great pieces of music? Of course not! each of them represents two minutes sketching. However, I think there’s a little potential in one or two and it’s a great way to get the creative muscles flexing after a period without much songwriting going on.
52 Things #1 – Without Your Hand
New year, New goals
I spent the latter half of last year toying with various songs but getting little finished. I have resolved to remedy this by releasing a new ‘thing’ every Sunday this year – hence ’52 things’.
Mostly I’ll be releasing new songs, but sometimes there will be live recordings, demos from the FAWM challenge and things of that ilk.
Yes, I realise this might be quite a challenge – 52 new pieces of work, whether new songs or live tracks, is a big ask. However, this will force me to complete all the half finished tracks I have sitting on the harddrive and in notebooks.
52 Things #1 – Without Your Hand
Without Your Hand is a song I originally wrote for the 5090 challenge last year. It’s the first from a new 5 track EP called ‘Papercuts Sunlight Snow‘ tracks from which will form some of the first ’52 Things’.
Free Ebooks
