Thursday, May 27, 2010

writing

Yesterday was a good writing day - wrote lyrics to a song I worked on during the flood. It was difficult because it is personal and emotional. Hard to define and describe the feelings without revealing too much information. I don't want to lay it all out on the line on this one and name names, so to speak, I just want to talk about the emotional aspect of it. So there's no "furniture" as they say here in Nashville, just pure emotions. I'm still working on it, but at least I've got a rough draft. I think the music is beautiful. I think the lyrics are working, but I need to let someone else hear it to get their feedback.
And I went to my co-writer's house last night and we did a revision of our song from last week. He'd taken it to the critique session and we re-wrote lyrics to the lines that were unclear or confusing to the group. I truly enjoy co-writing, we always have fun and laugh! Writing alone can be, well, lonely! It's necessary for me to do, to get inside my head and really listen to what's being said in there (I know that sounds crazy, but you songwriters understand - right?).
But too much time alone can make me climb the walls. I always joke that solitary confinement is either for prisoners as punishment, or spiritual men as a way of finding God. So I guess it's either or both, depending on my mood or how creative I am. If I'm creative, it's heaven. If I can't write, then it's a hair-pulling experience.
OK, so then after we re-wrote the lyrics, I played him 3 of my song ideas I'd written for the TV show. He liked parts of each of them..I'd written some of them as exercises for myself. One song has a key-change for the chorus, another song I wrote two chords per bar as an exercise. I try to force myself to push myself out of my comfort zone. So I do exercises like that - but ultimately the song must sound good -right? Of course...
So I'm going to keep the verse to one of the songs which he liked, and write a new chorus. He thought he was going to hurt my feelings by telling me he didn't like the chorus and that he felt the energy drop on it. But I'm taking it as another opportunity to push myself, to take critique and use it to create something better. I will work on it today. I always felt that a song was "sacred", that once it was written it was like the Holy Scrolls - that it couldn't be altered. Whatever! Yes, it can be altered and improved. Especially if the initial song was written as an exercise, then I just have more exercise to do...no big deal! So I'm excited about writing more music today. Lyrics are very time consuming for me, and I don't usually write music on the days I write lyrics. So the music wheels get squeaky. Today I will oil them up. Thanks for listening!

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