Thursday 28 February 2013
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| Lyrics started for 'Can't Justify' |
At two in the afternoon I worked on the music for some lyrics written by @kahlo2013 on FAWM. The title, Songs In Our Heads, was great and the lyrics incredible. She had suggested putting some music that I had put up without lyrics to these lyrics of hers and I could see why. It took a little work because I still had the melody for the lyrics I had thrown away back in about September when I came up with the music. I also had to come up with a middle eight so to speak, because I hadn't written music for that before. I had finished recording a quick live demo of it by a quarter to three. That is our third collaboration for FAWM. I wish that I had done more work with her actually, because her words are amazing.
I had a play with one of my mandolins from ten to four until ten past four, and then between twenty past four and twenty to five I wrote and recorded (on mandolin) the song Farewell Fawm - one of quite a few songs that I have written over FAWM that is around the one minute mark.
At two minutes past seven I looked on Titular again. I'm not sure whether I will look back at those beforehand, or look back at them at the beginning of FAWM 2014... I've still got to make my mind up.
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| Mandolins, uke, side of hollow body acoustic just in shot. |
From eight until nine I played around with my copy of Reason 5.0, which I had received the previous day through the post from my uncle (thank you very much). This was followed at ten past nine by me suddenly changing my opinion on the musical backing I had in my head for Declaration. It took until twenty to eleven, but I had a really good workable demo for the song uploaded onto the FAWM website - yes. A more darkly brooding synth feel to the song than the original vocal and piano that I was originally thinking of. Not that it sounds anything like it, but I was thinking a little bit of Bruce Springsteen's Streets of Philadelphia as inspiration. It is funny in a way that I mentioned, because during FAWM I have purposely tried not to listen to too much music because I didn't want to be influenced by it too much, except for a few things I'd listened to. That means that songs which came to mind, came to mind because they are memorable to me. The music style was something different from me. Still with the rubbish vocal sound from built-in laptop mic using Audacity - a program that, although brilliant for freeware, is irritating in that I can't hear what I am doing in my headphones, so pitching is a pain in the neck.
Actually, after a fair number of people have suggested it, I have just tonight (1st of March) downloaded a copy of Reaper on the 60 trial. I am looking forward to seeing how that works out.
At twenty five to midnight I suddenly noticed that I had missed a skirmish between 10 and 11pm GMT - gutted. However, I saw the title (Before The Sun) and still went for it. What I finished with, at ten to midnight, was recorded a capella, but I sort of like it. I've really enjoyed these skirmish songs.
Friday 1 March 2013
So, FAWM was over then, or so I thought...
In the forums on FAWM there was a post from Sean McGaughey (who is @ductapeguy on the FAWM site) asking for people to record "reflections on FAWM", so I did just that. I shouldn't say, but he asked for me to suggest a song from someone else on FAWM that I had liked and one of my own. The song by someone else that I had chosen was Kick The Can by @Brownium. Now, I could have gone for something by Hoopshank (+Paul Turrell), John Staples, Kevin Emmrich, Matt Blick, Matt Wood... The list is endless. The truth is that there are actual memories for me with that song - it was a skirmish song. I had written a song with the same title during the same skirmish, as had so many others (including both Kevin & John - click here for the list page of all songs with that title). In truth, I actually wrote six names on little bits of card I found, mixed them all up, went out for a patrol of the site I was doing security for, and then just picked one up, and it was this one. I won't tell you who all the other five people's names were but be assured that I just couldn't decide any other way.
I noticed a post on the thread later that mentioned another skirmish taking place at what would be 3 in the morning of March the 1st here in the UK and felt terrible. I'd had so much fun with skirmishes during FAWM (I had written ten skirmish songs on my own and collaborated on another with @kahlo2013). The others on FAWM were lovely and basically said, "well, it's still the 28th of February until midday GMT somewhere in the world." That was nice. :D
From ten past three in the morning then until around ten to four I wrote the song Automatic. Initially I had The Pointer Sisters stuck in my head, but then I thought "ooh, automatic, automaton, robots, kraftwerk, and I have the Reason software now. Why not?" I started writing out some lyrics and whilst doing that worked on a rough backing for verse and then chorus (actually, more than Kraftwerk themselves have a lot of the time). I posted the lyrics up at five to four, and the rough demo was up for half past four I think. I liked it, and it was very different for me. Who would expect that - not only the musical backing, but I went the whole hog with even trying to sound like a robot with that, I'm sorry, probably bad impression of Ralf Hutter. I'm even thinking of actually doing an alternative in the German language... I'll have a think about that one.
A look back at FAWM -
So, what about FAWM then? The idea was to write 14 songs and I ended up with 69 of them on the page. Was I surprised? You bet I was. It's a bit of a cheat in a way though, because Songs In Our Head is really made with the music from the piece of music mentioned earlier, which is also in that list as a separate entity.
Of the songs, I am surprised to be very proud of virtually all of them. There are some niggles here and there, but all in all it's not a bad body of work, but then I am perhaps too open minded about music.
I learnt that FAWM is actually about the fun of song writing rather than trying to be perfect. Perfection is somewhere down the line when you look back at the material to do the whole selection business of choosing what songs to take further, and then you made edits and changes if necessary. It is also an interesting thing where you get good feedback on something and you initially thought it wasn't much cop - it makes you look at things differently. I thought that Puff The Dragon Now Oh So Tough (or whatever it is called) was really silly, but I seemed to have got good feedback about it. That's not the only one. I'd also not put things up and then looking back on them later I thought, "wow, that's not half bad" (take a bow Tears of Their Peoples).
In the end I also made a lot of friends on there who are incredibly talented. I wrote music for three songs whose lyrics were written by Elizabeth Perry (the aforementioned @kahlo2013), one with the very talented Wyman Griffith, one where Matt Blick had written the lyrics, and there was so much fun involved. It brought the fun to it all, and I really enjoy creating anyway. That's a thing with me anyhow, and I am so happy that I could be a part of it.
A great experience, and now I have signed up for something called 50/90, which lasts from, I think, the fourth of July until the first of October, and the idea is to write fifty songs in ninety days (hence the title). I probably won't reach that many since I've possibly sapped my creative juices in FAWM, but I will still take part and at least enjoy the company of those involved, some of who took part in FAWM.
Is there a downside to all of this? Well yes there is in a way... I am still a Security Guard who isn't in a band (unfortunately, because I miss that), and gigging live would be something I could only do occasionally because of the rotten hours. However, I will press on because writing and recording music gives me the fun that I need to counterbalance that. The nice responses I get are, as Kevin Emmrich said in a post, the proverbial cherry on top. People buying my product from Amazon and iTunes would be nice, but we can't have it all ways can we? ;-)
Thank you for reading, please take care.
Now after writing all of that it is the 2nd of March at 3.49 in the morning, but still the 1st in a lot of places around the world. Hello to my new friends everywhere in the world.
March 2 2013 (42 years, 3 months, and 4 days old).
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