Day 25: Chipping away

I recorded vocals for City Song, re-did them for July and You Amaze Me, and re-wrote some of the chords for Fail. Played around with my ukulele, started to get some interesting things happening but no actual song as yet. Tomorrow I'm going to do the final piano recording session so otherwise have been getting stuff ready for that. I've also been listening to the Hidden Cameras today, having helped out at a gig of theirs on Saturday for a friend. I hadn't heard their music before but they were really quite special, particularly as the gig was held in Shoreditch Church. I spoke to the vicar afterwards, which felt all kinds of wrong as I had a beer in my hand and had just watched a gay band singing about watersports. He didn't seem to mind.

Day 17: Already??

Just had a slight panic at the fact I'm now on day 17... But whatever. Today I recorded vocals for You Amaze Me. Now, the first line of this song is "If my life were a song/you'd be the bridge/bold and breathtaking and explorative", so I had sort of set myself up there - the song was going to have to have a pretty good bridge. I hadn't actually written it, when I recorded the piano part I recorded quite a few alternatives from which I thought I'd be able to make something good. Luckily today as I experimented with melodies over the top of the piano part I came up with something which in my opinion is a pretty killer bridge. And even better, it mentions Scrabble, which is my favourite board game. I think this may be the only ballad with the word Scrabble in it.

I also re-recorded vocals for The Race with the new preamp... Looking back I don't think I ever mentioned The Race - there are a few songs that happen in bits and I forget to refer to them in this blog. The Race I pretty much had figured out before I started and recorded in the first few days, it has some lyrics that I like:

I saw you out crawling to the crashing sea
I was out walking with the elderly
You were running out of money, running out of time
Driving yourself to the end of the line
Well the candle in your heart wasn't strong enough
Your torch bulb blew, the weather was rough
Then the lighthouse did it - lit your destiny
But it only showed you where you didn't want to be

The music here is building and building, so the imagery does the same - in the first part it's:
Crawling - Walking - Running - Driving
Then in the second:
Candle - Torch - Lighthouse

So there.

Oh, and the song I started to write yesterday will I think be called Everyone Likes Coffee Except Me.

Day 16: A brand new colour

Today I got a new melody on the guitar after doing a bit of retuning, no lyrics as yet. I woke up FOUR times in the night with ideas that I recorded into Garageband - listening to this in the morning is always hilarious, I basically hang out of bed and sing into my laptop in the mode of someone who isn't actually awake. Once I was actually awake I started work on the song You Amaze Me, it has some lyrics which refer to a story I read in primary school about a boy who discovers a ball that is a brand new colour. Trippy. I now have twelve songs that are completely written, nine of which are recorded. Today I messed around with trying to construct a track just using the noises I can make with my own body, I want to write a song about the separation between the physical and psychological selves. I want to write a lot of things, but whether this can be achieved a) in four weeks, and b) in two minute songs, remains to be seen. I think I may stick to my earlier advice and just keep playing until something comes together rather than thinking too much of a concept or of the end result - 'though this is much easier to do with music than it is with lyrics.

Day 14: Wires and hammers pt. 2

So today I risked my spine by lugging all my location recording stuff back into town for the second day of piano recording. I got parts for a new song called You Amaze Me and Reverie. I also sat with those words I found on the way back from High Barnet (see Day 6) and started to improvise. Now I don't write songs like this very often, but if I just keep playing and playing with lyrics in mind, usually something weird starts to happen - not at first, but after about ten minutes I start to get really (and I mean really) into it, sweating, swaying and gurning, and it's only when I get to that place looking like a total idiot that great chords start to appear. I can only do this on piano, as I'm much better than I am on the guitar (although my limitations on guitar actually make it better for songwriting in some ways). Anyway, I played and re-played for about half an hour, and ended up with something that sounds to me like it has something Vaughan Williams-y about it. I then tried to do some other stuff, re-recording a song that may be called July, and another about a reincarnated pigeon, but none of it quite came off.