I don’t usually document my work. I’ll tweak, refine, slowly write a song in my head, singing it over and over and over until I’m satisfied. But, for the sake of curiosity, let’s do one en plein air and see what the process looks like.
No promises on a timeline here; the garden keeps me busy, and busier, as summer progresses. But today I was biking home from work, listening to Beck (I recently bought Hyperspace), and one of the songs had a groove, a mood, a storyline I thought I could riff on. I don’t really know the album yet, and I don’t think I want to hear that song again—not until my own takes a more definite shape. (Almost all my stuff starts this way: I’ll hear someone else’s groove or melodic idea that I like, and say Yeah, I like that, let’s try something like that.)
Anyway, I went out to water the garden, and sang to myself for an hour. Then I came inside and sang this at the kitchen table.
If I woke up and everything was gone
No roof, no walls, just summer sky and birdsong
I maybe had a life, somewhere I need to be
And cutting through the air, a robin’s voice, solitary
Almost all the lyrics came in 5 or 10 minutes—everything except the last line, which I mulled for the remainder of the hour (along with honing the melody and cadence). The first 3 lines are basic world-building, setting up the story. That’s easy. But the last line is the hinge, the image that everything else relies on. Already, I say lose the “And”—it’s clutter. So then, “Cutting through the air, a robin’s voice”. Lately we’ve been waking up to animal noises, early in the morning, and it’s bizarre. Animal voices can be so sharp, so sudden, like they come from an alien world. But is that the best image for telling the story? Hard to say, when I’m not sure yet what the story is… We’ll revisit this when we know more.
Writing melody-first, no instrument in my hands, is not how I started out—but nowadays I find it easier (which I talked about over here). Most obviously, the chords underneath this melody could go I, IV, V, I. That would sound like this.
But! As someone who rarely takes the path of least resistance, I trust I’ll pick up my guitar and try some different progressions before I settle on one.
Two things I know already:
1) Next we’ll kick into the chorus, and we’ll hit the tonic, the high note we’ve been flirting with but haven’t reached yet. Then, immediately, we’ll hit the relative minor. This move feels obvious, inevitable. Not sure why. Is it worth second-guessing? Maybe (because I second-guess everything), but probably not, when I already hear it as the payoff, the hook. Too good, too satisfying, to deny. Stay tuned for that—once I figure out some words.
2) Verse 2 could follow the same thematic vein: human civilization is gone, and we look around, see what’s out there. BUT. I think that’s the wrong move. The story would stagnate. The emotional heart is about losing someone you love. Playing “what if” in the first verse should turn into a more real, more literal grappling with loss from the second verse onward. That’s my intuition. It took me a long time to learn, a song’s logic matters less than its emotional truth. Prose may be linear, but poetry and songwriting don’t have to be. Juxtaposing images, without necessarily connecting the dots, is one of my favorite modes in songwriting.
Other thoughts:
3) I usually write high, then lower a song until I can sing it comfortably. Here, I started closer to G (probably my least favorite key to sing in), then quickly dropped it to F# (where a lot of my songs hang out). Once we hit that high note in the chorus, we’ll see how I continue to deal with F#.
4) When I started out, I heard the folk-rock coming through, which felt a tad too comfortable. (Everything I write is in the pattern of Glen Phillips, like it or not; that stuff is deep in my brain.) So I tried to massage the melody away from the folkiness, with some sharper, more decisive turns. I’ve also been thinking lately how I get too comfortable, relying on long verses, the slow build. How would my songs work if they got to the chorus more quickly? Or if I started with the chorus? I’m not so good with choruses. I want to do better with that.
Sooo… What next? Probably the process will change for being more deliberate and demonstrative. That’s OK. I would actually love to collaborate. Chime in, let’s workshop this in real time. That’ll give me motivation to update regularly with new bits and pieces.