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17 August 2008

Half-Baked

I generally have a music-first approach to songwriting-- I start with the music and then let that inspire the lyrics. I suspect that my lyrics might suffer from using this approach, but whenever I try to write lyrics first, I can't seem to come up with music that works for them.

Today was my first day off work in far too long and it was my first chance to sit at the keyboard during piano-appropriate hours. I don't have anything finished, but I came up with three half-formed ideas... we'll see if any of them develop into full songs.



Fair warning: these aren't performances. This is just me improvising on the piano and making up lyrics as I go along. Definitely not ipod-ready!

photo credit luz a. villa

Back in Action (However Briefly)

Sorry that I've been M.I.A. this week-- I'm working eighty hours a week for the next month and in my limited time off, I'm going on a few dates (what?), trying to maximize time spent with friends who are moving (no!), and-- when possible-- catching up on much-needed sleep.

But!

Last night, I was out and about at the Dane 101 show at The Frequency. I was there to catch some shaky-cam action of my friend Clarity J. Unfortunately, the footage is currently locked away on mysterious little tapes in a camcorder that belongs to our friend Andrew. I hope to share it with you soon because she was fantastic.



Pony Parade - Clarity J



Clare's played in a successful indie pop duo for years, but is newly on her own as a singer-songwriter. It must be scary to be up on that stage all by yourself after sharing it for so long, but if the audience's response to her (at least one instance of "You're so cute!" yelled between songs) was any indication, she's going to do just fine.

I missed a few of the other acts due to a mid-show trip to the 'Dise for some grilled cheese sandwiches and irish cream (best combo ever), but I want to tell you about a few bands that really impressed me.

First: The Takebacks. This act wasn't even on the original line-up, but they absolutely blew me away. Based on their band name, I was expecting high-energy pop punk, but they were this, like, shoe-gazey explosion of electrifying goodness with hints of reggae sneaking in around the edges. It was super good.

Three minutes into their set, a friend leaned over to me-- unprovoked-- and whispered: "He's married," referring to the dreamboat lead singer. Dude, it's all about the music here! Although, I have to admit that I basically had a huge talent crush on the entire band. They're all pretty adorable.

Go see them when you can and pick up a CD. They were selling them last night for $5.



Inna Rut - The Takebacks



Speaking of crushes, another band I loved was Madison favorites The Shabelles. Oh, that keyboardist. So cute. Anyway, they were super fun and had the whole bar bopping along to their raunchy pop-a-licious goodness.



Nothing - The Shabelles


I was excited to see Pale Young Gentlemen as I've been a fan since their debut album (which I strongly recommend getting your hands on as it lived in my CD player for a full three months before I reluctantly took it out of circulation). That album is equal parts classical music recital and wild west saloon drinking game. It's swaggering and grandiose and it's effing beautiful. They remind me a bit of Regina Spektor in this piano-as-time-machine way. They're like a couple that's doing the tango, but the man has a rose between his lips at a certain jaunty angle that says, We're in on the joke.

Unfortunately, I was too tired to keep my eyes open after The Shabelles and will have to catch them live another time.

Keep on keepin' on, Madison music scene!

photo credit: david de young

06 August 2008

For Your iPod: September 29th

Enough about me, let's talk about someone else.

Specifically, I want to talk about the artist who calls herself September 29th. She lives in Italy and she is 25-years-old and she is amazing. Her voice is equal parts ether and steel; her lyrics a poignant blend of poetry and madness.


First, let's talk about this song that I love. It's called "Meditation Upon the Perfect Word" and it is painfully beautiful. I can't stop listening to it. You should listen to it, too.



And I understand
That what's good is the Prelude
To what's bad
And what's sad is a path
Towards woods of Joy...


Holy crap, y'all.


She also makes these incredibly rad music videos that I kind of cannot even handle. This one's called "Heavy Times" and it gets better every time I hear it.



Broken hearts, windows
Widows, cigarettes,
Global warming,
Global warning
We're getting used to living
In these Heavy Times.


This next one is a cartoon. The reason for watching it should be obvious.

The song is called "Legend".



You are leaning on the window sill
The Moon is pale,
Looks ill.
And up there, on the barefoot hill,
The dogs are barking to the ghosts.



You can visit her website here and check out more of her songs on thesixtyone or on her myspace page. You can buy her album Herald of the Morn here for $10, including shipping.

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I'm hoping to make these artist intros a regular occurrence on my blog. You know, for the ten people who read it. Hello, friends!

Letting the Bad Ones Have Their Turn

A friend of mine once said that writing is like having a thousand words queued up inside of your brain. The problem is that the best ones are stuck in the back, waiting their turn, which means you've got to spit out all the bad ones first.

My problem as a fiction writer is that I never want to let the bad ones have their turn. I just sit there with my mouth clamped shut, pen hovered, waiting for the good ones to leapfrog their way to the front.

They rarely do.


As a musician, I see every song as an opportunity to learn and to grow. My problem as a fiction writer is that there's no joy for me in the learning and growing; I see it only as an affirmation that I'm not already good enough. But as a musician? I don't expect to be good. When I write bad music, I'm unsurprised and unbothered and I move on. And when I write good music? I'm amazed and I'm thrilled and I move on.

The point of this post is to say that I write a lot of amazingly bad music. For every song that I post, there are a thousand deleted takes of me singing the most ridiculous lyrics, banging around on the keyboard like a six-year-old, and hitting notes that cannot and should not be heard by the human ear.

And that's the whole point of something like February Album Writing Month or 50 Songs in 90 Days: To get to the good ones, you've got to let the bad ones have their turn.

photo courtesy of meredith_farmer

05 August 2008

Even In the Desert, It Sometimes Rains

A few years ago, I drove across the country with someone I didn't know. We were two strangers trapped in a cramped Toyota Camry for five days-- both in a sort of existential place in our lives, in the midst of major life changes and still stinging from recent, painful break-ups. We spent a night in Las Vegas on the way and you couldn't choose two more perfect people to share a gaudy motel room in the desert on a rainy summer night.

This isn't a full demo, but it's a snippet of an idea I'm working on. The piano and "violins" are me, but the guitar is not. (It's just a loop.)



More to come.

04 August 2008

Improvisation & Being Mindful of Your Medium

Tonight began with pisco sours & hand-rolled cigarettes on the front porch, but soon led, inevitably, to guitars and tambourines on sloping couches. I live in a house of musicians and usually these jam sessions find me playing an oil can with a wooden spoon or harmonizing shyly in a corner, but this time my housemates insisted that I haul my keyboard downstairs and join the fun.

I was incredibly nervous because I have essentially zero experience playing music with other people and certainly don't have experience improvising music with other people. But, guys, it was so much easier than I thought! I've been practicing piano almost every day and I'm getting much better at hearing a chord and then reproducing it on command or finding a complementary chord. I guess that really is something you can learn with practice. I'm still shy about playing music live, but I'm excited about getting better.


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I've been thinking a lot about songwriting lately. It's still very new to me, but I've spent most of my life thinking about writing in other forms.

Some of the best screenwriting advice I've ever heard is: Be mindful of your medium. Theoretically, you have a story to tell and you choose a certain medium (film, photography, poetry, etc.) because that's the best medium in which to tell your story. If you've chosen film as your medium, then you should take advantage of the aspects of film that make it unique; writing a screenplay that is purely dialogue-driven is a waste of the medium.

I think the same goes for music: every song is a story that you tell and you've chosen music as the medium for telling that story. We should make sure its the right medium and, if it is, take full advantage of what that medium has to offer. In other words: a song should be musical! It's not a poem.

These thoughts aren't entirely cohesive, but I hope it gives you something to think about. We can talk about it over pisco sours the next time I see you.

photo credit: zen

New Demo for "Frequency"

This still needs work, but here's an updated demo. It's basically just clearer vocals and a little bit of musical rearrangement.



The old demo is here.

Incidentally, I'm not sure what would possess me to write a song that includes notes I can't actually hit, but... there you go.

02 August 2008

New Demo - "When My Eyes Are Blue"

New and drastically different demo for When My Eyes Are Blue. The song still isn't finished, but as a wise man once said: "Art is never finished, only abandoned."

This song feels like a major departure for me, although I don't know if it will sound that way to you. For one thing, I wrote this song entirely on the piano, whereas most of my songs rely on loops more heavily than I'd prefer.

I also feel like this song differs lyrically from some of my recent songs. As a writer, I'd expect lyrics to be the easiest part of songwriting, but I've found that I really struggle to be honest as a songwriter. It's so easy to fall back on cliches rather than writing a song than really comes from an honest place.

This song feels honest to me.





When My Eyes Are Blue

Talk me down again
Seem to love this ledge
What a view

I've got coffee on
I know you like it strong
You like it strong
Won't be warm for long

And you're waiting for me
To wake up from this dream
From this dream
And I don't want to lie to you
But I'm only sad when my eyes are blue

Twilight's slipping in
It's found me again
Oh, again

And you're waiting for me
To wake up from this dream
From this dream
And I don't want to lie to you
But I'm only sad when my eyes are blue

BRIDGE

And you're waiting for me
To wake up from this dream
But I just sleep

And I don't want to lie to you
But I'm only sad when my eyes are blue