Song of myself - Remix
[note: I started writing this post over a week ago, and I've been too busy house / job hunting and working to finish it. It may not even make any sense anymore. And yet...]
Not really.
Attempting to write a body of songs on a deadline has taught me a few things about myself, and perhaps this will ultimately be the value of this experiment.
I've been a musician as long as I can remember, starting with singing in church and school when I was six or seven. I've played in all kinds of bands, from synth-funk to glam-noise to metal to industrial to avant-garde experimental to acid jazz to plain-old guitar pop.
In all cases, I was either an instrumentalist / sideman or a co-writer working with a lyricist. I only wrote a full song with lyrics about once a year.
My favorite role is the "cool sounds guy," which is pretty much what I do with my current band, weaklazyliar. I do all the tasty keyboard stuff: electric piano grooves, Moog lead lines and noise beds, B3 flourishes. The songs are written by Gerlinda, the guitarist / singer, and Chris, the bassist. They bake the cake, and I get to put flowers and swirly bits on it.
This little 30 Day thing has been my attempt to become a prolific baker; to build the frame and make the thing. I do this all the time with instrumental stuff - it's like therapy to pile up sounds and grooves and try to make a coherent composition out of it all. It's different, though, when words come into play - you are now communicating on a different, less abstract level. It takes real skill and (more importantly) confidence to do it right. You have to feel something that needs to be said; it's similar to the drive a writer feels to put words on a page and tell stories. I don't have it. I'm a competent writer, from a word-on-page stanpoint, and I've written some short fiction and a very little poetry, but I lack that urge that real writers have.
I do have other undeniable drives. I pick up a guitar early every day. They lay around my bedroom like fallen trees, leaning against the bed and the desk and the pile of coats. I can spend hours and hours in the studio layering keyboard sounds and samples and beats and random found audio. I like noise. Noise is good.
I suppose I will keep writing songs, and trying to finish them, but the deadline for completion is today, and I never really got past song two. So there's that.
But hey, I did get a job offer today. And I might put a bid on house later in the week. Failure begets success.
Or something.
Not really.
Attempting to write a body of songs on a deadline has taught me a few things about myself, and perhaps this will ultimately be the value of this experiment.
I've been a musician as long as I can remember, starting with singing in church and school when I was six or seven. I've played in all kinds of bands, from synth-funk to glam-noise to metal to industrial to avant-garde experimental to acid jazz to plain-old guitar pop.
In all cases, I was either an instrumentalist / sideman or a co-writer working with a lyricist. I only wrote a full song with lyrics about once a year.
My favorite role is the "cool sounds guy," which is pretty much what I do with my current band, weaklazyliar. I do all the tasty keyboard stuff: electric piano grooves, Moog lead lines and noise beds, B3 flourishes. The songs are written by Gerlinda, the guitarist / singer, and Chris, the bassist. They bake the cake, and I get to put flowers and swirly bits on it.
This little 30 Day thing has been my attempt to become a prolific baker; to build the frame and make the thing. I do this all the time with instrumental stuff - it's like therapy to pile up sounds and grooves and try to make a coherent composition out of it all. It's different, though, when words come into play - you are now communicating on a different, less abstract level. It takes real skill and (more importantly) confidence to do it right. You have to feel something that needs to be said; it's similar to the drive a writer feels to put words on a page and tell stories. I don't have it. I'm a competent writer, from a word-on-page stanpoint, and I've written some short fiction and a very little poetry, but I lack that urge that real writers have.
I do have other undeniable drives. I pick up a guitar early every day. They lay around my bedroom like fallen trees, leaning against the bed and the desk and the pile of coats. I can spend hours and hours in the studio layering keyboard sounds and samples and beats and random found audio. I like noise. Noise is good.
I suppose I will keep writing songs, and trying to finish them, but the deadline for completion is today, and I never really got past song two. So there's that.
But hey, I did get a job offer today. And I might put a bid on house later in the week. Failure begets success.
Or something.
posted by tay0 at 11:56
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