AuthorI'm a high school English teacher who hasn't quite given up his dream of being a rock star. Archives
October 2022
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Week 5: Collaborate and Listen3/30/2022 This week I was reminded of the need to embrace the words of a true poet of the late 20th century: Robert Matthew Van Winkle. You may know him better as Vanilla Ice. The first verse of "Ice Ice Baby" asks the listeners to "Stop, collaborate and listen," which is honestly solid advice for ensuring one's success in any kind of creative endeavor. The message of the song gets a bit muddied from there as Ice talks about his brand new invention and how "something takes a hold of [him] tightly," and for some reason that makes him "flow like a harpoon daily and nightly." Regardless, I decided to take some of the lessons at the core of this song to heart, particularly the benefits of collaboration. I'll talk more about the "listening" aspect next week, but for now, I've found that the most productive aspect of my week has come from me taking the time to collaborate and forcing myself to let others read my lyrics, listen to my melodies, and help me see and hear what I couldn't. "Will it ever stop? Yo, I don't know" Vanilla Ice This Week's Progress: SongwritingProbably the most progress I made on lyric writing this week came from spending a good hour in the "studio" with my wife and having her look over what I've written so far. I played her the melody idea I had for the chorus to "Dying Light" enough times for the notes to imprint. After that, I just kept playing the chord progression over again until we stumbled upon some lyrical variations that really seem like they're on the right track to capturing the overall theme of the song. As with much of the other progress I've been making with my writing, I don't love what we're working with 100% right now, but I do feel a lot better about the direction the song is going than I did a couple of weeks ago. Of course, the biggest issue is still time and the fact that I can't always seem to find that dedicated hour to brute force myself through the missing pieces of a song. Even still, I have found that since that really productive session that even when I can squeeze in five minutes or so to look at lyrics, I am finding that it is easier to get them drafted than it had been before. This Week's Progress: VocalsI actually did get a chance to sing this week. Granted, it was also in one of those hour-long sessions where I mostly did vocal warm ups and embarrassed myself singing and playing "Thunderstruck," but still. Progress is progress, or so they say. Now, I might have gotten a little overzealous and made it so I needed a couple days to rest my voice afterwards, but it was legitimately exciting despite me definitely not hitting every note I wanted to. I don't know how much of my singing will be featuring on my production drafts of songs, but I do feel at least a little better about the prospect. Some Stats
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Week 4: Don't Bore Us...3/20/2022 One of the most cliché songwriting maxims of all time has been living rent-free in my head this week: "Don't bore us, get to the chorus." There is some truth to this idea, though I find I'm looking at it a bit differently than I have before when approaching music from the songwriter's perspective. First off, it would be nice to get to the chorus. It's the part that everybody is waiting for after all. So it has to be big. The melodies have to be epic and catchy. The lyrics are likely to repeat, so they better be on point. It's a lot of pressure, in other words, and for perhaps that reason and a combination of others, this week has seen me continue to struggle to make what I'd consider to be substantive progress on the music I'm writing. Maybe my problem is I'm writing in tiny little cubicles at coffee houses Photo by Tim Gouw on Unsplash This Week's Progress: SongwritingAs I mentioned last week, my principal focus has been on generating melodies for the chorus of "Dying Light." I think I like the melody I have at the moment (especially with the added backing harmony), but the lyrics are just eluding me for whatever reason. My goal for this week is to try to whip that section of the song into shape. I think the key will be just allowing myself to write the bad lyrics and be okay with something being there. They say perfect is the enemy of progress, and I need to allow myself to let go of the idea that I'm going to just grab the perfect lyrics from the ether. I'm not sure how this song will turn out at this point, but it won't go anywhere if I don't write something down. This Week's Progress: VocalsNot much to report here, unfortunately. In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to try and squeeze in time to practice singing this past week, but it just didn't happen. Singing is an interesting beast for me because unlike the guitar where I feel my relative experience level makes it easier to practice purposefully even with only fifteen minutes or so, I almost feel like with singing I need to give myself at least a half hour or forty-five minutes to accomplish anything productive. Right now, I'm worrying that the song I'm putting the most work into won't be able to have a good vocal recording by the time this project is over because my lack of time to work on singing is probably going to come back and bite me when I'm trying to get a good take of the chorus. I'm not completely without hope despite what my words would imply, but it is a little concerning. Over this next week, I'm recommitting to finding time to work on my vocals. Maybe if I only have fifteen minutes that time will be best spent doing warm-ups and other exercises, but at least that's something. Some Stats
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Week 3: Making Time3/16/2022 This past week of Genius Hour was the first where time, or the lack thereof, began to complicate the forward progress on this project. Progress was made, but not as much as I have seen in previous weeks. This isn't to say that every issue this week was down to struggles with timing, but when it doesn't feel like time is available to make substantial progress, I've found that it's often easy to convince yourself that doing even a little bit is not worth it. By the end of the week, fortunately, I was able to work beyond that hiccup by leaning on the techniques and exercises I have gleaned from my songwriting course to find ways to "hack" myself into inspiration for forward progress on my music. Not that kind of hacking. This Week's Progress: VocalsUnlike last week where I really got into exploring videos on voice exercises and warm-ups, I spent little to no time this week working on vocal exercises. Knowing how good my voice sounds now (read: not good at all), I'm sure that loss of a week will come back to bite me near the end of the project. That being said, I do feel pretty good about what exploring these voice videos has done to help me find my range and use that to guide my melody writing for the songs I'm working on. It's definitely helping me figure out what is feasible and what isn't with my current skill level, so that's something at least. This Week's Progress: SongwritingOn the songwriting front, much of my focus this week was on just giving myself time to do something productive. I probably only really got a combined hour or so of work in on writing itself this week, but there was some forward progress at least. Earlier in the week, I pulled out my guitar and allowed myself to just jam on some variations of a riff that I improvised in Eb Minor incorporating diminished intervals (for those who don't know music theory, these are technically "keyless" and have a tendency to sound dark). I wasn't sure if I liked the part or not, but I wrote it down so I could give myself some distance from it. Surprisingly, it actually still sounded okay when I listened to it a couple of days ago, so I'm thinking I might give myself some time next week to revisit it and experiment with some backing percussion and other variations that could be turned into parts for a song. My biggest struggle with songwriting so far has been with the song I'm tentatively calling "Dying Light" I referenced in my last post. The aspect of this particular song that is giving me the most trouble is the chorus. The chord progression for this part of the song is one that I like quite a bit despite its relative simplicity, but the vocal melody that should go over it has continued to elude me. Fortunately, this week saw a bit of progress in that area. Using some tips from my songwriting course, I decided to change the way I was approaching the vocal melody to give it a different context. Instead of focusing first on the rhythm and lyrics as I have done with the verse, I pulled out my guitar and created a melody line using different intervals from the chords in the progression. I haven't lived with it long enough to know if this will work, but I'm definitely more excited about writing lyrics around these notes than I was about the ideas I had come up with before. Some DataLyrics Written
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Week 2: Warming Up My Voice3/9/2022 The principal goal of this Genius Hour project is to take the songs that I have been working on sporadically for the past fourteen years and try to finish them. So why has it taken so long for me to actually get songs to the finish line? Simply enough, it's the vocals. Despite being an English teacher and reading quite a bit, I've never spent a lot of time writing lyrics for songs. And even if I did, it really has never mattered much to me because I always knew I couldn't sing anyway, so why bother? Well, with this project, the idea is to change that narrative and actually give myself the means to write interesting vocal parts. I can't guarantee I'll be able to sing everything I write, but if I can at least start the process of improving my singing voice, that should theoretically make it easier to communicate my ideas to someone who is more skilled than me. Pictured: Someone who actually knows what they're doing. This Week's Progress: VocalsEarlier in the week, I went online and researched places to take voice lessons in the area. I stumbled upon Triad Music Academy, which offers bundles of four lessons at a time for $160. That's not the worst deal I've heard considering the benefits of having one-on-one time with a teacher who can cater instruction directly to you, but I'm also not sure that this would be money well spent just yet. In the meantime, I've turned my attention to more of the high quality free resources I've been able to find on YouTube, which has led me to Ken Tamplin Vocal Academy, which is an amazing repository of voice lessons. So far, I have only gone through his video called "Learn How to Sing For Guys" (embedded below), but it has given me some really good information on improving my posture, breath control, and finding ways to hit notes within a specific key. He has some other videos on subjects like daily vocal exercises and how to properly warm up your voice that I am planning on consulting this week. This Week's Progress: SongwritingCompared to the first week of the project, I haven't had as much progress regarding new songwriting, but since last week's post focused on the background for the project, I am going to take some time now to talk about what I did both before the project and in the first week to help streamline my creative process during these twelve weeks. Before the project started, I went through all the song files on my computer and listened to every one. Some of these were pieces of recorded riffs, and others were more written out pieces of music I've accumulated for years. Each piece of music was rated on a scale of 1 to 5, with a 5 being a piece of music that I considered either to have a lot of potential or one that gave me a raw smiling or headbanging kind of reaction. During the first week of the project, I took one of these pieces that was the closest to being a real song and forced myself to sit down and write some lyrics for it and record its guitar solo. Before the project started, all I had in mind for this song was a rough rhythm for the vocal melody and a working title: "Dying Light." Building off that idea of light dying, I later came up with the lyric "Love born in fire / burns to ashes before my eyes." I still don't know if that lyric is any good or if it is incredibly generic, but building off that idea, I took some advice from my songwriting course and created a word cloud and wrote down as many words I could associate with "fire," "death," and "light." At this point, lyrics for the first verse do exist and I have recorded a rough take of me "singing" those parts to get the overall feel, but hopefully nobody ends up hearing the part that has been sung so far because while it's not terrible for a guide vocal, it is very much not what the final product is supposed to be. With that being said, one area I've been learning to focus on with this project is the idea that all art is substandard at some point in the creative process. There will be many bad parts and cliché lyrics before I can whip my musical ideas into shape, but I have to be okay with that part of the process. Some DataLyrics Written
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Spring 2022: A New Project3/2/2022 You're Doing Another Project? What Is It?My Genius Hour project this semester is to write music, specifically to write and complete pre-production on at least three original songs. "Pre-production" in this case means that the song is completely written (a full arrangement with guitar, bass, drums, vocals, and other layering as necessary) and that there is a recorded version of it that is indicative of how the final product should sound. For this project, I also define a "song" as a piece of music with a clear structure (intro, verse, chorus, bridge, etc.) and a "topline" (a vocal melody or a melody created by another melodic instrument). But Why?I have played guitar for fifteen years. I have made various attempts at writing pieces of songs for fourteen years. I have never actually completely finished writing a song in that time. I have a lot of pieces of songs — many that I actually like quite a bit — but nothing that is complete and that could go to a studio or be released. My main obstacle has always been my lack of singing experience, which has made me feel insecure about writing vocal parts and lyrics to go with them. My goal with this project is to work through that limitation and make use of a number of resources available to me to better develop my ideas and actually finish my songs. What's the Process Going to Look Like?Before beginning this project, I purchased a songwriting course called How Songs Are Made by YouTuber and songwriter Trey Xavier. I have worked through a good portion of his content and am planning on first finishing watching the videos in this sixteen-hour course and then going back to revisit each module as I use his suggestions to write new parts for songs or expand upon existing pieces of music I have written. Additionally, I have already gone through my collection of song ideas and ranked each piece on a scale of 1-5 to determine which ones have the most potential. As the twelve weeks begin, I plan to take the highest-rated parts and work to finish each of their instrumental and vocal arrangements. As the project continues, I will also be working on developing my singing ability, not necessarily to be used in the final versions of my recordings, but rather to create a solid guide to give potentially to another singer. I anticipate that as part of this project I may find myself purchasing a midi keyboard and pitch correction hardware, though I am not sure if that will happen yet at this time. What Do You Want Out of This?This project will honestly be successful if I can finish one song and feel confident that it could be worth taking the time to track a real demo and final studio mix. Obviously, getting the three is my goal, but having any complete piece of music will definitely contribute to my overall feeling of success. If I ended up having to trade out doing three songs for having one song that went beyond the pre-production phase and that I recorded "for real," that would be an acceptable substitute.
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