AuthorI'm a high school English teacher who hasn't quite given up his dream of being a rock star. Archives
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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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Kat Woodruff-Carter
3/21/2022 01:07:50 pm
Song writing is such an amazing creative outlet... that is until you hit writers block. Try to find simple metaphors that match or have a little instrumental until you get to a good point where you think lyrics can start up again.
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