My Ears Wrote a Song Last Night

Last night I did a bit of songwriting. Interesting, huh? I know. Nothing new whatsoever. I go into my room and come out some time later with a song, or parts of a song, or a poor excuse for a song. Last night began as no different, at least until I started thinking about where I wanted this song to go. It all began with a teency melody in my head.

I sang with melody over and over, and finally decided that the best course of action was to imitate this melody on an acoustic guitar, and build from there. I picked up my trusty acoustic, found the key, and then realized that if started in a D minor I could play exactly what I was singing with a pull off on the high E string, the two notes in a D minor on the B and G strings, and then notes in C and G chords. That's never happened to me before, where it was such a simple task to recreate this short melody, so I had to stop and collect myself before I continued. I took a breath, and continued.

Because I liked this part so much, I told myself to focus on the bit I just wrote and just keep building it. Before I continue, I need to fast forward a little bit. After the song was all done, I played it for Shaun Rhoades, the bass playing little man who lives in our basement, and he said something I was hoping he would. "Ya know how sometimes you hear a song and you sort of know where it's gonna go next, like what chord it's gonna go to? That's what this song is. It goes exactly where your ears want it to go".

Thank. God.

"That's just what I was going for, actually" I said in response.

Back to the writing session. So I focused on building the part because I loved it so much, blah blah blah. I decided that melody and the chords that went with it would be the intro and verse. Then I had a nice idea. I'd take that same melody, drop one (or maybe it was two) notes, and change the key from a D minor to an A minor. I did that, added a little ending to it, and called it the solo, or instrumental break, as I got so used to calling it when we recorded our last album with Malcolm Burn.

There ya go. Two parts in the can. Now came the chorus. I usually have no problem writing choruses. Actually, many of my songs started out as a chorus and quickly built themselves up from there. I decided I'd make the chorus very melodic, and keep it in all major chords. F-G/F-G-C. Fine, right? Not fine enough for me. I started thinking "How can I make this song good for the ears?" I guess what I meant by that is exactly what Shaun said. I'll add some nice chords to make it go exactly where one wants it to go. So that's what I did. It started with a D major, then back to an F. The I added an E major and mimicked a few notes I was singing in the E chord. Then back to F, then the kicker, and F minor for good measure. There. I had a pop chorus. I knew from the beginning that this song was going to be all about the chord progression and the melody, and I think I'm actually really happy with how it came out. The lyrics came pretty quickly. After throwing around a few ideas I decided I'd do what I do a lot. I'd write down a bunch of words in a certain part of the song that sounded good, and I'd pick a few that went together and kick the rest out. I took those two or three words, "put them back in my head", you might say, came up with a little summary of the song, and just started writing. I didn't stop writing words down, no matter if I hated them or not. Most of the time it takes the deleting of a few lines to get something I actually like. Once I had the lyrics and phrasing down, I felt pretty confident that I had a song. I played it a few times to myself and tried to think if there was anything else it needed. I came up with a nice little outro that combined parts of the intro/verse chords and the chorus. Ta-da! There's my song.

I won't go into detail about what this song is about. You'll have to come see my band at Bodles Opera House in Chester, NY on March 29th. We're doing a cool show where we're playing all the new songs together in one night. We're making sort of like an intimate storytellers evening, but still full band. You'll get to hear about all the new songs, including this one, which has already been brought to the band.

That's all for now. I hope you enjoyed this trip inside my brain, inside my bedroom, and inside my song.