FAWM 2012 Song 1

The songs posted will not be staying permanently because they are demos written for the FAWM 2012 challenge. The good ones (if there are any) will end up being worked on properly and released at some point, by which time the demos will be long gone and most likely forgotten!

The demo can be heard in the ‘FAWM 2012" player in the sidebar.

The first song is called "Not on Your Life". Not much more to say about it really except it’s pretty much along the lines of being wise to the attempts of control by people/entities that (think they) are bigger or better than you.

Enjoy!

Another FAWM, Another Journey

Another sleepless night! Being unable to sleep I decided to make use of the time to write this post. The irony is that I should be able to sleep easily due to the amount of work I am doing, but as I have learned by experience, when you are busy doing something you love, it energizes you to the point of almost forgetting when it’s time to sleep and when you do have the opportunity to get some, it doesn’t turn out to be all that easy to achieve.

I am at that place right now. However, things are going well and I am on a roll. After having no time to stop at all in February I looked back at the month’s achievements and found myself pretty amazed to be honest. I wrote and demo’d 14 songs for FAWM, wrote a 15th, which I am yet to record and I co-wrote another 15 songs for a corporate album project.

On top of that I was working on two blues recording projects too, which left no time to write anything for 5 of those days in February, so I managed to write/co-write 30 quality songs in little over 3 weeks. I am very pleased with those statistics. Looking back at January I co-wrote and co-recorded a disco album, which you will be hearing more about some time soon.

My FAWM 2011 experience was an interesting one this year. I decided to create demos for a potential album, so they had to sound right together. Following my 50/90 campaign last year, which was 99% improvised on the spot, this was a totally different discipline and one which I am pleased to say I haven’t forgotten how to do – write and structure songs!

You can listen to the candidates for my potential album and soon I will be putting up another player for the aforementioned disco project called Dark Fiber (You can follow that on Facebook, as you can Boy@Heart!)

Songwriting Therapy: Restoring the Creative Flow

I don’t know when this all started. Maybe there was an element of it from the beginning, but lately I have been thinking about my current approach to writing songs, which is steeped in the process of improvisation.

Improvising can be quite a daunting task, especially if you know people are going to hear the results. I’m not the most adventurous of songwriters, sticking pretty much to fairly traditional sounds, but I have come to realize that improvisation brings out a braver, bolder me.

I loved composing music for years (still do), I loved writing songs for the last 3 years (still do) and now since writing songs alone I felt maybe I had exhausted my resource pool of ideas and inspiration. However improvisation has rescued me. Here’s how and why and it’s about more than just coming up with ideas.

Improvising has provided several positive effects on my songwriting. It helps me reach potential ideas that I may not have otherwise concocted by trying and as a by-product of that, it renders the whole notion of writer’s block obsolete. You can’t have writer’s block if you improvise because the point it not to start with your head, you start with how you feel, which brings me to another benefit I have received with this process.

Improvising helps me become a little braver, stronger and less worried about how my songs will be received. In a typical hour or two of improvising I can end up with, say five or ten songs or chunks of what potentially can become songs and of that number, maybe 1 will become a really good song. Of course, maybe none of them will, but every idea that jumps out as I am playing and/or singing is working for the greater good of my songwriting.

The biggest benefit is that I am emptying the trash can of any spurious thoughts that may be lurking in my mind. I think the very idea of something like writer’s block is that there is no room for inspiration to flow because the mind is too full of noise. The water needs changing, it becomes cloudy at times.

Have you ever been running so many applications on your computer that you get a system message saying "You are running out of virtual memory, please try closing some applications" etc.. ? It’s like that. When there is no buffer space left in your mind to act as a "parking space" for mind-noise, there is no channel for your inspiration to flow. It’s there, but it’s rooted to the spot. That’s why you can’t wait for inspiration, you have to restore the flow in the system to have any chance of regaining it. You can do that by letting go of writing that perfect song and just letting loose.

What is important to me regarding improvising is that it builds my confidence. The more at ease I am about allowing people to hear my "Crap" songs and random ideas, the better shape I’ll be in to wow them with a song that moves them and makes a lasting impression – hopefully.

I still haven’t worked my confidence up to improvising like this in front of a live audience. I haven’t played a song I already know live for a long time, let alone improvise, but I guess that could happen.

Staying Fresh, Remaining Creative

Well thank you Tom Slatter who recently started a podcast called Songwriting Strategies at his blog called Indie Songwriter (formerly known as songwright.co.uk). He recently started a podcast on songwriting and has invited songwriters of all kinds to create an episode of their own for the series.

I have decided that if and whenever possible I’d like to create something, somewhere that serves some purpose for somebody else and isn’t just another flag-waving "Hey look I’ve just written a new post about how you should be a fan of my music!" announcement on Twitter. To be honest, there’s so much noise on Twitter that I tend to miss the great stuff and Facebook pages are still something I draw a blank over when thinking about how to stand out.

I am currently working on an idea to send to Tom for inclusion in his podcast series, so hopefully I’ll be providing some worthwhile insights and information as well as spreading my musical creativity around a bit more. There is something that feels more satisfying doing things like this rather than constantly trying to come up with interesting posts, tweets or bulletins in order to keep the awareness of my songs fresh in people’s minds.

If you have any kind of project such as Tom’s Songwriting podcast that you would like some contribution to, then please contact me. I think it is a way that would suit me rather than blogging for the sake of blogging about my music (which is probably why I haven’t blogged about it for a while).

As long as I’m creating music one way or another, I feel alive and in the "Right Place", so help a fellow creative spirit out and find me something to contribute to! Please!

Look out for my podcast episode (when it’s done) by bookmarking Tom’s Blog or subscribing to his RSS feed.

In the meantime, you can listen to my current 50/90 challenge offerings, most of which were written using an approach of total improvisation (which probably shows).

Enjoy!

Improv to Improve

Improvisation. Regarding my songwriting, improvisation is something fairly new to me, but I have recently discovered how effective it is in a variety of ways.

This is always a busy, songwriting time of year for me and since becoming a father I am experiencing the pinch on available time to write, seeing as I am taking on the FAWM songwriting challenge again.

Having less time to spend with guitar over my shoulder and putting pen to paper I have found that I usually have a daily window from about 9 or 10pm until, well until I remember to look at the clock and tell myself I really should be in bed! On average though it gives me, say up to 4 hours each night to write a song, record a demo and post it up on the FAWM website to share with the songwriting community there.

Something I’d Like to Ad-Lib

With limited time and in an attempt to minimize the time taken twiddling my pen around my fingers, trying to come up with some good lyrics I have resorted to, within reason, making it up as I go along. I can always come up with melody and chord progressions, so laying down a guitar track and some guide drums takes no time at all. I then have a basic framework for a song; instrumentally a typical song structure – verses, choruses, bridge etc.

Then I just pick up the mic – my current choice is a hand-held Telefunken M80 (I love it) and start recording. So far it’s working. I’ve been pretty happy with the results so far and seeing as I am able to instantly share what I have written with a supportive songwriting crowd I can get feedback and pointers as to what can be improved or re-written. Winner!

So my conclusions from my experience is that improvisation is great for developing the ability to create more deliberate structure and I believe the secret to being able to deliver the goods via improvisation is having faith that you can do it. It’s not a big deal if your improvising by yourself in a recording environment because if your attempts sound a bit lame, nobody needs to hear it, so keep practicing and you will pull it off. I did, so anyone can.

I’m grateful for having less time for songwriting this year because it’s helped me grow as a songwriter.

Update: The very next day my songwriting session, using the principles discussed in this post gave rise to 3 songs, all recorded and posted on the FAWM website in about one and a half hours.

I Surprised Myself This Year.
FAWM 2009 kicked off well with me writing a song on the first day and I felt like I would be easily on track to complete the challenge, so I stated on my FAWM profile that I was aiming for 20 songs this February. However, as time went on I found myself struggling for ideas and by the halfway point I was languishing at about 5 songs.

I never doubted I could complete the challenge target of 14, but I had totally forgotten about any intention to reach 20 and seeing as I find it difficult to write about anything outside of a particular subject I was finding it hard to come up with songs without feeling like I was repeating myself.

Still the 14 songs were done by about 26th February and I was a winner. I was pleased, but felt a little like I had only really done the basics, so I got down to writing anything, no matter how good or bad is was and wrote a bit of a novelty song to make it 15. That was the same total as my FAWM 2008, so at least I was not regressing in my songwriting (Even though I know its about quality not quantity).

In the final throes of FAWM 2009 however I received a message from fellow FAWM er Becca, asking if I wanted to do a last minute collaboration. There were about 5 hours left and all we needed was an idea and a title. We are able to record the demo of the song after the challenge has finished. She explained that she saw my initial intention for 20 and wanted to help me get as close as possible. I accepted, came up with a concept (to be revealed) and then saw my total hit 16. This was great, but then I woke up to myself and thought "Why not just go for it? You have 5 hours left. Surely it’s worth a shot at getting 20!"

Thanks to Becca I was spurred into action, dropped all else that I was supposed to be doing and made a solid commitment to finishing the remaining songs before the close of FAWM! I had a few bits and pieces of lyrical ideas that I hadn’t completed, which were a good place to start and I then found, buried in my notebook an almost complete song I had written, lyrics only and totally scrapped because I didn’t like it. On reading it again it seemed to actually be quite good and seeing as I was after as many songs in as little time as possible I started work on it.

Well the flood gates opened after that. I got the titles and lyrics posted prior to recording the demos to make sure they all counted towards my total. I then sang and played my heart out and some ropey, quick performances followed by a few grand moments I was uploading the demos to all my finished songs (All except the collaboration with Becca, which is to follow).

My total finished up at 22 songs with about 30 minutes left to go. I thought about letting loose and trying to get another one down, which I actually think I could have done, seeing as I was ‘In the zone’, but my wife wanted to go out to dinner and I remembered that I really needed to eat myself.

So good feelings all round. I ended up with 22 songs, 21 of which are all by myself and I feel like I gave it my all now.

Check out all my FAWM 2009 songs in one place.

Enjoy!

Yes it’s that time of year again.
February Album Writing Month 2009 is upon us and it seems like only yesterday that FAWM 2008 was in full swing, which was my first one. It was also when I was a rookie songwriter. Well I still am really, but a rookie compared to now even. I had only written about 5 songs when FAWM 2008 came around and thanks to that challenge, it got my songwriting off to a flying start. The 50/90 challenge was next from July to October, where the goal is to write 50 songs in 90 days, which is organized by FAWM too. This then took my prolificacy to a new level, resulting in my having written nearly 80 songs in 2008. Was I chuffed about that!

If you want to step up your songwriting and you haven’t registered for FAWM I strongly recommend doing so. There is a great community of people passing feedback back and forth, a forum and a general good time to be had by all who participate. You will benefit from a massive improvement in your songwriting I guarantee it.

So the next 28 days pose the challenge of writing 14 songs and my target for this year is to write 20 in that time. As of writing, it is day 1 and I have completed the first song with a demo, no less!