Just to clear up a few loose ends in the matter of songwriting and allied areas, the question arises, 'What do you do when you get stuck and can't solve any one of the many little problems that arise in song-writing?' We all need a fall-back position and someone on your bench, as they say in the US, is very handy, if only to talk out those problems and talk yourself into finding the answer - which is what often happens.
I have two, one for lyrics and one for the music. (As for the arrangements, I'm pretty much on my own or at the mercy of whatever happens in the studio.) When I am stuck for a dazzling rhyme, pithy phrase or just the mot juste, I call up my friend Marie who is a much more interesting and playful lyric writer than I will ever be, but, being a woman, she knows how to flatter a man by letting him think he made a brilliant decision or came up with a great idea. When I am stuck, I call her up and, social engagements allowing, she gives me a few moments of her valuable time. This usually results in her dropping something wonderful into the mix. I can't do this too often in case anyone asks me how I got the idea for that brilliant couplet. But, just occasionally, it will do the trick.
The problem is that I feel, in comparison to what Marie can do, that I am just fashioning a trashy bauble out of base metal that she can place a gem into. I'll live with it! Getting on the same wavelength is the important thing here. Marie and I honed our relationship over the years when I was adding verses and bridges to old jazz standards to elongate them for performance purposes. We discovered we had similar senses of humour and a no-holds-barred attitude to lyric writing absurdity so we could egg each other on to ever wilder flights of imagination. Being able to spend some time in hilarious laughter while you are being serious is very therapeutic and good for the creative juices. Having someone who doesn't even recognise the concept of box, let along feel constrained to think in or outside of one, is inspiring.
For the music, I turn to my friend Damien, my sometime musical accomplice, a sweet natured guy and all-round good egg. We have known each other for several years and have played together in many different configurations. He knows much more music theory than I will ever do and is well used to my calls out of the blue asking things like 'If a chord has this, this, this and that in it what's it called?' Or 'What can I substitute for this chord or that chord?' Or 'Where can I go from this sequence?' I learn a lot from these sessions and sometimes, it can change the direction of a song in an interesting way. Sometimes in pointing out alternatives, I find that what I had originally is ok anyway but you have to try it to find out if you like it.
As for most of the rest of it, you're on your own and so am I!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Friday, April 29, 2011
A never-ending series of problems
As previously mentioned, in the old days, I used to write for a band. At rehearsals, they would edit, pitch in with ideas, criticise or approve, participate in the writing and arranging process and work on the songs until, regardless of who claimed the original idea, songs became communal property so it was nigh impossible to say who did what. That's the way with folk musics of all sorts. A song may have been good but the band made it better and very often the band's performance became the song. There have been courtroom battles by disgruntled ex-band members claiming their contribution had made songs as memorable as they were and they had received no credit, either in shouts or cash for their contributions. Fair point.
When you suddenly start doing it all on your own, unless you have a knowledgeable and critical partner or friend, all those decisions have to be made by you. Bottom line - if it's good, thanks very much, it was nothing really. If it sucks - where's that hole in the ground?
So that's the first part of the problem - is the song ok? What does it need? Does it need editing? Are there too many verses? How should it be arranged? What instrumentation does it need? Harmonies? Etc. I freely admit to needing an editor but, in my defense, songs and their verses are like babies. You want to nurture, take care of and keep them away from all those nasty critics who would hurt them. I don't like cutting out verses once they are written. I write 5 or 6 verses because I need that many to say what I want but it is received wisdom that audiences have the collective attention span of a gnat so 5 verses (plus solo) is way too long. Think of all the great landmark songs, of which the first thing that is ever remarked on is their length - Boh Rap, Like A R Stone, Defecting Grey, Hey Jude etc. (Having said this, maybe I do the audience a disservice since Big Prize and Blues For Billy Strayhorn, both weighing in at around the 6 minute mark, seem to be popular wherever they are heard.) I have, however, started pruning, in the interests of getting a leaner, meaner, punchier song.
Then, regardless of how long a song is, is it any good? Am I just repeating myself? They all sound the same to me but I can remember them and don't start singing one verse to another's music so I guess they must be different.
As far as arrangements are concerned, without other people to muck in and help create something, the problem is hearing the song without actually singing it. Recording demos helps here even if they are rather primitive. Questions about structure - shall I have a couple of bars between chorus and verse two to catch my breath or would that slow it all down? - can be resolved this way. Important here to recognise that recordings and live performance are very different beasts. If you are singing it live, then, yes, you could leave a space but on cd, it may cause drag. If there are irregularities of meter and verse length, why, and where? And don't forget when you finally record them, you will have to remember where they are if you haven't been playing them live often enough to have become habit.
A lot of these problems are soluble by trial and error. If you are in a band of more than 2 people it is difficult to create arrangements on the spot in performance but for anyone who plays in a small enough unit to be able to change a song on a headshake, you can alter them on a nightly basis until they are right.
Of course, as I said in the last blog in this series, the concept of 'right' is moot here. I have been playing jazz-based music for the last 18 years and, in an improvised arena like that, I don't think of songs as ever finished. There was how I wrote it and how it is tonight. Sometimes they are close and sometimes not.
When you suddenly start doing it all on your own, unless you have a knowledgeable and critical partner or friend, all those decisions have to be made by you. Bottom line - if it's good, thanks very much, it was nothing really. If it sucks - where's that hole in the ground?
So that's the first part of the problem - is the song ok? What does it need? Does it need editing? Are there too many verses? How should it be arranged? What instrumentation does it need? Harmonies? Etc. I freely admit to needing an editor but, in my defense, songs and their verses are like babies. You want to nurture, take care of and keep them away from all those nasty critics who would hurt them. I don't like cutting out verses once they are written. I write 5 or 6 verses because I need that many to say what I want but it is received wisdom that audiences have the collective attention span of a gnat so 5 verses (plus solo) is way too long. Think of all the great landmark songs, of which the first thing that is ever remarked on is their length - Boh Rap, Like A R Stone, Defecting Grey, Hey Jude etc. (Having said this, maybe I do the audience a disservice since Big Prize and Blues For Billy Strayhorn, both weighing in at around the 6 minute mark, seem to be popular wherever they are heard.) I have, however, started pruning, in the interests of getting a leaner, meaner, punchier song.
Then, regardless of how long a song is, is it any good? Am I just repeating myself? They all sound the same to me but I can remember them and don't start singing one verse to another's music so I guess they must be different.
As far as arrangements are concerned, without other people to muck in and help create something, the problem is hearing the song without actually singing it. Recording demos helps here even if they are rather primitive. Questions about structure - shall I have a couple of bars between chorus and verse two to catch my breath or would that slow it all down? - can be resolved this way. Important here to recognise that recordings and live performance are very different beasts. If you are singing it live, then, yes, you could leave a space but on cd, it may cause drag. If there are irregularities of meter and verse length, why, and where? And don't forget when you finally record them, you will have to remember where they are if you haven't been playing them live often enough to have become habit.
A lot of these problems are soluble by trial and error. If you are in a band of more than 2 people it is difficult to create arrangements on the spot in performance but for anyone who plays in a small enough unit to be able to change a song on a headshake, you can alter them on a nightly basis until they are right.
Of course, as I said in the last blog in this series, the concept of 'right' is moot here. I have been playing jazz-based music for the last 18 years and, in an improvised arena like that, I don't think of songs as ever finished. There was how I wrote it and how it is tonight. Sometimes they are close and sometimes not.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Where do they come from?
In a response to this series of blogs, I was asked to write something about songwriting, the process, the inspiration etc. So, ever grateful for the attention, here goes.
How many times have you read an interview with some celebrated songwriter and the subject is asked how s/he writes. After a period of due modesty, out come those bloodcurdling words, 'I don't know where they come from, the songs just flow through me'! Instantly, you want to inflict lasting, disfiguring damage. 'Yeah right! You are just a conduit for the muse! The music of the spheres is flowing through you like electricity through a lightning rod!' Like we all wake up with a Yesterday tripping from our fingers.
The thing is that if you do fancy yourself as a songwriter and spend long hours sitting with guitar/piano and note pad hoping for something to coalesce, you do - if you are lucky - find yourself having those occasional 'what the hell just happened?' moments. Then you realise that these, all but inarticulate, song-smiths you have been cursing actually have a small point. That isn't the entire story of course, but it covers a large and thrilling part.
I presume that there are as many different approaches to songwriting as there are songwriters, so for it's worth here is my own contribution.
As mentioned in a previous blog, I used to write lyrics while notionally at work in a solicitor's office, so that I would have something to croon when Charlie and I sat down in our version of Lennon/McCartney's nose-to-nose sessions. If you are not prepared for these times, you find the band champing at the bit to get their teeth into their latest melodic breakthrough and all you have to sing over it is something mind-numbingly banal, like a shopping list. Plus I get inspiration (sorry! that word again. I didn't mean to) when I am alone and have some peace. I still tend to write in this way though, as a teacher, I am at everyone's beck and call, so, at strategic times of the academic year, I say 'thank god for exams!' Two hours when you are not only allowed but obliged to sit motionless and stare into space for 2+ hours. I used to bask in two hours of uninterrupted sex fantasies featuring various morsels of the concupiscent flesh I was supposed to be invigilating. Now I find my mind roaming over the more esoteric and intriguing byways of human desire and thinking about the many ways in people can start, participate in or fuck up their relationships. On a good day I can come out with 3 sets of lyrics. They're not finished - after all they are just words - but it's something to hang the music on - or vice versa. I always have a rhythm or maybe even a melody for these but I instantly forget it - I don't even try to remember them. After they are typed up and put into my pending book, they wait until the time is right and something can be made of them.
Sitting with my guitar is when the work really starts and when, on a good day, some kind iof magic can happen. I used to try to force this or bring ideas to the guitar and sometimes the latter still happens. But what I like about this part is that you can let random events dictate the course of the song and take it out of your hands. Here is where those conduit-for-the-muse illusions start. Mostly, it's a question of trying to avoid my own cliches and surprise myself. The more songs you write, the more difficult this becomes, I should imagine. Sometimes it's easier than others. It's just a matter of bashing around on the fretboard, letting my fingers fall where they will until something interesting comes along.
Sometimes I struggle to avoid my own tried and trusty formulae, banging round the fourths, majors to relative minors etc and sometimes it's just a question of managing to hear something familiar in a new way or to give it an unexpected twist. I will sometimes start with a hideously difficult chord and find a melody to fit it and see where it takes me. Another pet method is to throw chords with common notes in and work them until they form an interesting structure with a kind of drone. Yet another way is to take a well-known chord sequence and play around with it until it sounds novel. The more chords you know the easier and more interesting it becomes. And you have to let yourself become suggestible and be prepared to let the melody and chords take you where they will.
Once you have some kind of chord sequence, with melody attached, it becomes a question of sifting through the lyric book to find something which goes with it. It could be a phrase that fits, or a rhythmic nuance and a mood that suits the melody. Almost anything, in fact. At this point, I discover just how usable my lyrics are. They usually invariably need tweaking, occasionally de- or reconstructing. but if you are lucky, you end up with something. I find that I take a lot of care over the words but let happenstance guide the music. Every Shade of Blue and But I'll Miss You More both happened that way.
I used to have a manic compulsion to try to finish the entire song at one sitting and sometimes it still happens. But nowadays I often don't even pretend to and I don't worry if the chorus or the bridge is unfinished. When I'm in a different mood, I will bring another kind of flavour to the song. It's all about trying to catch myself out and let chance take a role. To that extent, it is possible to feel that you are just an instrument and if you are very lucky you can surprise yourself.
On this note, the concept of finished becomes a relative thing. Sometimes they are never finished - it becomes a case of 'this is how I will do it for now'. The when you have been playing it a certain way for sometime, you get bored and find something better. Keeping things fresh is the key to it all really. Starting with a title, working from an unlikely situation, trying to illustrate a maxim or platitude. It helps to keep a playful quality to it all and treat it as a game to amuse yourself.
So that's it for now. My recommendation to aspiring songwriters: find a school in need of invigilators for exams and hunker down for the duration while letting your imagination wander. I suppose prison would do almost as well......
How many times have you read an interview with some celebrated songwriter and the subject is asked how s/he writes. After a period of due modesty, out come those bloodcurdling words, 'I don't know where they come from, the songs just flow through me'! Instantly, you want to inflict lasting, disfiguring damage. 'Yeah right! You are just a conduit for the muse! The music of the spheres is flowing through you like electricity through a lightning rod!' Like we all wake up with a Yesterday tripping from our fingers.
The thing is that if you do fancy yourself as a songwriter and spend long hours sitting with guitar/piano and note pad hoping for something to coalesce, you do - if you are lucky - find yourself having those occasional 'what the hell just happened?' moments. Then you realise that these, all but inarticulate, song-smiths you have been cursing actually have a small point. That isn't the entire story of course, but it covers a large and thrilling part.
I presume that there are as many different approaches to songwriting as there are songwriters, so for it's worth here is my own contribution.
As mentioned in a previous blog, I used to write lyrics while notionally at work in a solicitor's office, so that I would have something to croon when Charlie and I sat down in our version of Lennon/McCartney's nose-to-nose sessions. If you are not prepared for these times, you find the band champing at the bit to get their teeth into their latest melodic breakthrough and all you have to sing over it is something mind-numbingly banal, like a shopping list. Plus I get inspiration (sorry! that word again. I didn't mean to) when I am alone and have some peace. I still tend to write in this way though, as a teacher, I am at everyone's beck and call, so, at strategic times of the academic year, I say 'thank god for exams!' Two hours when you are not only allowed but obliged to sit motionless and stare into space for 2+ hours. I used to bask in two hours of uninterrupted sex fantasies featuring various morsels of the concupiscent flesh I was supposed to be invigilating. Now I find my mind roaming over the more esoteric and intriguing byways of human desire and thinking about the many ways in people can start, participate in or fuck up their relationships. On a good day I can come out with 3 sets of lyrics. They're not finished - after all they are just words - but it's something to hang the music on - or vice versa. I always have a rhythm or maybe even a melody for these but I instantly forget it - I don't even try to remember them. After they are typed up and put into my pending book, they wait until the time is right and something can be made of them.
Sitting with my guitar is when the work really starts and when, on a good day, some kind iof magic can happen. I used to try to force this or bring ideas to the guitar and sometimes the latter still happens. But what I like about this part is that you can let random events dictate the course of the song and take it out of your hands. Here is where those conduit-for-the-muse illusions start. Mostly, it's a question of trying to avoid my own cliches and surprise myself. The more songs you write, the more difficult this becomes, I should imagine. Sometimes it's easier than others. It's just a matter of bashing around on the fretboard, letting my fingers fall where they will until something interesting comes along.
Sometimes I struggle to avoid my own tried and trusty formulae, banging round the fourths, majors to relative minors etc and sometimes it's just a question of managing to hear something familiar in a new way or to give it an unexpected twist. I will sometimes start with a hideously difficult chord and find a melody to fit it and see where it takes me. Another pet method is to throw chords with common notes in and work them until they form an interesting structure with a kind of drone. Yet another way is to take a well-known chord sequence and play around with it until it sounds novel. The more chords you know the easier and more interesting it becomes. And you have to let yourself become suggestible and be prepared to let the melody and chords take you where they will.
Once you have some kind of chord sequence, with melody attached, it becomes a question of sifting through the lyric book to find something which goes with it. It could be a phrase that fits, or a rhythmic nuance and a mood that suits the melody. Almost anything, in fact. At this point, I discover just how usable my lyrics are. They usually invariably need tweaking, occasionally de- or reconstructing. but if you are lucky, you end up with something. I find that I take a lot of care over the words but let happenstance guide the music. Every Shade of Blue and But I'll Miss You More both happened that way.
I used to have a manic compulsion to try to finish the entire song at one sitting and sometimes it still happens. But nowadays I often don't even pretend to and I don't worry if the chorus or the bridge is unfinished. When I'm in a different mood, I will bring another kind of flavour to the song. It's all about trying to catch myself out and let chance take a role. To that extent, it is possible to feel that you are just an instrument and if you are very lucky you can surprise yourself.
On this note, the concept of finished becomes a relative thing. Sometimes they are never finished - it becomes a case of 'this is how I will do it for now'. The when you have been playing it a certain way for sometime, you get bored and find something better. Keeping things fresh is the key to it all really. Starting with a title, working from an unlikely situation, trying to illustrate a maxim or platitude. It helps to keep a playful quality to it all and treat it as a game to amuse yourself.
So that's it for now. My recommendation to aspiring songwriters: find a school in need of invigilators for exams and hunker down for the duration while letting your imagination wander. I suppose prison would do almost as well......
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Where Next?
So what you do when you feel you are haemorraghing songs and experience the urgency (and arrogance) of anyone who thinks they are creative and absolutely must share your every deathless creation with a world spell-bound with anticipation (or not)? Well, if you are me and a gigging musician, your first impulse is to find a stage in order to strut your stuff and bask in the public's adoration. The only thing is you are just the teeniest bit uncertain as to whether your latest meisterworks are any good or not. Sure, friends have listened and nodded approvingly, but then friends always do. It's not exactly the dispassionate and level-headed critical analysis you are looking for.
An additional complication is that you work in the Middle East. The only possible audience are bored ex-pats for whom every social event is an opportunity to parade around in their latest threads (hand-made by poorly-paid Indian tailors) and catch up on the latest gossip. They attend events organised by hotels for whom every occasion must come with a buffet and an air of suffocating wholesomeness. Your blows against the empire will get lost in the hubbub and in any case they only want to hear Mustang Sally or Hotel California. Any prospect of a responsive but critical audience is stillborn. Music is just part of the package unless you are one of the occasional acts newly arrived on the international scampi in a basket circuit who visit the local Intercontinental from time to time. (Words calculated to cause any self-respecting Goan F & B manager to break out into an acute case of the yawns being something along the lines of, 'Hi. I am a singer-songwriter who writes literate adult pop songs for people with experience and varied tastes. Is there any chance of a gig at your establishment?' It's not exactly the Venga Boys is it?)
As chance would have it, I was approached by someone putting a small charity event together to raise money for computers and stationery items for a school in Zanzibar. Would I be interested in contributing to the event by performing? Is Qaddaffi worried? Of course I would. Just tell me where and when and point me to the stage
Next problem, how to present these little gems in a sympatico setting? Called up my guitarist friend, Santhosh Chandran, one of the most amazing musicians and asked him whether he would be up for it. (If you don't believe how great he is go to this link and see for yourself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnna2B5tXo )
I wanted something different in order to stand out from the common ruck. He agreed to do it and I told him I would ask another friend Abdulwadud Al Dawoodi who plays the violin in the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. We picked a few songs - a fast entry and quick getaway being the ingredients for maximum impact - sketched out some arrangements much to the bemusement of Abdulwadud who had never done improvised head arrangements before and turned up at the event.
As usual, at these things, everyone presses their case and egos run rampant so we got squeezed out and didn't actually get to perform until the very end to a small but dedicated crowd. However, they were very warm and insightful in their appreciation, not to mention gratifyingly incredulous that I had written the songs myself.
Mission accomplished!
I repeated the event but with another guitarist the next time. Lightning doesn't strike twice and it was less successful. Never mind. Just for a short time an intelligent audience reared its tentative head (but I would say that because they liked me!)
Tonight Zanzibar, tomorrow the world!
An additional complication is that you work in the Middle East. The only possible audience are bored ex-pats for whom every social event is an opportunity to parade around in their latest threads (hand-made by poorly-paid Indian tailors) and catch up on the latest gossip. They attend events organised by hotels for whom every occasion must come with a buffet and an air of suffocating wholesomeness. Your blows against the empire will get lost in the hubbub and in any case they only want to hear Mustang Sally or Hotel California. Any prospect of a responsive but critical audience is stillborn. Music is just part of the package unless you are one of the occasional acts newly arrived on the international scampi in a basket circuit who visit the local Intercontinental from time to time. (Words calculated to cause any self-respecting Goan F & B manager to break out into an acute case of the yawns being something along the lines of, 'Hi. I am a singer-songwriter who writes literate adult pop songs for people with experience and varied tastes. Is there any chance of a gig at your establishment?' It's not exactly the Venga Boys is it?)
As chance would have it, I was approached by someone putting a small charity event together to raise money for computers and stationery items for a school in Zanzibar. Would I be interested in contributing to the event by performing? Is Qaddaffi worried? Of course I would. Just tell me where and when and point me to the stage
Next problem, how to present these little gems in a sympatico setting? Called up my guitarist friend, Santhosh Chandran, one of the most amazing musicians and asked him whether he would be up for it. (If you don't believe how great he is go to this link and see for yourself (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IYnna2B5tXo )
I wanted something different in order to stand out from the common ruck. He agreed to do it and I told him I would ask another friend Abdulwadud Al Dawoodi who plays the violin in the Royal Oman Symphony Orchestra. We picked a few songs - a fast entry and quick getaway being the ingredients for maximum impact - sketched out some arrangements much to the bemusement of Abdulwadud who had never done improvised head arrangements before and turned up at the event.
As usual, at these things, everyone presses their case and egos run rampant so we got squeezed out and didn't actually get to perform until the very end to a small but dedicated crowd. However, they were very warm and insightful in their appreciation, not to mention gratifyingly incredulous that I had written the songs myself.
Mission accomplished!
I repeated the event but with another guitarist the next time. Lightning doesn't strike twice and it was less successful. Never mind. Just for a short time an intelligent audience reared its tentative head (but I would say that because they liked me!)
Tonight Zanzibar, tomorrow the world!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
New Hope For Those With Writers Block!
Let's have some history before we carry on. In the punk/new wave era of 1979-80 - i.e. prehistory almost by current standards - I was in a couple of bands, most satisfyingly The Relatives, in which my ego and creativity were given free rein as there were only three of us. I assumed the roles of bassist, singer and song-writer. Along with guitarist, Charlie Mac, I wrote an entire repertoire in a matter of months.
Exhilarating as this was, and it was very exciting, what was far better was to realise that the songs we wrote improved in quality almost on a song by song basis. I had a 'job' in a solicitor's office supposedly updating his Rolodex and in between entries I used to type up my latest lyric ideas to take to the band later that day in our squalid rehearsal room under a deconsecrated church in Brighton, UK so that we could construct music for them. (That was if the rabid glue-sniffers outside would give us the peace to do so.)
It was the new wave and, hey!, everyone was a social critic. We were pissed off with everything and wanted to change the world, change the music business so that it would accept us grubby little tykes with spiky hair and spiky attitude and also get rich quick. (Though we would never have admitted as such for fear of credibility death.) Subjects for songs were ripe for picking and there never seemed any danger of drying up.
So far, so prolific. All was well until the small amount of money I got dried up and I got to living below the poverty line, relying on a bunch of thieving, alcoholic hippies for food and boiling up my strings in order to get some life into them. I relocated to Athens for a couple of years as a teacher and thought I would take my muse with me. Fair play, I did write a few things with which I am still quite pleased. But then the moment passed and when I came back to UK I found that new wave had morphed into new romantic and the tables had turned. Now everyone wanted to get rich quick and it would have been seen as socially gauche to actually care about anything.
Feeling too old and too much like a fish out of water I went back to being a jobbing bassist and that's pretty much how it stayed until I abandoned bass for guitar and started on my own little Murph and the Magictones moment in the supper clubs of Muscat. As far as song-writing went, my only creative activity was to add occasional verses to old jazz standards for the fun of writing in character. I never had the urge to try anything more challenging and had to all intents and purposes dried up as a song-writer. If I ever tried to do anything, I would get panicky and abandon it.
Cut to January 2010 and I am sitting on the front door step on a winter's evening with my partner. I should state that my partner has ridiculed me all along for this practice of completing other people's songs. My answer to this was that I had run out of things to say to the world. Suddenly, unbidden, a song starts insinuating its way into my mind, only I don't yet know its a complete song or that it could become a complete song. A phrase or two are enough to make me grab a guitar and suddenly it's coming together. In an hour or two it was finished and suddenly the floodgates are open. Then I couldn't stop them and for the next 9 months, they come thick and fast. The only constraints are time and energy. Human nature provides an inexhaustible fund of subjects and stylistically they are a far cry from the rather po-faced efforts of by-gone days.
Now I don't worry about whether I will dry up again. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Is there a moral here? Probably not. Maybe sometimes it takes 30 years and innumerable changes of life-style to kickstart the creative juices.
Exhilarating as this was, and it was very exciting, what was far better was to realise that the songs we wrote improved in quality almost on a song by song basis. I had a 'job' in a solicitor's office supposedly updating his Rolodex and in between entries I used to type up my latest lyric ideas to take to the band later that day in our squalid rehearsal room under a deconsecrated church in Brighton, UK so that we could construct music for them. (That was if the rabid glue-sniffers outside would give us the peace to do so.)
It was the new wave and, hey!, everyone was a social critic. We were pissed off with everything and wanted to change the world, change the music business so that it would accept us grubby little tykes with spiky hair and spiky attitude and also get rich quick. (Though we would never have admitted as such for fear of credibility death.) Subjects for songs were ripe for picking and there never seemed any danger of drying up.
So far, so prolific. All was well until the small amount of money I got dried up and I got to living below the poverty line, relying on a bunch of thieving, alcoholic hippies for food and boiling up my strings in order to get some life into them. I relocated to Athens for a couple of years as a teacher and thought I would take my muse with me. Fair play, I did write a few things with which I am still quite pleased. But then the moment passed and when I came back to UK I found that new wave had morphed into new romantic and the tables had turned. Now everyone wanted to get rich quick and it would have been seen as socially gauche to actually care about anything.
Feeling too old and too much like a fish out of water I went back to being a jobbing bassist and that's pretty much how it stayed until I abandoned bass for guitar and started on my own little Murph and the Magictones moment in the supper clubs of Muscat. As far as song-writing went, my only creative activity was to add occasional verses to old jazz standards for the fun of writing in character. I never had the urge to try anything more challenging and had to all intents and purposes dried up as a song-writer. If I ever tried to do anything, I would get panicky and abandon it.
Cut to January 2010 and I am sitting on the front door step on a winter's evening with my partner. I should state that my partner has ridiculed me all along for this practice of completing other people's songs. My answer to this was that I had run out of things to say to the world. Suddenly, unbidden, a song starts insinuating its way into my mind, only I don't yet know its a complete song or that it could become a complete song. A phrase or two are enough to make me grab a guitar and suddenly it's coming together. In an hour or two it was finished and suddenly the floodgates are open. Then I couldn't stop them and for the next 9 months, they come thick and fast. The only constraints are time and energy. Human nature provides an inexhaustible fund of subjects and stylistically they are a far cry from the rather po-faced efforts of by-gone days.
Now I don't worry about whether I will dry up again. If it happens, it happens. If it doesn't, it doesn't.
Is there a moral here? Probably not. Maybe sometimes it takes 30 years and innumerable changes of life-style to kickstart the creative juices.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Welcome to my blog!
I should have done this before as it would have been a way of recording my thoughts and experiences as we wrote, recorded, pressed and attempt to distribute the cd, '10 Cents Above A Beggar - Mark Gresty's Pappadom Songs'. It's my first and therefore a steep learning curve has attended every step.It would have been a good way of distilling the experience and sharing the joys and pitfalls of trying to get my own music to the masses with other aspiring musicians.
This is just a quickie for a first effort. I promise to get down and dirty with all the detail later. Suffice to say that I was hopelessly naive and simple-minded in my expectations that it would be effortless and easy sailing. It has not. The easy part is writing the songs - though that too is complicated by the fact that I am usually too tired from holding down a job at the same time I try to get my alternative career launched. The business part of this - and we haven't even got to the real music business yet! - is what causes stress and is so time consuming.
It's Friday - a significant day here for us in that the phone rates are cheap and people we need to contact are still at work as our weekend is different from theirs. Even with cheap rates, calling Canada and the USA to speak to AlertPay and PayPal boost the phone bills frighteningly. Then there are the calls to Sri Lanka to speak to my website designer and the video director and the cd pressing plant and the cover designer. On the plus side, it has been cheaper doing it this way. It's just that, in my naivete, I kind of thought that it would all be over once we got the cd produced. Not a bit of it. That's where it starts really. We are a two man operation and I couldn't have managed without Chamath. He is up all night working on the laptop to link us to various sites and people, upload the songs, video etc and generally publicise the thing. I just disburse the money and make executive decisions! It's a job for many people and suddenly we understand why the big artists and bands have an organisation behind them. It's because it's bloody tiring and a lot of hard work without many hands to share the load.
Anyway, I will attempt to recap all this and diarise the process from top to bottom to share the rollercoaster with anyone else who might like to learn from this or share the experience.
Over and out.
This is just a quickie for a first effort. I promise to get down and dirty with all the detail later. Suffice to say that I was hopelessly naive and simple-minded in my expectations that it would be effortless and easy sailing. It has not. The easy part is writing the songs - though that too is complicated by the fact that I am usually too tired from holding down a job at the same time I try to get my alternative career launched. The business part of this - and we haven't even got to the real music business yet! - is what causes stress and is so time consuming.
It's Friday - a significant day here for us in that the phone rates are cheap and people we need to contact are still at work as our weekend is different from theirs. Even with cheap rates, calling Canada and the USA to speak to AlertPay and PayPal boost the phone bills frighteningly. Then there are the calls to Sri Lanka to speak to my website designer and the video director and the cd pressing plant and the cover designer. On the plus side, it has been cheaper doing it this way. It's just that, in my naivete, I kind of thought that it would all be over once we got the cd produced. Not a bit of it. That's where it starts really. We are a two man operation and I couldn't have managed without Chamath. He is up all night working on the laptop to link us to various sites and people, upload the songs, video etc and generally publicise the thing. I just disburse the money and make executive decisions! It's a job for many people and suddenly we understand why the big artists and bands have an organisation behind them. It's because it's bloody tiring and a lot of hard work without many hands to share the load.
Anyway, I will attempt to recap all this and diarise the process from top to bottom to share the rollercoaster with anyone else who might like to learn from this or share the experience.
Over and out.
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