Five in Five: 1/5

I crashed at 6:30 p.m. last evening. It was right after dinner. I put in a marathon day in my home studio as a part of this five songs in five days project.

I got rollin' around 9:30 a.m. I had about 15 sketches of songs from which I could choose to demo. I opted for something fun and elaborate. I had a sketch for a song that is reminiscent of "Welcome to the Machine" by Pink Floyd and "Fascination Street" by the Cure. Setting a tempo with a click is a good idea, but what's even more fun is setting a tempo with a seek wah or a pulsing synth. This changes the feel of a song from being stiff to fluid. I played the chord structure through a seek-wah. I used beat detective (a new useful tool that comes standard with Pro Tools 7) to find the tempo. Then I used some multi-tracked samples by Discrete Drums to lay in a rhythm section. Bass followed. I quickly sang the lyrics I had written. Then, I pulled out my Marshall cabinet to put some decent guitar tones on the piece. Also, it needed some synth pad stuff. I wrote out some chords in Sibelius and exported them as midi files. Then, the midi files triggered my synth patches. I still have to sing some harmonies on this song, but it's feeling pretty good. The working title for this song is "Exit." But, that will probably change as I get to the final mix.

I was working fast yesterday. There's an episode of Scrubs where Dr. Cox says to the interns "Haaaam gonna hit ya hard; haaaam gonna hit ya fast!" That was how yesterday went for me. I had another sketch that was just about done on my dictaphone, so I demoed it in a similar fashion. This song is much more sparse than the aforementioned song. I usually work in twos, making sure the second movement of my creative process is the opposite of the first part. This song is called "Roller Coaster." I should probably change it so people don't make fun of it by singing that funk song of the same name to me.

The most important thing to remember, at least for me, when in the thick of a writing session is to not censor yourself. I'm not talking about refraining from curse words or lude suggestions. What I mean is letting yourself see an idea completely before judging it. There was a time when I had a song that I didn't think was very good. It was about candybars and cous cous. I'm glad I let people hear it before throwing it away.