A Song A Day: #7

Dead chuffed with tonight's effort, the 7th and final song of this whole experiment. I'd reached midnight and was still completely lyricless, though I had some chords for a chorus and a nice melody to go with it. Then I had the idea of writing a song about writing a song every day. I know, I know, but since it was my last one I thought I'd indulge myself. In this version (life translated into pop) the song-a-day thing is a symbol of missing someone you love - hence the chorus:

While my love's away
I'll write a song each day
And pin them to the trees in her neighbourhood
Have you seen this girl
Finest in the world
Please send her back to me

The whole thing is very sweet and innocent, but often that's the hardest kind of song to write (or at least to write well). I'm very proud of it. It also has a proper middle-8, as promised.

So there it is. The full list, in chronological order:

Everybody Makes Their Own Jam
Trains And Sunsets
Maida Vale
Higher Shelf
Miles From Land
I Draw The Line
A Song A Day

As predicted, there are songs in there I'll most likely never return to (except to record them for posterity). In the case of I Draw The Line, I'll probably play it to myself (the guitar part is lovely to play) but not to an audience (especially if that audience includes its subject, who really doesn't deserve to be subjected to it). Some - like tonight's, and Trains And Sunsets - I think stand on their own as some of my best songs. The self-imposed deadlines were fantastic for pushing me to the end of a song, and forcing me to run with ideas I would usually have rejected at an early stage. Every day it would get to the afternoon or evening and I'd worry that I wasn't going to be able to produce anything, but somehow 7 songs materialised (though some are short and runty).

As soon as I get all the gear I need, there will be some musical evidence to go with all this verbiage. Thanks (to whom it may concern) for reading, though.

A Song A Day: #6

You might think that after a Friday night of boozing and dancing I'd get off the nightbus and head straight to bed. But, with a song to finish, there was no chance of that. This side of the Atlantic, it's hard to claim that it's still Friday, but you can't fault my dedication.

This will be a short post, and not just because it's past 4am and I'm shattered. Today's song is, in terms of lyrical content, pretty personal, certainly more so than anything else I've written this week. And I'd rather not rake over the subject matter in public. Suffice to say it's called I Draw The Line, and lyricswise it's pretty short (12 lines) - which is down to laziness more than anything. I wrote on the guitar today, and returned to the chords I'd been playing around with a couple of days ago for Higher Shelf. This time the lyrics fitted better. The resulting song is very earnest - think John Mayer meets Gary Barlow - and not remotely ironic. It's not very sophisticated, but the chords are pretty. And goshdarnit, it's a song at least.

Incidentally, though I've turned out some fine choruses, I've yet to write a song with a proper middle 8 this week. An aim for tomorrow (which will be the last day of this project, as I'm starting an internship on Monday).

Now, BEDTIME.

A Song A Day: #5

I got distracted by Bonnie Greer giving Nick Griffin a good drubbing on Question Time tonight, so didn't get round to writing the bulk of the song until almost midnight. I'd had a few ideas brewing since the afternoon, though. This morning I was thinking about the musical influences on the 4 songs I've written so far, and how there hadn't been any real correlation between the music I'd listened to that day and the song I ended up writing. Well, today I bucked that trend. I had Beirut's 'Gulag Orkestar' album on at lunchtime, and when I sat down at the piano I started fiddling with some gypsy-ish chords. More flamenco than Balkan, but still decidedly Beirut-ish.

I then went out for a couple of hours, and jotted down a few lyrics on the train. The music called for something wild and exotic, and I went for a description of a hellishly drunken evening in a dive bar. Admittedly, 'Everybody Makes Their Own Jam' was also about a boozy night, but THIS song would drink THAT one under the table. Whereas 'Jam' (as it's sure to be known among fans) was about bored kids in the British countryside, I wanted this to feel like a foreign country (the opening lines are "Smoke and gloom / Filling the darkened room", which wouldn't wash in post-smoking ban Britain).

In contrast to the minor-modal verse I wrote quite a tuneful, but structurally awkward, chorus:

Take me away from this watering hole
This hanging and drawing and quartering hole
Won't someone help me to stand
Looks like I'm three sheets to the wind
And miles from land

The scansion makes sense with the music. Sort of. Note my use of "quartering" to rhyme with "watering", thumbing my nose at my American friend Rhymezone.com. The ye-olde / nautical imagery gave a slight sea shanty dimension, which I liked. I went with 'Miles From Land' as my title.

I bashed out verses 2 and 3 pretty quickly (in truth I wanted to get the thing finished): more stuff about reality slipping and oblivion drawing close. My structure for the verses (AAABCCCB) meant that I was having to dig deep into the rhyme box (as with 'Jam') - so in order to find a rhyme for "cab" and "tab" I put in a line about walking like a crab. In fact the line was originally about a hermit crab, but I realised hermit crabs don't walk side-to-side. In fact, as the clip below demonstrates, they don't walk much at all.

[I enjoy her repeated claims that the crabs are "walking around" despite the overwhelming visual evidence to the contrary. Though Sonny deserves a mention for his attempted jailbreak at 1:25.]

Enough about crabs. Not sure this one's a keeper, but with the addition of an accordion and the odd brass or string instrument it could be fun.

So, after 5 days, the tally stands at:

2 songs about getting pissed
2 songs about public transport
1 song about some bollocks with a ladder...

A Song A Day: #4

I didn’t leave things as late today. After yesterday I wanted to write something more substantial, and after 3 piano-driven songs I thought it might help if I wrote on the guitar. The problem, however, with my writing songs on the guitar is that I tend to spend the whole time finding voicings that sound nice rather than focusing on the song itself. This was certainly the case today, and I ended up with this big, powerful chord progression that didn’t really leave any room for a melody.

So, to help me think about melody I opened the first book I could find - which happened to be a book of Leonard Cohen’s poetry on my desk - and tried to sing one of the poems along to the chords. The poem I chose is called ‘Need the Speed’ and it’s written in short two-stress lines, eg:

need the speed
need the wine
need the pleasure
in my spine

I liked the idea of writing similarly short lines, and this pushed me towards abstract, cod-mystical territory. This kind of writing seems to come naturally to Cohen, but it demands a gravitas that I feel I don’t really have - and when it’s done badly it can be the worst kind of tosh (eg Oasis). Still, I had a crack at a first verse: “Take a step / Above yourself / And try to reach / A higher shelf”. I didn’t quite know what this meant, but decided that rather than use the “higher shelf” image as a rather cheap throwaway metaphor I should build the whole song around it.

So I came up with a little fable: there are two people who want all these wondrous, mysterious spiritual goods that are kept on a high shelf. One of them’s light enough to climb the ladder, but not strong enough to lift the things down. The other is strong enough, but too heavy to climb the ladder without breaking it. Deep stuff, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Anyway, I’m pleased with the lyrics (I’ve included them in full below). I wasn’t happy with the music, though, so I went crawling back to my old friend the piano, where I came up with a much better tune and chord pattern that sounded like an old hymn. I then timed it, found it came in at under 2 minutes, so took the 1st verse and used it as a repeated refrain every 2 verses (for padding - but also giving it a bit more cohesion).

All in all, a classic case of 'change the handle, then change the blade'. And you know what, I like it.

HIGHER SHELF

Take a step
Above yourself
And try to reach
A higher shelf

There you will find
The hidden hoard
Where higher forms
Of truth are stored

Things cumbersome
And so profound
You cannot lift them
To the ground

And as you climb
To greater grace
I’ll hold the ladder
At the base

And as you climb
Back to the floor
I’ll ask you all
The things you saw

For you alone
Are swift and light
So I can never
Reach that height

And I alone
Could lift that freight
But these old rungs
Can’t take my weight

Take a step
Above yourself
And try to reach
A higher shelf

A Song A Day: #3

"Go on," I said to my friend Hugh over lunch, "give me a word, and I'll put it in today's song. I need all the help I can get."
"Oh, I don't know," said Hugh. "Something about the Metro. You know, the free paper."

I'd been feeling pretty smug about yesterday's effort, playing and singing it lots and thinking about what a soulful genius I was. But then I noticed I had 2 hours in which to write something before I had to leave for a pub quiz. So. I'm afraid I took a lazy way out. Hugh's suggestion about the Metro reminded me that I'd had a vague idea to write a light-hearted song about love on the Tube. I went back to an old notebook and found a few scribbles. I also thought I could get away with incorporating bits from a little 4-line poem on the same subject I wrote years ago, in which I ingeniously rhyme "charming filly" with "Piccadilly", and "pretty" with "Hammersmith & City".

The opening couplet of my song dealt with the Metro:

At first our love seemed perfect; it went off without a hiccup
Then you left me like a freesheet for somebody else to pick up...

And subsequently the song was an excuse for some dodgy wordplay on names of Tube lines and stations. But, I dunno, some of it's quite funny, and I'm pleased I managed to fit in the word "phantasmagoria" (to rhyme with Victoria - I had to look it up to check what it meant). Lyrically I was aiming for a Flanders and Swann vibe, but then when I came to write the music it turned out a bit more 1920s / Noel Coward (or rather Monty Python 'doing' Noel Coward). It's called Maida Vale, because I make a wildly original pun on said tube stop at the end of the song.

So. Day 1: silly song, finding some kind of emotional centre by the end. Day 2: emotional song, slightly ashamed of its own emotionalness. Day 3: just silly.

WHO KNOWS what Day 4 will bring...

A Song A Day: #2

First, some thoughts, on the second day of this fool's errand.

- Rhymezone.com is my best friend. Even though it's American, so it doesn't think water rhymes with quarter.

- Songwriting can be a bit like that riddle about the axe. You change the verse, and then you change the chorus, so is it still the same song? With today's, there were a few instances of this: I'd want to use the word 'black' at the end of a line, so the next line would end 'I want you back' - a sentiment plucked out of the air, for the sake of the rhyme - and then I'd go back and change the first line to end with 'track'. And hey presto, for no very good reason, the song's about wanting someone back.

- Though this whole exercise is partly about lowering my standards for myself, I've still (happily) got some in-built sense of quality control. Today's song is almost very cheesy, but hopefully, my constant desire to undercut the sentimentality will have saved it from total schmaltz.

- Both today's song and yesterdays have seriously challenged my piano-playing abilities. If/when I do them live I need to either do some practice or bring in a real pianist.

So. Today's effort is called 'Trains and Sunsets'. I find that I'm often at my most introspective on train journeys, and when I happen to be on a train at sundown I'm even worse. I remember a moment from my pre-university travels when I was on a train from Munich to Prague, standing by the window, wind in my hair, listening to 'Dust In The Wind' by Todd Rundgren as the sky turned pink. I had been a bit down at the time and I just had the most epic emotional wallow. This song isn't about that train journey, but it's about that feeling.

I like songs about trains, too. Seriously, I've got a whole playlist on my iPod. I've long wanted to write one, and since the rhythm I'd been playing around with on the piano sounded vaguely train-like, this seemed a good moment. The first bit of the lyric to come was a lighter-waving chorus:

I barely think of you but every now and then
Trains and sunsets set me off again

I took a moment to congratulate myself for the accidental wordplay of 'sunsets set me off'. Then I had to pad out the sentiment into a couple of verses. I wanted to have a specific train journey in mind as I wrote, and toyed with a few ideas before settling on the standard train from Victoria I take to get home from central London. Consequently I refer to it as the 7.21 (there actually is a train at that time), there's a reference to the Thames in there, and when I mention chimneys I was thinking of Battersea Power Station.

That aside, it's not a very specific lyric. As I said, there are lots of attempts to save myself from cliché by drawing attention to the cliché (which is a cliché in itself), so there's a bit about a "clichéd colour scheme", a "chocolate box display", a "manipulative lighting plot". But then that became, I suppose, the central idea of the song: that certain moments (like a sunset on a train) conspire to manipulate us into feelings that we wouldn't usually have; that the epiphanies you get at such moments are produced, as it were, under duress.

Anyway, after two verses I thought I'd have trouble stretching the idea any further. So for the third verse you get some good oldfashioned "da da da"-ing. Which, in the context of a band, would be solo time. And I think that just about constitutes a whole song...

A Song A Day: #1

I've always been in awe of prolific people. When I write a song I'm usually quite pleased with the result, but the occasions when I actually manage to see one through to the end - music, lyrics and all - come around less often than Halley's comet. Whereas there are some people for whom it seems like the easiest thing in the world. Stephin Merritt of The Magnetic Fields is one such jammy git. The album 69 Love Songs is, well, sixty-nine songs in total. Most of which are proper songs, with middle 8s and everything. And the album i is equally maddening: all the songs begin with the letter I and are arranged in alphabetical order - as if he's got a whole index-worth of songs in his locker, and has just chosen to put out one twenty-sixth of them. Similarly, it's said that Ed Harcourt writes, on average, a song a day. I'm lucky if I write one a year.

A while ago I got to thinking that it would be a fun project to force myself to write a song a day. That way, I figured, after a month you'd have 30 songs, many of which would be crap, but a few of which might be salvageable. With a bit of luck it would also push me out of my comfort zone as a songwriter and encourage me to write about anything and everything, rather than just about my own romantic failures (plentiful though they are).

Well, last night I decided it's time to bite the bullet, after prompting from my friend Emma (who has agreed to try to do it too - but she's in full-time employment, and I do nothing all day). The Song A Day project starts here. I'll try to do a week's worth, and then if that succeeds I might push for a month. Anyway, I'll use this blog to keep track of my progress.

It had got to about 7pm when I realised I hadn't done anything. I duly sat down at the piano, fiddled around for a bit, and came up with a few musical ideas including one with quite a nice repeating melodic pattern. It sounded, perhaps not surprisingly, a lot like a Magnetic Fields track. Then I had dinner, and with it, a glass of cider. I took the glass of cider back to the piano and started to think about lyrics. And - you've guessed it - I looked at the cider and thought "what rhymes with cider?"

I came up with a verse that didn't make much sense on its own, but rhymed:

Spider
Off his face on white cider
Like a bike with no rider
Tumbled into a ditch on the side of the road

Then I tried to fit some kind of narrative around this. It's an odd way of writing, I'll admit, but it's worked for me before. I decided that the song could be a series of little vignettes from a boozy night among some kids in the countryside. The next thing to come was the chorus:

Round here everybody makes their own jam
And we have to make all our own fun but no-one gives a damn

I was pretty pleased with this and felt it set a good tone for the song - light-hearted but maybe with some genuine teen angst underlying it. So I cobbled together 5 more short verses, full of forced rhymes and also vaguely Lily Allenish stuff about getting pissed and giving head - which felt a bit strange, and not very me, but appropriate for the character singing the song. I'm usually so literal in my songs that it's nice to do a bit of storytelling.

So it's done. 1 day, 1 song. 100% success rate so far. Whether it's a good song is another question, of course. It's called Everybody Makes Their Own Jam.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's result. I will get round to recording rough versions of these at some point and will put them on myspace.

#metatwitter

Twitter is the internet's gift to lazy journalists.

Witness this story. Almost entirely constructed from a few simple mouse-clicks. The story itself is devoid of any genuine controversy or intrigue, and is only of interest if you care what Sarah Brown thinks about things - in which case you're probably one of her >774,000 followers already. And 'tweets' occupy an odd middle ground: they're not candid private remark, and they're not press releases. So they're neither substantial (at 140 characters, how could they be?) nor exclusive (however much hacks try to present them that way).

Twitter, to use its own strange parlance, has been a Trending Topic (#twitter, if you will) for a while now, nestling alongside The Wire in the bargain bin of zeitgeisty dinner-party subjects. (And here I am, talking about people talking about it! I'm in a hall of meta mirrors!) Received wisdom divides into two camps. On the one hand, there are those who say it heralds a new dawn for social networking, or the internet, or humanity in general. On the other, there are those (including, notoriously, David Cameron) who'll wheel out some version of the following: "What's the point of twitter? I mean WHAT is the point? I don't care if you're having a cup of tea! Shut up already!"

Both are wrong.

Twitter is almost certainly not the future. Even with all the hype it's been getting in the media, it hasn't caught on in the way facebook did - and without a certain tipping point of users, it doesn't quite work. In certain communities where everyone uses it (say, journalism or stand-up comedy) it can be a vibrant and entertaining means of communicating and exchanging ideas. But essentially, if your mates aren't on it, there's not much point. My own twitter page is a rather forlorn thing: my tweets tend to go unheeded, and should I fire off a message in the direction of one of the journos or celebs I "follow", I feel like a kid rather desperately trying to join in with a playground kickabout.

BUT it can work brilliantly. This is largely due to the simplicity of the format, which leaves users in control of how they want to use their 140 characters - unlike facebook, whose cumbersome and irritating applications (game of zombies, anyone?) have pulled it in too many directions. So, in among all the people tweeting about their cups of tea there are a few gems. Like an ongoing fantasy soap opera of Nick Griffin's life (@realnickgriffin), or an 18th-century commentary on current affairs (@DrSamuelJohnson). Within moments of Michael Jackson's death @jeremylimb was musing: "Has anyone told Paul McCartney the girl is his?"

Meanwhile, the papers (with only a few hours to fill pages and pages of their Michael Jackson Death Special Editions) were dedicating substantial column inches to the reaction on Twitter: instant and copyright-free comment, without having to pick up a phone. So, a site which is uniquely positioned to aggregate responses to the news becomes the news... and we're back in the hall of mirrors.

Now, I'm off to watch The Wire.