Metamorphosis
Last week I was thinking about musical growth and this week that theme sort of continued, but in a slightly different manner. I was thinking about the way an idea or a set of related ideas become a song. I was looking back at some of stuff that I came up with when I first started playing guitar and comparing it to the newer songs that my band had started putting together. It was interesting to see how something really basic can become something new and different yet retain a tie to the original idea.
Many music fans don’t realize that writing a song can be an extremely long process before the writers are even happy with it. One simple idea can morph and mutate into countless side branches before becoming anything worthwhile. It is rare for the writer to bring in a song idea to the rest of the band that is completely finished or to use an original riff exactly as it was written.
But the fact that things change when band members get together is one of the best parts about music. The interaction between members and the contribution of each player are what make a song what it is.
In the case of my band, each song (all of which are still unfinished) has been through what seems like 5 versions a piece, each with different structures and variations of the basic theme. Through this exploration we hope to make each song stronger by giving it a chance to write itself rather than being satisfied by pushing it in only one direction. Some of the best material comes from each member pulling the song in a different direction than the others, sometimes to the point where the song itself tears and the band has to start over again.
While this seems relatively simple, this process is in fact slow, confrontational, and sometimes agonizing. Arguments about how the song should go and how parts should sound are commonplace and can slow down the writing pace to a slow crawl. One of our songs, "Panacea", has been around in various forms since 2004 when I first came up with the root idea. It has taken up until this very day for the band to reach an agreement on the song. We have argued for hours on what we think should happen where, which instrument should shine in which part, and how the vocals should augment the piece. While 2 years may seem like a long time for a song to come into being, progress was delayed due to the distance factor between the band and myself and the college academic schedule.
I do think that the extra time has allowed the song to grow and find its own identity. I’m sure that some great songs have been written in less than an hour or even a couple, however, I think for the most part that time benefits songwriting.
Here is a link to my newly created podcast. I'm trying to get the files into the right formats to get some stuff up, but until then I posted a filler/intro track.
click here to go to my podcast
Many music fans don’t realize that writing a song can be an extremely long process before the writers are even happy with it. One simple idea can morph and mutate into countless side branches before becoming anything worthwhile. It is rare for the writer to bring in a song idea to the rest of the band that is completely finished or to use an original riff exactly as it was written.
But the fact that things change when band members get together is one of the best parts about music. The interaction between members and the contribution of each player are what make a song what it is.
In the case of my band, each song (all of which are still unfinished) has been through what seems like 5 versions a piece, each with different structures and variations of the basic theme. Through this exploration we hope to make each song stronger by giving it a chance to write itself rather than being satisfied by pushing it in only one direction. Some of the best material comes from each member pulling the song in a different direction than the others, sometimes to the point where the song itself tears and the band has to start over again.
While this seems relatively simple, this process is in fact slow, confrontational, and sometimes agonizing. Arguments about how the song should go and how parts should sound are commonplace and can slow down the writing pace to a slow crawl. One of our songs, "Panacea", has been around in various forms since 2004 when I first came up with the root idea. It has taken up until this very day for the band to reach an agreement on the song. We have argued for hours on what we think should happen where, which instrument should shine in which part, and how the vocals should augment the piece. While 2 years may seem like a long time for a song to come into being, progress was delayed due to the distance factor between the band and myself and the college academic schedule.
I do think that the extra time has allowed the song to grow and find its own identity. I’m sure that some great songs have been written in less than an hour or even a couple, however, I think for the most part that time benefits songwriting.
Here is a link to my newly created podcast. I'm trying to get the files into the right formats to get some stuff up, but until then I posted a filler/intro track.
click here to go to my podcast
posted by in2thegapagain85 at 10:49 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home