I think I had this fantasy that the next time I wrote one of these blog posts, I’d have a completed shell of the song I did a very rough demo of the last time.
Surprise surprise! Songwriting is hard. And it’s work. I’ve had enough jam sessions that make me feel fantastic about how I’m sounding and what I’m playing, and in those moments I get it in my head that I’m really close to having something I can share, something I can record. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
Part of the reason this blog post already feels delayed is that I was really tempted to share ANOTHER song snippet I had worked on not long ago. This one is an easier acoustic strummer, but I was thrilled with the melody I whistled into my phone and suddenly wanted to listen to a bunch of Neil Young to figure out how to hammer that one out into something good.
But I think part of the discipline of songwriting, or any kind of writing, is staying focused on a given idea. I have way too many reviews and think pieces that I’ve written an opening paragraph for and then put off returning to because I didn’t want to do the hard work beyond that initial moment of inspiration. So I’m specifically not going to share that other song and instead focus on the work I did following my first post.
Tempo
When I sat down to play today, I started by practicing the riff I had previously recorded. I wanted to get a feel of it again and get back the muscle memory of playing it. I drilled it a few times with the intent of then looping the riff so that I could solo or play a melody over the top of it. But I was finding it difficult to play along with my looped recording and stay on time, and I realized it was because I was still playing the song fast and loose with no regard for tempo.
First I slowed down my playing, taking the riff down to about half speed. It sounded something like this (this was actually recorded in 2016 and not today since I’m an idiot, but you get the idea):
I determined what the tempo was (around 80-90 BPM) and then played the power chord verse and bridge riffs at that same tempo. I also found myself strumming in something other than straight eighth notes when I was playing fast, so at the slower tempo I even simplified the riff to straight eighth notes and even tried to count out what I was playing to a point where it actually made sense rhythmically. The next step should’ve been to physically write out the rhythm on paper or sheet music, but I digress.
For a while I even tried playing at the accelerated tempo I wanted to play but keeping my metronome even as low as 75 BPM. So rather than eighth notes at a brisk tempo, I was forcing myself to effectively play sixteenth notes at a slow tempo. That got complicated to count, but it helped me gradually build up to the appropriate speed I wanted. This latest recording of my riff clocks in at an upbeat 180 BPM.
Song Structure
One thing I haven’t quite cracked yet is how my chorus should tie into my verse and bridge. I decided that the opening, intro riff would also double as my chorus. So if that’s the case, the song structure is effectively this:
Intro/Chorus
Verse
Verse
Bridge
Chorus
Verse
Verse
Bridge
Chorus
Solo
Chorus
Or something like that. I’m working on it. But the progression for the verse doesn’t fit my opening riff, so I need a rhythm guitar line that can go underneath the chorus riff…or do I? I started envisioning a track with only a lead guitar, and just bass and drums underneath, but there still has to be a progression that will sound appropriate.
Hitting that impasse, I decided to record each section separately, which helped lead me to that song structure and get each portion to something I liked a little more. I even took the time out to solo over my looped verse, playing around on the A major pentatonic and A sliding pentatonic scales. I’m finding it hard to play a strong solo at that tempo for a punk song, but I’m beginning to get an idea of how I might drill a specific solo, and I’ll have to listen to similar songs to get an idea of what licks I can incorporate.
Melody
This is where it starts to get funny and embarrassing. Once I had my tempo and my components, I looped the verse and bridge and hummed some bars that I think could be the outline of a vocal melody.
Would you call that humming? It’s more hushed growling in my mind, like I’m a caveman who can’t quite find the words to what I want to say. At times during this very improvisational exercise it appears as though I almost sound out some words. “I gnnnhnned somethnnn,” I think?
What I like about this is I can already imagine how the bridge vocals might break down into phrases, as well as how I would escalate my voice vocally. I do want this to be a more shouted, punk sounding song, and this, rather than my whistling on a different song recording, feels weirdly right.
I also recorded this for my chorus without looping the chorus riff, but you can hear how I intentionally made my melody follow the guitar riff.
You know how when Paul McCartney developed the melody for “Yesterday,” he didn’t yet have the words for it, so his placeholder lyrics were “Scrambled Eggs?” (a note: these blog posts are going to have a lot of Beatles anecdotes) Somehow the word I latched onto during this improv’d melody was San-Fran-Cis-Co. I’ve never been to San Francisco, so maybe that could be a good starting point when I take a stab at writing lyrics, which will be my goal for Songwriting Blog #3!
Thanks for reading, and again, let me know your thoughts on this update below. What is it sounding like? Where could I go from here? What should I listen to for more inspiration? And check out my first entry here.
