Week 2 (slightly belated)

Hi there blog fans,

Apologies that this post is a little late, as I'm now into week 3 of the course - but hey, I'm a musician; always fashionably late. At least, that's my excuse.

So, after the first week fun - meeting everyone, getting to grips with each other's styles, playing our first songs - we got down to the nitty gritty of writing songs every week. For many of us it will be a tough discipline to get to grips with. Personally, I hadn't written anything new for a good while - maybe one song in the last six months or so for me. Writing a new song every week is a challenge, but one which I'm relishing.

It's great to be in the company of such an enthusiastic and talented group of musicians, and we're in such beautiful surroundings. All these positive factors have really inspired me to get back into writing music, and suddenly the ideas have started flowing. I probably could've written 3 or 4 songs in week 2. Maybe I should've - when the ideas are drying up in week 5/6, I'll regret not doing so!

Onto my submission for week 2 then. During my bike ride home from Uni in week 1, I had lots of ideas going round in my head. The one that made it into a song was called "The Girl Who Couldn't Be Seen". It was written about an anorexia sufferer during her teenage years, and the title seemed perfect for the subject matter.

Usually my songwriting process involves getting a catchy melody, developing a memorable hook, then writing the song around these ideas. However, I'm trying to write in as many different ways as possible during this course (lyrics first, concept first, etc.). I've always thought my main weakness lied in writing lyrics - however this week's idea was really refreshing in that I think I could've happily written eight or nine verses.

So I picked up my guitar and got down to the writing process. I really wanted to play on the idea of "The Girl Who Couldn't Be Seen" - it's written about anorexia and how someone can just fade into the background. I wanted to draw literal parallels of the girl actually "not being seen" - i.e. getting physically smaller and weaker; but also to use this as a metaphor, i.e. the girl's problems going unnoticed by family/friends until it's too late.I also really wanted to put a twist into the tale, to trick the listener a little. Basically, the conclusion of the tale is that the girl ended up okay and overcame her problems, but the first half of the song deals with what may have happened had she not have done.

I was fairly happy with the final song, but was well aware of it's shortcomings. I don't think I managed to get the 'twist' across properly, and maybe I cut the song short before I'd got all my ideas in there - I was a little aware of the song running on too long, and losing the listener's interest. I also didn't really manage to build up the visual images of the girl who "couldn't be seen".

When I played the song to my group on Monday, it got a mixed reaction - I think everyone liked it on the whole, but there was plenty of scope for discussion! Many of the points that I had already thought about were raised. Andy (course leader) suggested that it would be interesting to re-write the song and write completely around the subject, rather that dealing with the issues head-on. This idea really appeals to me - I think by doing this I could make the song much more visual, as I had first hoped. When we get on to the "Solo Songwriting 2" module of the course, we will be re-writing all of our songs, so there is plenty of scope for future progression with this one.

If you want to hear the demo, click the fast forward button below and play the track named "The Girl Who Couldn't Be Seen".






My songwriting group has dropped from 6 to 4 people - I believe Andrew is now going to be doing the course next year and Mark has moved to Tuesday, due to the fact that he has to travel from Birmingham each week. So that leaves me and three fantastically talented ladies! What a tough life I lead. First up to play her song last Monday was Kim. Her song was more of an idea - she told us that she struggled to get something new ready in time for Monday, and in fact she forgot the chords when she played it to us! We gave her a breather, and thankfully she remembered what she'd written. Just a starting point for a song so far, but another really great idea which has bags of potential.

Bex played her new song "The Doctor" - a dark song in a similar style to her previous week's submission. More beautiful, haunting vocals and a great story. This song spurred a lot of discussion, we all seemed to have different ideas for where Bex could go next with this one. Andy in particular had a lot to say, and in fact advised Bex to drop about three verses out of it. It will be fascinating to see what Bex does with that one when it's re-written.

And last but certainly not least, Heidi played us her new idea (working title "Opening Night"). Awash with uplifting harmonies and great lyrics, this song again has great potential. We particularly enjoyed Heidi's pre-chorus, where she sang some very melodic gibberish, as she had not written the lyrics for that part yet! Great song though - we have some amazing talent in my group (hopefully I'm not lowering the standard!)

So that's about it Songwriting-wise for week 2. All the other students are now uploading their tracks to our University system, so we can all hear each other's work. There's so many different styles - it's going to be a tough job critiquing every song. For this module, our grade is awarded on the quality of our critique, so there's a lot of work ahead...

Ok, signing off now. Week 3's song is already written and recorded, so I'll get that posted on here soon. I'll leave you with a couple of views of the campus, taken from the window of our rehearsal room.

Pat