Rehash

Oh hey, it’s time for my every once in a while put my thoughts to the page of what I’m doing musically. Is it important for anyone else to know? Not really, nor does anybody read this, but hey it’s interesting to me and that’s what matters.

In the last week or so I’ve for some reason regained the spark of writing again. Maybe not so much just lyrically, but overall music in general.  I honestly don’t know where it came from but I’m glad it did.  I recorded most if not all the tiny ideas I had and left it at that. Then a few days later started pecking at them again and putting the songs I did have together with melodies and started to imagine how they would play out.  Then, I came back to the sampler programs I have and starting making drum beats and there you go.  It’s kind of funny how things turn around when you’re on the verge of quitting something because nothing’s happening.  Speaking of nothing happening, slowly but surely I’ve even gotten back to writing again with my band and what’s coming out, what little that does, is shaping up to be pretty exciting.  Maybe we’re all growing as musicians or maybe we’re finally in that groove of working together that I noticed while writing for the last album I dunno.  Either way, the few things we’ve come up with in recent months are groovy and I’m really enjoying them.

Today I was looking through old notebooks of lyrics and abandoned songs and realized that I’ve written far more than whatever actually came about which made me feel a little better about just jumping on songs as they’re written.  My idea for our last album was to write a good 20 or so songs fully and pick and choose which ones were best and record those.  Sadly that didn’t happen and we ended up recording the first 10 or 11 we came up with, cheating because 2 were already written previously.  This bummed me out a bit because I was left wondering, what if we were to come up with something better that we never came back to or was just on the tip of the tongue. I’m still really proud of mostly all of our songs, but the what if still lingers. Well until today.

Not even a correct total, but I count that for Your Music Is Bad And You Should Feel Bad we wrote about 20 songs more or less.  These were pretty much all at least jammed on once or twice and we only used 10 for the album.  11 if you include the cover.

Feel Good. Make Ya Sweat had around 10 which is surprising because we were just playing shows and virtually not writing at all during that time.

Don’t Just Stand There while really only worked hard on the ten from the album, we had actually jammed on around 18 or so.  I’ve got lyrics for at least 20 or more written during that time.  A lot of which I’m going back to and have decided that unlike the first run, these aren’t all total crap.  A lot are, but that’s beside the point.

So now at least I don’t feel like the last album was a rush job.  It really started nearly a year and a half before its release after all. Now a days it’s taking a slight different approach as well.  I’m starting to come up with my own melodies along with the lyrics, record them, and send them to the band or play them at a practice myself to see what they think.  Take a more active role in the writing in other words.  Nick is doing a lot more writing and sending it to me alone beforehand as well which has churned the beginnings of a lot of songs including Momma’s Boy, The Leafy Illusion, and The Ballad of Jimmy.

Needless to say I feel good about music again for the first time in a long time.  Time will tell if any of this either my own or band related stuff will see the light of day, but for now I feel inspired.