I have been trying an experiment for the last couple weeks,
which I hope to continue for the next few months. . .
I recently found myself getting bogged down in the minutia
of songs that are mostly completed. “Perhaps
I should invert this chord, or move that one note in the bass line up a fifth,
or add one measure of 23/8”. It was
getting quite maddening! I listened to the same two tracks over and over again
until I would find myself spontaneously bursting out in song to questions like,
“Can I use your restroom?” As you might
imagine, I have this tendency to be a wee-bit perfectionistic when it comes to
music, and as such tend to perseverate on songs until I feel they are “just
right”. Unfortunately, to get a song
“just right” I would need to focus on it to a point nearing self-abuse. No, not the Freudian definition (sicko!), more
like that endured by Manuel Noriega when troops played loud music outside his
Palace in an attempt to get him to hand over Panama. While this process has always resulted in
music I am happy with and want to listen to, I am finding that it really
stifles the creative writing process. As
a result, I have created the “Two-week Song Challenge” for myself.
The Two-week Song Challenge is based on a book writing challenge
I heard about. In that challenge,
aspiring authors are tasked with writing 50,000 words in 30 days, without
self-critiquing their work as they write.
The idea is to let the creativity flow, damn the torpedoes, full speed
ahead. After the 30 days are up, the
budding authors can then go back and see what they have, decide if it’s a
keeper and edit, or throw it back.
In this spirit, I have decided to try to write and record
one complete song every two weeks for the next few months. The goal is to get these songs to the point
where they are “acceptable” rather than “perfect”, and then just move on. Then, after a few months, I will go back
through the completed songs, decide which ones should be “perfected”, and do
so. My first attempt at this started
with a classic prog/rock style song that I am very happy with. The next two week cycle begins this Thursday
and I have no idea what will come out. This
is very exciting to me as I will again write with no preconceived ideas about
how the song should turn out. One thing
I am pretty certain about is that these songs will have a heavy prog
influence. When I first started writing
Judgment I tried very hard to write straight ahead rock songs, but they kept
turning out prog. Prog has run in my
blood since my first Genesis concert in 1980 and no matter how hard I have
tried to move away from it I always end up back there.
Well, wish me luck! Hope
fully I will have a lot to show for this experiment soon.
Craig