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Day Two Hundred Four (Year Four)

I sit here tonight, still somewhat surprised that I finished off the music for all 14 songs in the first twelve days of the month.  That said, the tweaks and adjustments to the music that I predicted last night waited barely 24 hours before starting to show up.  Tonight I tweaked a chorus for one of the songs as I was diving into structure and arrangement.

I'm happy to say that I got the song structure squared away for 60 percent or so of the record (8 out of 14 songs).  This part of the process has always come pretty quickly to me.  It seems like, once I get the chord progressions figured out, I can hear in my head how many times each section needs to be played through for each song.  I'm also generally pretty good at getting the order right (i.e. how many times through the verses and choruses, which comes first, where the solo sections fit in) early on in the process.  The only songs I didn't get squared away were a couple of the ones that I'm thinking will have a bit more odd/adventurous of a layout.  I'm not sure if all (or any) of those will end up making it onto the finished album or not, but regardless, it felt like they needed a little bit more time to sort themselves out.

Probably the coolest part of the structure & arrangement process for me is simply the fact that, if there are any serious holes in the music, this is the point at which they will start to make themselves known.  That's why I always hold off on recording until I have at least a little bit of an idea how things are going to shake out.  I feel like getting that part out of the way before hitting the studio makes things go a little smoother in the end.

The other thing that needs to at least start happening this weekend is some work on lyrics.  I've got a few phrases that I've been kicking around, but nothing too serious yet.  If the recording is going to go smoothly, I don't want to leave the words until the bitter end, just because trying to wrap the whole thing up at the end of the month is going to be tough enough without having to write lyrics completely under the gun.

In a perfect world, I'd be able to get the rest of the song structures finished this weekend, and nail down final tempos on everything.  That may be a bit too adventurous, but we shall see.
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