"Muse" - ings on Rock & Life

Finally got in touch with B. tonight... she sent me the verse & chorus that she's been working on. Said she sees it more as a quiet, album ending type track. I really liked what she sent me, and I suspect that with a little work and a little polish, we can possibly include it in the list of "keepers." The old pattern emerges... I wrote the music, and she came through on the lyrical side. That means that both she and J. have gotten a lot done recently, and I'm kind of feeling like I haven't done my share of late. That's a horrible feeling to be left with at the end of a day where I had hoped to get a lot done. On the plus side: I did get the progression I've been fighting with recorded and sent off to B. She likes it, and she hears it as a verse... which helps me out immensely just from a song structure point of view. Also on the plus side, was out running a few errands today, and stumbled across a book on arranging songs at Half Price Books. Not su...

It was an interestingly odd day today. Was listening to random stuff on the listening stations today, and somehow I wound up on the discography of Fountains of Wayne. Admittedly, all I really know of them is "Stacy's Mom," which I am quite certain any fan of theirs would say does not adequately represent them. Nevertheless, I previewed all of their records, and quite enjoyed what I heard. I think I might just have to pick up some of their stuff. Here, however, is the important part of all that: IT REMINDED ME HOW MUCH I'D LOVE TO MAKE A POWER-POP RECORD. Not that it will happen anytime soon, of course, too many irons in the fire at the moment to even think of doing such a thing, but it will happen one day, oh yes, it will. The second half of my day was devoted to 50's rock and roll. Considering that I am off tomorrow, and my day will be occupied only by activities of my choosing, I wanted to have something new to listen to. Choosing was easy. I picked up that ...

Well, I didn't get around to the recording today. On the plus side, however, I DID teach a guitar lesson. A co-worker's grandson had expressed an interest in guitar, and said co-worker came to me because they knew I played. He might be a bit young to take lessons, but I'll definitely give the teaching thing a shot again, because the prospect of introducing in someone a love of music while further cementing my own knowledge is too tempting to pass up. Besides, I found some really cool resources online for teaching guitar to kids. At the very least there's another lesson set up for next week, so we shall see where this goes. I found some other cool stuff online today too, including a very involved guitar chord/scale generator. It looks like it'll be a nice way to re-familiarize myself with the naming process for all of the odd chords that we've been using in the songwriting process for the band. It's already helping me out with intervallic relationships and ...

I finished up a six day run at work tonight, and celebrated by taking a little bit of time to work on the record tonight. Nothing in comparison to what I hope tomorrow (a mostly open day) will bring when it comes to results, but still. I kept working on the progression that has occupied my thoughts for the last few days. I'm trying to refine the chorus progression as best I can. I'm currently searching for one more chord change that can show up late in the chorus to offset the rest of the progression. Some of the tricks & theories are coming back to me, now that I'm working on this regularly. I'm hoping it won't be too long until I can crank out the music with ease again. I'm still not sure where the verses are going to come from for this particular song, but that, I suspect, will be easier to determine once the chorus progression is set in stone. This one is falling together slowly, which is making me a bit impatient, but I suppose I ought to be happy the p...

As with seemingly every night this week, I sat with the acoustic this evening. I dropped the acoustic a half step to mess around with the acoustic part that J. wants guide tracks on. I'm fairly certain I've got the verses down, I've just got to recall the chorus progression, and then I'll be able to blast through the whole thing right quick. After that, I wound up messing around with another progression instead. Made a tiny bit of progress on that front too. Still, I managed to burn the CD with the demo mixes, and then the drum & bass tracks on their own. This way, I can listen to it in the car, and burn into my mind where the entrances are. I know the others are waiting on me, and either tomorrow night after work or Tuesday during the day I will get the tracks recorded and toss them in the dropbox. I had a couple of people tell me this week that I need to be playing open mics. They're right. And possibly because they're right, I sat down with the binder...

I sat with the acoustic again this morning. And I found some old photos buried in the pages of a novel I evidently hadn't looked at in two years. That's the kind of thing that leads to a bunch of old memories. Those memories burn less now than they used to, but they will still be good fodder for the music. Again today, I played around with the idea of these guide tracks J. wants. In the process, I figured out a different way to play the progression I really need to be recording. It'd be an electric part if anything, and I'm not sure that we really need electric in that spot. It was cool anyway. I'm wishing I was off tomorrow, so I could lock myself in the back bedroom with a notebook, a pen, and my acoustic. I could really use an entire day to myself to just try and write. It seems like my days off lately (aside from the ones where people have been in from out of state, of course) have been spent doing things for others. Maybe that sounds selfish. Maybe it is. B...

I got up late this morning, but still had time to sit down with the acoustic before work. Something tells me that B.'s songwriting adventure last night may have inspired a small journey for me today. I didn't get a lot done, but I did find chords for a small bit of lyric that had stayed with me for the last few years. It's a quicker progression, and one that feels a bit different for the band (and take it from me, we write some pretty different stuff). It's only a three chord progression over a couple of lines, but I like it. I tried to work on recording that guide track this morning, too, and found that it was quite tough for me to not throw in all kinds of embellishments as I played the progression. I didn't get the track laid down, because I worked on that second, and when I went to listen I discovered that the original track was in a different tuning, and I didn't have enough time to re-tune and record before I left. I did, however, peel back all of the la...