Hey guys, do you remember that thing I said about gathering puzzle pieces and putting the puzzle again? Well, I honestly thought the rest of the songwriting process would just be taking the writing I generated and arranging it into a song. Turns out things just aren't that simple. The writing I generated is great and helped me create a lot of ideas and set the theme, but I'm finding myself with more writer's block now than I ever had when starting this process. It's getting hard to be optimistic all the time, but that might just be a byproduct of the dark imagery of the piece. Oh well, I'm still putting the song together one piece at a time, it's just a moving along a little slower than I first thought.
I picked up some new books from the Library today. Hopefully they can give me some inspiration and help me with my writing. I'm going to start with Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents, a cool little book that details the kind of folk music that I'm interested in, as well as the general structure of different varieties of folk music. Maybe I'll make some connections to some of the folk music I've been listening.
Well, folks, I don't know about you, but I'm just gonna keep on folkin'.
Thursday, April 25, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2013
Day 8: Progress!
Today marks an important point in the songwriting process; today I wrote the chorus. Not only that, but I have figured out the structure of the song. It follows a general pattern of chorus, verse, bridge, repeat x3. The chorus as it stands goes:
Oh, we gather 'round screens like a moth drawn to the flame,
While news of destruction travels faster than a plague
And while bloodshed and heartbreak spreads throughout the land,
We'll sit around screens and hold each other's hands.
The thing I love about this chorus is that it sets up the theme for the rest of the song. The song contrasts light and dark (happy vs sad), and the chorus embodies just that. I think it's also quite catchy and has potential to be very anthemic.
The overall story of the song is starting to develop as well. The song follows a couple who's relationship correlates with the shootings and bombings of the past year. At the same time, the couple has an overwhelming fascination with the media coverage of said events. For instance, they have their first date on the night of the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shooting, which marks the beginning of their relationship, then they wake up in bed together to see breaking news on the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, and finally they spend all of patriot's day together on their couch watching the report on the Boston bombing.
The song takes my initial idea of contrasting light and dark, while at the same time includes inspiration from various events from the past year or so. I'm really excited to see what comes next.
Oh, we gather 'round screens like a moth drawn to the flame,
While news of destruction travels faster than a plague
And while bloodshed and heartbreak spreads throughout the land,
We'll sit around screens and hold each other's hands.
The thing I love about this chorus is that it sets up the theme for the rest of the song. The song contrasts light and dark (happy vs sad), and the chorus embodies just that. I think it's also quite catchy and has potential to be very anthemic.
The overall story of the song is starting to develop as well. The song follows a couple who's relationship correlates with the shootings and bombings of the past year. At the same time, the couple has an overwhelming fascination with the media coverage of said events. For instance, they have their first date on the night of the Aurora, Colorado movie theatre shooting, which marks the beginning of their relationship, then they wake up in bed together to see breaking news on the Newtown, Connecticut school shooting, and finally they spend all of patriot's day together on their couch watching the report on the Boston bombing.
The song takes my initial idea of contrasting light and dark, while at the same time includes inspiration from various events from the past year or so. I'm really excited to see what comes next.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
New Mother Folkers Song!: "Suzie"
Check out the latest song by the Mother Folkers! Enjoy!
Written by Haley Gowland & Kelly Burns
Filmed & Edited by Joe Casper.
Day 7: Everything Comes Together
After a week of writing, writing, and more writing, I've generated enough text to choke a horse. Now that I have the puzzle pieces, my task is to put the puzzle together.
At first, I struggled to find a subject to write about, but after the events from this week I found it. This year has been filled with acts of violence and death, so I figured it would be something worth writing about. After writing short reflections on each of this year's tragedies I realized I couldn't just write a song about death and destruction, so I thought back on my earlier idea of contrasting happy sounds with dark words. The resulting idea is a love song told through the tragedies of this past year. I'm thinking the song follows a relationship over the course of a year, and it evolves as each tragedy occurs. It's a love story as well as a story of death.
My mid-term presentation is first thing on monday. My goal is to come into class with a first draft of a song. I don't plan on having a melody, but I would like to have something people can read.
In other news, the mother folkers have a new song that I'll be posting soon, so keep a lookout!
At first, I struggled to find a subject to write about, but after the events from this week I found it. This year has been filled with acts of violence and death, so I figured it would be something worth writing about. After writing short reflections on each of this year's tragedies I realized I couldn't just write a song about death and destruction, so I thought back on my earlier idea of contrasting happy sounds with dark words. The resulting idea is a love song told through the tragedies of this past year. I'm thinking the song follows a relationship over the course of a year, and it evolves as each tragedy occurs. It's a love story as well as a story of death.
My mid-term presentation is first thing on monday. My goal is to come into class with a first draft of a song. I don't plan on having a melody, but I would like to have something people can read.
In other news, the mother folkers have a new song that I'll be posting soon, so keep a lookout!
Thursday, April 18, 2013
Day 4: Writer's Block
Wow, long time no see. Sorry for the delay in posts, as you can tell by the title the song writing process has not been kind. I've done a lot of writing before, mostly script work for film and theatre. As a result I've experienced a lot of writer's block, yet for some reason it's different this time. My process so far has been sporadically write lines of poetry with a common topic/theme. I started by trying to create very dark imagery, but the results were far too cliche in my opinion. I then started focusing on more specific ideas like recent tragedies like the Boston bombing and Newtown shooting.
With this new topic it was still very difficult to get my ideas on the page. As a last resort, I consulted with my good friend Jimmy (check out his blog at http://deusexvirtus.blogspot.com). His advice to me was to avoid boring/cliche text by focusing on interesting things around you. His example was "A man, with mouth agape stares at lightbulbs," which was influenced by seeing a guy at home depot who was just staring at lightbulbs. I took this concept and thought about what it was like to first hear about the news of the Boston bombing. That idea sparked new ideas, and by the end of the block I had almost two pages worth of text.
My goal now is to finish brainstorming text and to put it together in a coherent manner to form verses of lyrics. Once that's finished I can start putting music to words. I'm not sure which process will be harder; writing out the lyrics or arranging the music. I guess you'll have to tune in to find out!
To be continued...
With this new topic it was still very difficult to get my ideas on the page. As a last resort, I consulted with my good friend Jimmy (check out his blog at http://deusexvirtus.blogspot.com). His advice to me was to avoid boring/cliche text by focusing on interesting things around you. His example was "A man, with mouth agape stares at lightbulbs," which was influenced by seeing a guy at home depot who was just staring at lightbulbs. I took this concept and thought about what it was like to first hear about the news of the Boston bombing. That idea sparked new ideas, and by the end of the block I had almost two pages worth of text.
My goal now is to finish brainstorming text and to put it together in a coherent manner to form verses of lyrics. Once that's finished I can start putting music to words. I'm not sure which process will be harder; writing out the lyrics or arranging the music. I guess you'll have to tune in to find out!
To be continued...
Monday, April 15, 2013
Day 1: Let's Folkin' Do This!
Today marks the official beginning of my motherfolkin' folk project. For those of you who don't know what my project is, I'm writing a folk song. I've been listening to enough folk music for the past week or so to choke a horse and I'm not done yet. T
he songwriting process has begun, which for me is to write as much poetry and as many lyrics as I can until I can eventually put everything together in a coherent manner. Basically I'm gathering the puzzle pieces before I put the puzzle together. This is probably going to be one of the tougher parts of the project. Writing has never been my strong suit, so writing song lyric after song lyric is going to be a challenge.
Fortunately, I've achieved what I thought would be impossible, arranging a very basic melody. I know very little music theory, yet somehow I managed to put together a happy little melody that I think will fit as the chorus. My plan is to write a happy sounding song with incredibly dark lyrics, so at this point I'm brainstorming the happiest melodies and the darkest lyrics possible. I can't wait to see this song come together. I've never written music before, so this is something very exciting for me.
he songwriting process has begun, which for me is to write as much poetry and as many lyrics as I can until I can eventually put everything together in a coherent manner. Basically I'm gathering the puzzle pieces before I put the puzzle together. This is probably going to be one of the tougher parts of the project. Writing has never been my strong suit, so writing song lyric after song lyric is going to be a challenge.
Fortunately, I've achieved what I thought would be impossible, arranging a very basic melody. I know very little music theory, yet somehow I managed to put together a happy little melody that I think will fit as the chorus. My plan is to write a happy sounding song with incredibly dark lyrics, so at this point I'm brainstorming the happiest melodies and the darkest lyrics possible. I can't wait to see this song come together. I've never written music before, so this is something very exciting for me.
5 a.m.
This is our first and latest song! It's the story of a young hobo who's stuck on the midnight train, because everybody knows Hobo's + Folk Music = Genius! Enjoy!
Written by Haley Gowland & Kelly Burns
Welcome to the Mother Folker's blog!
This is the place to be to check up on music updates, as well as insights into the songwriting process. Please feel free to leave questions and comments on the blog. Have a good motherfolkin' day!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)