FAWM Wrap Up - 2/4

In the second week of FAWM, I wrote three songs. They were all written pretty much on the same day. Each one was a semi-improvisation that I recorded and later went back and smoothed out the lyrics and changes in places where I didn’t know what I was doing. Then I listened to each for a bit and re-recorded them as follows.

04. Lost Again – Written like the song says on a Sunday afternoon. I was focused on television when I was writing this one. Lost and Parks & Rec. are mentioned specifically, but I was really trying to write a commentary about a life that revolves around work and watching television. As I started writing it, I was reminded of that old Lemonheads song that starts out “That pencil smell reminds me of school…” and I tried to write a song with that feel. I would have scrapped the whole thing, but I the chorus is fun to sing.

05. Penny – This song was written for the Week 2 Challenge: Inanimate Objects. Obviously, this song is about a penny on the ground. This song is capo’d on the 10th fret of the guitar and is pretty fun to play the chords. After I improvised a take, I sat down and wrote out some painfully obvious lyrics about the lost penny being found by a boy and has worth again because he can spend it on candy or something and called the song “Currently Currency”. Listening back to the improvised demo, I really liked the rambling nonsense of the original lyrics, so I switched back to them. I was also really getting sick of coming up with “catchy titles” for songs and decided to go minimal on this song and the next one. This song was recorded in 4 sections on 2 different tracks because I couldn’t do the whole thing in one take because I hadn’t learned how to sing the last quarter of it. It is just me and the acoustic, live.

06. Games – A third improvised song and a second song with a minimal title. The improvisation really shows here in the phrasing of the whole song. In the recording, I really like the way the guitar sounds like it’s a egg-shaker instead of a string instrument. Listening back to the improvised acoustic demo, I like that one better, especially, the “it’s all right” ending part. This song is really about nothing except some arrogant lyrics in the verses.

So. That concludes my second week of FAWM. These songs weren’t fully recorded until the last two days of the month. I was in a real hurry to get all songs demo’d by then. The recordings are rushed and full of flaws, but they are done.