The third week of FAWM coincided with a day I called in sick from work due to snow. I decided try for an Album-A-Day, but ended up running out of steam after three songs. I also wrote and recorded a song for Songfight! that week. This is the first week where all the songs were recorded right after they were written, so the creative magic is preserved a bit more. These songs also run the gambit lyric-wise from being improvised at the time they were being recorded to being meticulously plotted out. In my opinion, sometimes, the lyrics aren’t that important; the melody and feel of a song can be so pure that over-thought-out lyrics can ruin the purity if it. Other songs, though, can be built solely around clever lyrics.
07. A Night Without Moon And Stars – To prepare for my supposed Album-A-Day, I did what I did when I wrote my first one; since you are not supposed to start with any preconceived ideas, after the time started, I got on three websites and pulled 5 potential song titles from each. The websites were a random quotations site, modplug’s random song title generator, and leon’s random lyric generator. That’s where I got the titles for songs 07, 08, 09, 11 and 14. In this stint of songwriting, though, I just wrote 07, 08, and 09. Moon And Stars revolves around a set of 6 harmonics played over and over. I wanted to get the feel of the beginning of “Pilgrim Snow” by Yoko Kanno mixed with some song from Escaflowne I can’t remember the name of. The lyrics were an afterthought added after the entire song was recorded. The “so dark” part ended up sounding a lot like a song by Low, who I also enjoy quite a bit.
08. Someone In Some Dark Café – This was another one with lyrics improvised at the time of recording. I wanted to write a song about the people who sit in coffee shops with their laptops and try to look really cool. I don’t usually build songs around riffs, but this time I did. I also added a guitar solo, which is not something I do often. At first, I was disappointed that the music wasn’t more brooding, but I don’t mind it that much now. It sounds more musical and complicated than a lot of my other stuff, so I guess that’s good. The main guitar was recorded with an external mic instead of lining in the guitar to the recorded. I guess I forgot that because you can hear me mumbling in the background at the starts of the verses. I was trying to keep track of where I was in the song. To kind of hide this, because another take was not an option, I put the background vocal track in.
09. That’s My Fly-Catching Logic-Bear – If you have this title in front of you, how can you not write something for it. This one is basically what I wanted; a high energy pop song. The music was recorded with only a vocal melody in place for the verses and a one line chorus. When I was recording the verses, I was in a bad mood and made the song about someone who likes to annoy people for no reason, and doesn’t like to follow social norms. The Fly-Catching Logic-Bear then became someone who is completely politically correct and has no real independent thought. Of course this meaning was completely retconned in later after the whole song had been recorded and I was trying to figure out what I was trying to say. I wish the lead guitar at the beginning was a little lower in volume. Oh yeah, this song features some more rare lead guitar work.
That’s pretty much as far as I got. There was another title called “Spinescent” that I recorded a distorted full band song for, but balked at putting lyrics on because at that time I had written three nonsense songs and had no ability left to form random lyrics and pretend they meant something.
10. Please Stop – This song was written for a Songfight!. There were three different version of this song conceived by me during the week that the title was up. My first version was a pop/rock number where the “please” would sound kind of like the “please” in the song “Go” by Pearl Jam (that I have not listened to in maybe a decade). I actually recorded an instrumental version of this and again balked at putting meaningless lyrics on it. I didn’t actually have a story for the song. The next version was going to be an alternate take on the “Romeo and Juliet” story with the first line being “Where for art thou, Juliet?”. The feel would have been like “Jack and Diane” by Johnny Cougar. I think I was still focused on Juliet’s demise on Lost at the time. I also didn’t have the drive to develop this idea beyond the vocal melody of the verses. I tried to combine this idea with the first as well. It didn’t work. On the last day before the fight deadline, I got an idea to use things that kids are taught as the central theme: stop, drop and roll, stop, look, and listen, and don’t swim for an hour after eating. At first I planned to make it a full-on kids song, but I got a flat tire after work that night and after getting home real late that night I knew I only had time for a live acoustic number. I also knew that I had to be witty at least or no one would like it at Songfight!. So, I wrote some graphic verses and made the song more of a cautionary tale, describing in detail the deaths of three kids (one was hit by a car, one was drowned, and one was burned to death). Once I had worked out the lyrics, which took awhile, I thought the song could be more than what it was and wanted to do something akin to my “Rattlesnake” song, but I didn’t have the time. So the live take was what I ended up with.
That ends my third week of FAWM. It was the most productive and the most creative so far. I’m kind of bummed that I didn’t get a full Album-A-Day done, but I really didn’t have it in me.
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