Practice with Fraser

Last night I cooked a pretty decent Lasagne and Fraser and I sat down to try to dicuss getting some focus on writing some music. It;s something which continues to to escape us. Our other commitments both musical and non-musical usually get in the way. Rather than just knocking together some chord structures and lyrics, we are trying to move away from guitar strumming and have some music that exists without the guitar. I'm so used to holding up a singer at an open mike with guitar chords, and it's become mundane.

To cut a long story short - we've come up with yet another reason why we can't just sit down and write. In order to limit the ambition a little in order to get something done, we're going to try to at least meet a little more often instead of just meeting when we have a gig to prepare for.

Writing Writing Writing

Karolina's in Greece, and despite my best intentions I haven't managed to use the "alone time" to get on with some writing. No matter how much I achieve, the ability to sit down and put my lyrical, rhythmic and harmonic thoughts into a 3-5 minute unit escapes me. I am very good and I enjoy co-writing, I am able to turn a good song into a great song through giving someone some constructive criticism and suggesting different chords melodies etc. but clearly I over think my own efforts.

To this end, I’m trying to be really methodical about writing. I constantly write down lyric snippets, chords snippets, etc. but I’m now trying to put them together base on themes. Essentially I´m writing 12 songs at the same time… I never make it easy on myself. We’ll see how it goes.

Trying to be creative on a Monday evening :-(

I finished off most of the open Mike mixing... and then tried to put down the makings of a song idea that came out during the Jam Session... lazy-arse-itis got the better of me and before I knew it I;d ran out of time.

Writing with a Bass

I wrote a few song ideas with just voice and Bass in an attempt to use simplicity to  overcome my recent uselessness -  I'll need to go back to them with a fresh head to decide if they are any good or not. 

Writing with Sandra

Sandra was round and we recorded a few ideas before heading out on the town. I messed about on some slide guitar blues in open G on the Kay Les Paul, which was a lot of fun. 

 

Monday Blues

Despite the good weather, I wasn't in a great mood when I got home. Went for a massage to combat the Monday blues, then recorded a few nice chord structures for later perusal... that was about all i was good for this evening.

Productive friday off

I had a writing and recording session with Sandra today.... we worked on 2 songs and got some rough chord structures for lyrics. I wasn't in the most creative of moods..... We got much more done recording Sandra's songs. We did takes of 4 songs.