Having a home studio has definitely changed my approach to writing songs. In many ways it’s been made easier, but you have to get past the distractions of infinite sound manipulation. When I first got my studio set up, I found myself doing an awful lot of creating, but I had a lot of trouble completing songs. It was just so easy to get sidetracked by all the options available. I’d come up with a great chord sequence, but then instead of buckling down and focusing on the task of hammering out a full song, I’d get distracted by the studio. Instead of working on the changes and the arrangement, I’d listen to the chord sequence, and hear a bass line in my head. Out comes the bass, and I’d record a bass line for that set of chords. Ooh, maybe some piano would sound good in there! Oh, and how about a banjo line?
The result would be an eight-bar section of music that sounded great, but it wasn’t a song! I’d just spent three hours recording eight bars. And of course, the next day, I’d fire up the computer and the gear, and instead of continuing to flesh out the song, I’d have some OTHER musical idea, and the same thing would happen. I still have probably a terabyte of song projects that are just snippets of cool sounding, but seriously incomplete songs!
Now, this didn’t happen all the time. This method has resulted in some good songs. And writing songs in the studio can be a great way to shake up your songwriting. The fact is that most of us songwriters tend to write on the instrument we are most comfortable with - and for most of us, that means the guitar, or maybe the piano. As someone who has written the vast majority of his songs on the guitar, I’ll focus on that. When I compose on the guitar, I have some “go-to” chords. And I write in a fairly narrow range of keys - which makes some sense, given my particular vocal range. The result is that eventually, I feel like I am retreading the same musical ground. So approaching composition from within a project studio can be very liberating. Since I can record a set of chord changes before working on the melody or lyrics, I’m able to record on instruments I don’t feel comfortable enough with to sing while playing - like the bass, piano, or banjo.
That’s all wonderful, of course. But it requires more discipline, because of the aforementioned distractions. And now that I’ve had my studio for a number of years, I’ve gotten better about it. One method of discipline that works for me is to set some strict goals. One of my favorite songs on my new album is “Division Street,” the song that ended up being the album title as well. I decided I was going to write a complete song in one day. No perfectionist excuses about the lyrics (I can be REALLY hard on myself about lyrics). No fiddling around and writing just a verse, or just a chorus. So I started by listening to some of the endless musical snippets I had on my hard drives. I found a piano line I liked, decided to base the song on that, and got to work. And at the end of the day, lo and behold, there was “Division Street,” fully formed. In fact, when it came time to do the “final” tracking for the album, I did very little with the song. The only thing I ended up re-tracking was the acoustic guitar and vocals, to get the performance up to snuff.
Most of the rest of the songs, though, were written the old-fashioned way - sitting down with my acoustic guitar, away from the computer, with a notebook. It had actually been a really long time since I had done that. “The Theory of Evolution” was written entirely in the studio, for example. So it was actually refreshing to return to my compositional roots. And the timing was perfect. We were moving from Neah Bay to Spokane - this was at the end of May 2010 - and my wife went ahead of us with the moving truck; I was staying with the kids until they finished up the school year. We were staying with some friends in Neah Bay. I didn’t have access to my studio, and I had nothing really to do. So I sat around and wrote songs with my guitar. It was exciting to have so much music pouring out of me!
Having complete songs made the recording process much faster. Now, of course I made changes to many of the songs as I was recording them. I didn’t want to make an album where every song was me just strumming a guitar and singing.
In my next post, I will focus in detail on the process of getting the individual songs into a finished product.
The result would be an eight-bar section of music that sounded great, but it wasn’t a song! I’d just spent three hours recording eight bars. And of course, the next day, I’d fire up the computer and the gear, and instead of continuing to flesh out the song, I’d have some OTHER musical idea, and the same thing would happen. I still have probably a terabyte of song projects that are just snippets of cool sounding, but seriously incomplete songs!
Now, this didn’t happen all the time. This method has resulted in some good songs. And writing songs in the studio can be a great way to shake up your songwriting. The fact is that most of us songwriters tend to write on the instrument we are most comfortable with - and for most of us, that means the guitar, or maybe the piano. As someone who has written the vast majority of his songs on the guitar, I’ll focus on that. When I compose on the guitar, I have some “go-to” chords. And I write in a fairly narrow range of keys - which makes some sense, given my particular vocal range. The result is that eventually, I feel like I am retreading the same musical ground. So approaching composition from within a project studio can be very liberating. Since I can record a set of chord changes before working on the melody or lyrics, I’m able to record on instruments I don’t feel comfortable enough with to sing while playing - like the bass, piano, or banjo.
That’s all wonderful, of course. But it requires more discipline, because of the aforementioned distractions. And now that I’ve had my studio for a number of years, I’ve gotten better about it. One method of discipline that works for me is to set some strict goals. One of my favorite songs on my new album is “Division Street,” the song that ended up being the album title as well. I decided I was going to write a complete song in one day. No perfectionist excuses about the lyrics (I can be REALLY hard on myself about lyrics). No fiddling around and writing just a verse, or just a chorus. So I started by listening to some of the endless musical snippets I had on my hard drives. I found a piano line I liked, decided to base the song on that, and got to work. And at the end of the day, lo and behold, there was “Division Street,” fully formed. In fact, when it came time to do the “final” tracking for the album, I did very little with the song. The only thing I ended up re-tracking was the acoustic guitar and vocals, to get the performance up to snuff.
Most of the rest of the songs, though, were written the old-fashioned way - sitting down with my acoustic guitar, away from the computer, with a notebook. It had actually been a really long time since I had done that. “The Theory of Evolution” was written entirely in the studio, for example. So it was actually refreshing to return to my compositional roots. And the timing was perfect. We were moving from Neah Bay to Spokane - this was at the end of May 2010 - and my wife went ahead of us with the moving truck; I was staying with the kids until they finished up the school year. We were staying with some friends in Neah Bay. I didn’t have access to my studio, and I had nothing really to do. So I sat around and wrote songs with my guitar. It was exciting to have so much music pouring out of me!
Having complete songs made the recording process much faster. Now, of course I made changes to many of the songs as I was recording them. I didn’t want to make an album where every song was me just strumming a guitar and singing.
In my next post, I will focus in detail on the process of getting the individual songs into a finished product.
2 comments:
It's gotta be different to see it from the mind of a composer than it is from the head of someone who does nothing more than enjoy the fruits of your labor -- and I do! Well, perhaps adding banjos and spending a day on eight bars seems slow -- but it's worth it! Too often production value gets lost or discounted by folks who want to hear bare-bones recordings. But I think production adds to the art -and I love where it's taken you as a musician. I, for one, have loved the dimensions you've added to your art! Keep it coming!
Thanks Dan!
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