The Song Project, Week 2

First of all, my apologies for getting this one out almost a week late. I did finish the song on time, but Blogger was acting very strange for me, and I wasn't able to post anything. Turned out I needed to dump my cookies (A phrase that would have been rather humorously nonsensical only a few years ago...).


So, here's the song. And now, the timeline of its creation:

The Song Project, Week One

So here's my first song. It's called Lose the War. I guess.

I'll admit, this was far tougher than I thought it might be. I had so much trouble letting go of my sense of perfection about the lyrics. I don't think they're terrible or anything, but I spent way too much time this week wrestling with them. I ended up running out of time before I had a chance to write and record a bridge.

Over all, I think it's a pretty decent song. For next week, I'm going to try and spend less time writing, to make it more challenging. Again, I'm going for a complete song, not necessarily a "great" song.

Songwriting Challenge

OK, this will be a quick one. I've decided to do a songwriting exercise. I'm going to write a new song every week, record it as well as I can, and post it online every Thursday evening. I really think that forcing myself to write like this will improve my songwriting; and putting it out there will help me get over my self-consciousness about my music, and it'll probably help me write better material while loosening up my sense of perfectionism. So, stay tuned. I've started on this week's tune, and I'll post it Thursday evening.

The idea is to write with fewer constraints as far as good/bad judgments go. Obviously I won't be trying to write badly, but the goal is more to write a complete song, not necessarily a "great" song, every week.

Wish me luck!

The Creative Spark

If you ask a room full of six-year-old kids how many of them can draw, almost all of them will raise their hands. Ask the same question to a room full of eighteen-year-olds, and very few will respond affirmatively. So what has changed in that time? Are the younger kids delusional, or have the teenagers succumbed to the common notion that creativity is the province of some inborn ability? Is the development of our creativity really any different than developing any other skill?

Most of us tend to think of creativity as something someone either has, or doesn't have. This belief is reinforced in many ways. Most of us knew someone in school who seemed to be able to draw, play an instrument, or write, at a level far beyond their peers. It seemed to come from nowhere, really. And throughout our school years, we are taught in an analytical fashion that suppresses creative thinking. There's only one right answer. There's one way of solving a problem. By the time we finish school, our thinking about creativity is entrenched.

Busking, Updates

Dear reader, my apologies for the lack of posting recently. Once I finished going over all the songs, finding material to blog about has been more of a challenge. So here's a general update.

I've been busking regularly for a couple months now. On July 4, I played for six hours in the park, with one half-hour break. My fingers are getting very tough. In fact, the callouses on my left hand are so thick, my iPod Touch often refuses to respond to my left hand, won't recognize it as skin I guess.

I'm not much for playing covers, but I did recently add one to my busking repertoire - Steve Earle's classic Ft. Worth Blues. It's a great song, and to my surprise it fits my voice better than I thought it might. Particularly if I let my inner Virginia drawl come through a little bit.