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Tonight’s effort is sadly a little bit on the bitter and angsty side, it’s also probably the most pop rock like piece I’ve ever done.
However, despite all that, I rather like it – it came together really easily, starting with the chorus melody on the guitar. From there the chords for the chorus came fairly easily, and then I only had one false start with the verse before settling on the key change to Am. The variation at the end just fell into place too.
Even the vocals and lyrics weren’t too much of a trial. The only thing I’m not entirely happy with is the transition from verse to chorus – it’s a bit too abrupt, and the contrast between the half time minor feel of the verse and the bouncy major chorus is too great. However, it’s as good as I could get it.
The vocal part writing process I’ve used in the last few pieces is this:
I start well and truly with the music first – I’ll have the chord pattern figured out, and pretty much everything recorded. Then I listen to it a few times to get a feel for what sort of effect I want to achieve. Next I record a dummy vocal track – I just sing syllables – like da or ahh and try to see what sort of melody will work. After doing that a few times until I’ve got the melody down, I’ll transcribe it to a MIDI track. Then I’ll mute the dummy track and start a new vocal track. I’ll listen to my new melody and certain sequences of notes will suggest phrases or words – so I’ll record those words. This might leave me with a couple of words scattered here and there without even a complete sentence, but usually once the obvious phrases have fallen out, I can then find a theme in the words and use that to actually write the full lyrics. There’s still an awful lot of pain in the actual lyric writing process, but it’s not half as bad this way compared with just starting with a blank piece of paper.
Finally, I want to note that I wasn’t actually trying for a Country solo after the first chorus. That was a most unfortunate accident.