2021 Songwriting Challenge: Week 01
This week, we saw what could be — and has been considered by some to be — the beginning of the end of American democracy: a sitting president incited an attack on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election which he fairly lost.
Jesus.
I also found out late in the week that our 17-year-old cat likely has cancer in addition to the kidney disease we’ve been treating her for. I was hoping we could eek out another 5 years with her; now I’m just hoping we have 5 more months with her. Add to that the ever-present and ever-growing sadness of the pandemic, and man, 2021 has started off to be something else.
It is not surprising, then, that the song I came up with for the first week of my challenge fits the mood of the week. I didn’t specifically write it in response to the week, but I don’t think I can ignore that I was influenced by these events as I worked on the song. This is arguably the most “hard rock” song I’ve ever written (well, at least from what I can remember). I was listening to Maserati quite a bit this week thanks to a recommendation from my buddy Josh, so that influence probably found its way in here, too. I’ll document my process below, for those interested, as well as some things I learned , but without further ado, enjoy.
The process
These notes are mostly for me to refer to if I ever want to play this song again or revisit it to clean it up. You may or may not find it interesting, so feel free to ignore it.
Structure + First guitar.
This song took a while to get going. I started the song Monday evening, and the basic guitar line came out from me just fiddling around, as usual. I was pretty tired so fell into the more melancholic groves that tend to be in my wheelhouse. I liked the delay on the guitar and how each beat echoed in a different ear, so I started riding on that feeling. I kept going back and forth between F#m and E6sus and really liked how melancholy it sounded. After I got into that flow, it was pretty natural to slide that 6sus chord shape down a step to the D6sus, and then I walked the bass note down to a C#, and my fingers just found the rest of the C#mb5. So, I found my self squarely in the key of F# minor, though the sus chords and the mb5 are neat substitutions that made things a bit more interesting. Monday was the day I worked longest on this, it took me a while to get a good recording of this pattern and to figure out exactly the rhythm I wanted, but everything — even the Bm11-A-F# of the “chorus” — all materialized that night. Basically, the pattern of the song is: i-VII / VI-v / iv–III / iv–III–i, and repeat.
Lead Guitars / Solos.
Anywho, once I had the structure, I was looking for a darker sound for the lead electric. I honestly didn’t even think of adding an acoustic, though in retrospect that may have been interesting. I settled in on a good tone and then hit that first F# whole-step bend, where I then immediately fell into a Shine on You Crazy Diamond feel. In my first take of that solo, the mood was set, and I think I was trying to channel David Gilmour for the rest of the song. I know it may not sound like David Gilmour, but that’s the thought that first came to mind with that first bend, and probably influenced the rest of my playing.
I must’ve recorded about 20 takes of each guitar solo, but the ones I kept were the first ones. Well, actually, the first solo was about the 20th take of me trying to copy my very first take, in which I hit 1 horrible note. I finally succeeded, so used that. I have a few interesting takes of the second solo, but they all seemed too busy to me, and I never came up with one that I preferred over what came out in that first take.
The walkup into the chorus (basically right up the F# minor scale) came from one of those solo takes. It was a nice happy accident in an improv that ended up being 5 notes that brought the entire song together. Once I heard that, I heard the drums, the rhythm guitar, and a bit of the arrangement.
Rhythm Guitars
While the clean delayed guitars were nice, I felt we needed some much heavier guitars in there to inject some tension, especially after I came up with that lead-in to the chorus. So for the verses I decided to follow the chord progression, but use muted power chords instead of the 6ths and minor-flat-fives. I also did a bit of a production trick where I doubled the guitar track, offset each copy by about 250ms, and then hard-panned one track to the left and one track to the right. This gave a much more open, lusher, heavier crunch.
Drums
The F# minor scale lead-in to the chorus pretty much dictated that drums should enter either during it or after it, and that they should be heavy, “rock” drums. Honestly, it’s almost cliche how it turned out, but I love it. I use the Garageband AI drummer, and I’ve got Anders playing the Heavy Kit in there. It is not exactly what I want, but there are moments that I’m like “yes!” Case in point, I love the way the drums enter, though I want Anders to follow the guitars a few beats longer before he gets into the groove. I spent about an hour trying to make that happen one night to no avail, so I said “f-it” and just let the dude do his thing. Emily agrees that if I revisit this song, I need to work on the drums. I think I can say that about every song I’ve ever recorded; I love drums, but can’t program or play them to save my life. I guess there’s an area of growth for me. But the fact that I can now get away with something kinda decent with this feature in Garageband makes me happy.
Bass
Writing bass lines on a keyboard is tough. I need to buy a bass. Anyhow, I’ve never been great at writing bass lines, so this one is a bit boring. I wrote a much more active bass line on my guitar and tried to transpose to the keyboard, but when I recorded it using the synth, it was waaaaay to busy for the song. So, the baseline is dirt simple. Nothing to see here. If my dad knew how to record in Garageband, I’d have him write a better one.
Horns
I’m a sucker for a horn section. I’ve always wanted to write a piece of music ala that of Jóhann Jóhannsson’s The Miners’ Hymns, which is one of my favorite works of all time, where the horns just add so much emotion. But let me say this: I really don’t know the first thing about arranging horns. I also don’t know if they fit in here super well, but dammit, they found their way in and they are gonna stay. At least I spared you a synth sax solo.
The main thing I learned
Finding time to do this challenge is hard. I only have the evenings and weekends to do this, and not even much time there. I usually end work between 5:30 and 6:30, and we eat dinner anytime between 6 and 7, so if I’m lucky I get a good hour of music writing in. However, that’s rarely the case. Also, I can’t revisit things again until about 8:30 or 9 and that’s when Alice, Emily and I watch TV together, until about 9:30. By 10, I’m tired. So I really don’t have solid blocks of time that I’d like. On the weekends, I don’t want to spend all my time writing, because there’s shit to do around the house.
Also, things come up! This week, Willa wanted to begin learning “real programming”, so I spent some of that time trying to teach Python to a 7 year old; other days, someone else was using the computer (the computer I record on is shared by our entire family). Some days, work went late. I mean, this goes without saying for all of us: life happens!
Still, I found that specifically trying to do just a little bit in 10–20 minute sittings here and there was great. I love the process. I learned that I don’t need large blocks of time to create something halfway decent. I also learned that having a deadline is an incredibly effective way to get me to just go with what feels right and to not overthink it. I nearly fell into bad habits and thought about scrapping the entire thing when I couldn’t get the first guitar solo exactly how I wanted, but I forced myself to move on to the rest of the song, and before I new it, by Thursday night, the song was mostly complete (except for the bass line, which I wrote on Saturday).
Overall, I love that I challenged myself to do this, and the first submission here makes me smile when I hear it.
