Every January for the past four years I joined in with a challenge to write and record a song in one weekend. The ultra simple formula is what makes it work so well.
🔗. https://www.facebook.com/events/1397569577833504
Always the first weekend after New Year. Wait until Midnight on the Friday. Start writing on Saturday, compose and record any kind of song in any way you can and then email it over to Joe before Sunday midnight. That’s it. The results are highly varied and all amazing when published a few weeks later. You don’t have to live in Worthing, but many people do.
Sometimes I’m busy on the Saturday so have to do it all on the Sunday. This year I finished on the Saturday. So that makes 2 x 24hr songs for me.
Restrictions are very powerful motivators for all kinds of artists and the aim of the challenge is to get your creative juices flowing. Last year’s song of mine was so fulfilling I didn’t need to complete any others for the whole of the rest of the year! But what would happen if I did this every weekend instead of just once a year? I’d have 52 new songs and nowhere to go.
I went to bed on Friday with no idea what I would create, but I had just posted a set of images on the theme “Wherever you go, there you are” and I guess that seeped in over night because I woke up in the morning with some dreamy ideas along the same lines. Eventually I just had to get up and write a few down. I can often get things done in the morning if I have set my mind to it the day before. That’s why it’s so important to prioritise on just one single thing that that needs to be done first to the exclusion of all else. Before any distractions can start up, open the notebook and pick up the biro set up ready.
Lyrics first
The way I work is nearly always to write lyrics first, but while writing them I try to make sure they will be singable. This means having a kind of proto tune in mind. It doesn’t have a melody yet 🎵, but it does have an internally consistent structure. The lines roughly scan. Any rhymes are at the same point in the verses, because rhyming has a subtle but noticable role to play in the emotional communication of this special combination of words and music that makes a song.
Sometime the first verse is easy but the rest is a big struggle, and if overworked that can strangle a song before birth, but sometimes the whole thing comes out in a steady flow. The time limit ⏳ must help with this. It’s fairly arbitrary with me whether or not to add a chorus, a refrain, a middle eight, bridge or whatever. I read somewhere that bridges are coming back, well nobody every told me they’d gone away, but I did put one in at the musical composition stage to make it more interesting.
12 strings
I usually choose to compose on the old 12 string guitar. It seems to help with suggesting a wider range of harmonics for the vocals, which makes sense. The wide rich tone also gives more space to play around before almost settling on a fixed line. I know what I mean.
With the tune’s arrival 🎵 there comes a need to tweak the lyrics again. This will happen in performance to some extent as well, but the recorded version will have a strong anchoring effect. If I listen back to last year’s song - Roll on the Day, it isn’t much different to the way I have been singing and playing it all year. I find that quite surprising.
How can something evolve quickly out of nothing in a very short space of time, and then remain largely the same over a series of Chinese whispers through the weeks and months? Is a song perhaps like a painting that can be painted over and changed during the creative process, but once the artist declares it finished and mounts it in a frame, does nothing further except perhaps mature and fade in colour slightly. Using that metaphor, the recording would be the frame but it doesn’t fit exactly of course. There’s always a little bit showing around the edges.
Recording methods
I’m a little rusty with the recording process right now. last year I tried to raise my game by splitting the channels but I ended up in a tangle with the guitar leads, microphones, headphones, strap, folding chair, laptop, audio interface, monitor and power all with leads and stands getting in each others way. And getting in the way of capturing the best possible performance.
“When you try to improve things, sometimes they get worse”
So I’ve decided to go back to that, trying to capture the best possible performance with guitar and vocals recorded together. It’s the way I play, what I’ve been doing for 50 years and spent a thousand hours honing in the Metro. I’d probably need to spend another thousand hours studio time to become excellent at the other method and I don’t have that long. Also some of my favourite audio settings were lost on the laptop that died last year.
Working with audio, almost as much as video, is a skill that can feel a lot more like trying to shape a lump of clay on a potters wheel than writing a program, a document or a story. When it works well, just don’t touch anything and carry on. When you try to improve things, sometimes they get worse. It shouldn’t be like that with non-destructive editing, but psychologically it still is. I make lots of false starts, too many to count. I save each full run through as a new take with its own filename, in case I want to go back. The latest one should be the best, but it might be the one before that. When I think I have it, I have to move all the equipment away and sit down with the headphones to listen properly. Noise reduction, amplify, equalise, normalise. I’m still learning all the time, which is just as well because the alternative is a lot of travel time, and waiting around, and dealing with people, and money.
Release Day
Take 5 was the one, exported and played on an actual loudspeaker. It’s not perfect by any means, but this is the 48 hour album project. It’s a wonderful thing that causes a whole raft of people to get into gear and produce something. Last year there were 27 tracks. The day the collection is published is a real celebration. What the heck am I listening to now? Oh. More than a few real gems amongst the diversity of it all. Play it all through twice and that’s a very long time ⏳. Release on Bandcamp and publication is usually between one and three weeks after today’s event. Looking forward to it!
🔗 https://48houralbum.bandcamp.com/
hey Andy i found you off clairs thread. sparkel on substack - i love love LOVE music myself. have my grade 10 in piano. now my son is taking piano lessions. just wanted to say hi and happy i found you