Songs that could have gone unwritten.

While talking to a friend about writing, recording and uploading a song a week it occurred to me that I have been forced to write songs that would have otherwise gone unwritten.

Last week, after uploading my latest song, I realised that I had no song or lyrics written, let alone even roughly recorded version, for the following week. So Wednesday morning I sat down and made myself write a tune. Thursday morning I asked my husband for a subject matter and wrote the lyrics.The remainder of Thursday and Friday I recorded and mixed the song.

I liked the song so much that I decided to add it to the EP I am about to release. So now it is being mastered and will be uploaded to itunes tomorrow.

So now it is Tuesday again – I have just uploaded the song to my website and I have to trust that  a new song will come out tomorrow. I wonder what it will be about…. hmm.

You wait for a bus and 6 come at once…

Last September, when both my kids were finally in school full time, I decided to embark on the career I had secretly been hoping for, for a very long time. I have been writing songs since I was a teen and had dipped my toe into the musical waters many times but never dared to get in. But last year I decided it was time to put on the goggles and dive in.

So everyday I wrote, recorded, facebooked, youtubed, twittered, myspaced, submitted, submitted, submitted my songs to anyone who would listen to them.

I felt like I was on the right track because it wasn’t long before I had signed some non-exclusive publishing agreements. But around the new year I started working closely with pigFACTORY publishers, who wanted some of my songs exclusively. I didn’t know if this would be a temporary death sentence for my songs or the start of something good.

Fortunately it was the latter. While they were pitching my songs I was still writing, recording, facebooking… well you get the picture.

So after a year of seriously pushing my music, this week a whole truck load of good stuff arrived.

I was in the final 4 for the Singer/Songwriter Awards, placed 3rd and 5th in the International Indie Songwriting Contest,had manyof my songs hit the homepage of The Sixty One, had 2 songs delivered to the important people at some major cable networks, got an instrumental placed in a USA regional ad and have just found out that my song ‘Perfect Girl’ has been placed in a new MTV show.

I am hoping that this is not ‘just a good week’ but the start of some momentum.

I work REALLY hard at this (ask my family!) and I want to thank all the good wishes from my youtube subs, facebook friends and fans and the patient people who let me into their inbox each week with my Song of the Week.

But I especially want to thank my publishers, Keatly Halderman and the guys from pigFACTORY, for having so much faith in my music and keeping me sane.

It has been a good week.

Fun with Capo (app)

I had a new EP out and I wanted to do a video for the title track, All The Letters. My daughter suggested that I have printed cards with the alphabet on them which I thought was a neat idea but I wanted to have the effect of it looking like the film was speeded up while singing in time… hmm.

Then… my husband (a techy) told me about this computer gadget he had, called Capo, which can speed up and slow down songs without changing pitch ( it can also change pitch without changing the tempo). So I had him slow down the song to half time.

I videoed the song at this rate and then put it into imovie to speed it up to match the song…but… there is no 1/2 or 3/4 time on imovie like there is on Capo, just a gradient. What to do, what to do…

And then I had an ah ha moment. If I can speed it up so that the song is an octave higher then it will be double time… and it worked!

So I have my video on youtube and it looks kind of cool… well I like it! Check it out here.

It’s not all about me, is it?

When I seriously started writing ( I don’t include those teenage and 20 something years that are so naturally self -indulgent!) all of my songs were either my diary in song or friends’ stories. I thought that by knowing my subject matter really well, I would write profound and meaningful songs. Looking at them now, they seem to be full of angst and self pity and I am slightly embarrassed by their indulgence. Friends started worrying that they would get a song about them if they ticked me off. That was not a good sign.

So gradually I started writing about other things. Subjects that had nothing to do with me. Made-up scenarios. Books I had read. The only autobiographical elements are now in the happy songs. Maybe it’s because I am older and happier or maybe it’s because I now write so many songs that I don’t have time for self-indulgence. Who knows. And writing a Song of the Week -means that there is no time for diary songs, unless you lead a really dramatic life!

But as I was pondering all this I came across this article – An Easy Way to Increase Creativity, which totally explained my output and quality of my work and it seems that further away I am from my subject matter, the more creative I can be with it.

After all, it isn’t all about me is it?

Songs that write themselves.

In all my years of songwriting (which are many) and listening to other songwriters I have discovered a great song can write itself. Let me explain…

I have written a lot of songs and write more often as I get older. I would never presume to have written great songs but I have noticed that the songs that catch people’s attention or move them are the ones that I don’t really remember writing. It’s like they kind of wrote themselves. I am not in any way religious but I feel that my subconscious is doing the work for me. It’s like I finish a song and then think ‘how the heck did that happen’. I have a song for the Relay for Life, which gets a lot of attention and when people ask me about the lyrics, I really have no idea how they came to be. And I’m not a flake (or on drugs)… honest!

There is the songwriting school of thought that says that a great song takes many hours of writing, re-writing, altering and re-writing some more. But after watching an interview with Paul MacCartney talking about waking up one morning and having ‘Yesterday’ in his head and being convinced that it was an existing song, I came to conclusion that great songs happen while writing other songs. ‘Yesterday’ has got to be one of the greatest songs ever written.

So my goal of writing and recording a song a week (which I am now in week 18) has forced me to write lots. I try to be a few weeks ahead to allow for illness and vacation and have found that my best songs happen out of nowhere while trying to write other songs. I am not averse to hard work, in fact I love it, I just believe that if I write enough songs then a few of them will be good and maybe one day I will have a great one!

In conclusion, rather than spend a month writing and shaping one song, I would rather write twenty songs and get one good one because I learn from every one that I write, especially the bad ones!

How do you write songs?

Are you making new fans?

I spent this last weekend taking in all the great music at Vancouver Island Musicfest. It was cool to see how many bands, some very famous and others on their way up, handled their audiences and the backstage crew.

I had the privilege of being both an audience member and  also an MC for the Saturday mainstage (which was SO cool, by the way!)

Without fans, the bands that played would not be where they are. Without the crew they would not sound as good as they do. Obviously.

So when I am told that I can’t take a photo of a famous performer while they are on stage, from the side of the stage, I have to wonder, is this performer thinking about making new fans? I spent the festival taking photos and tweeting about the bands that I liked and had I been able to take a photo I would have tweeted something nice along with the #vimf and my followers would have thought ‘cool’ and maybe RTed.

But I didn’t tweet and more importantly, others tweeted negative things. No new fans made here.

Then the next band came on. I noticed that they had been hanging around the festival all weekend (not just shipped in and out of the stage covertly). They had made friends at the festival, they thanked the crew and volunteers numerous time while onstage and brought members from other bands on stage to play with them. They were not precious.

So I tweeted! And within 12 hours they were now following my tweets. So I will tweet some more and now they have a new fan (and probably thousands more, judging by the reaction to their show)… and it helps that as a band they were incredible!

The band is Enter the Haggis and now I am blogging about them too.

So the other performer may have been famous, once upon a time, but I don’t think any new fans were made this weekend.

Enter the Haggis… You Rock!

Pick a card… any card!

I was getting ready to go play a gig last night and was trying to put a set list together from my cue cards and I realised that I don’t really care what order I play my songs or which songs I sing.

So I had the idea that I would let the audience chose the cards for me.

It turned out to be a great idea because I didn’t know what I was playing next, so it kept it fresh and the audience seemed to enjoy being a part of the show.

I don’t really enjoy gigs where the audience listens quietly. I prefer a bit of heckling and interaction (a hangover from my comedy days I presume). So this was the perfect way to add spark and participation to my gig. It was a really fun show.

Try it and let me know how it works for you.

Taxi!

I joined Taxi just over a year ago. The news of my new membership was met with some disdain from other musicians and words like ‘rip-off’ and ‘wasted money’ were bandied around.

At the time a lot of my friends had decided to go back to school to be nurses/therapists/rocket scientists etc. My youngest was now in school full time and knew that this was time for career decisions – I had already had a 20 year career in comedy and it was time for a change. I just didn’t feel funny anymore, ask my friends!

What caught my attention about Taxi was an email I received from them with the story of an artist who spoke about how hard work and perseverance, along with listening to Taxi’s critiques had brought him success. This really struck a chord with me. I am from the school of “if you work really hard at it you get good at it”. And I wanted to get really good at writing songs.

So I looked at Taxi and decided that it was WAY cheaper than going back to school. I already knew that writing and singing were the two things that I was really passionate about, I got the ok from the bread-winner in the house and I went for it. 

So as soon as the kids left in the morning I worked solidly until I had to pick them up – I LOVED every minute of it. The first critiques I got were nice enough, but very fair and I had lots of work to do. I had started out wanting to write for others but what I quickly gleaned from the critiques was that it was my voice that stood out from the songs. (I discovered that writing Country was SO not my thing!)

The critiques gradually led me to write in a way that I had never written before, simple, quirky pop songs. And what was weird was that I was finally writing the music that I actually listen to. Now I was getting critiques I could be proud of. Here is a recent one from a Taxi forward.

“Helen – Put quite simply, I love your stuff. It sounds extremely distinctive, in part because of the charismatic vocal performances, but also because of the way in which you’ve chosen to illustrate the arrangements. In terms of melody, the songs are simply irresistible. After hearing just one verse and chorus it feels as if I’ve known the songs my entire life. I am more than pleased to forward both of these wonderful songs for this listing, and I look forward to hearing more of your material in the future.”

After gradually getting more and more forwards I have just signed 2 publishing agreements.

The money I have spent on Taxi has been invaluable because it has shown me that I know what I want to do and that I am capable of doing it.

How do you grade yourself?

I have been spending some time on broadjam.com and finding out some interesting things about my own music.

Broadjam isn’t just a site to pitch music and enter contests, it is a site where peers can review each other’s music as well.

So I dug in a started reviewing some music (you have to review others to get your own music reviewed). You have to grade things like arrangement, vocals, lyrics from 1 – 5 and then substantiate your marks with positive and constructive comments.

When you start to pick apart other artist’s music it makes you look at your own music. One of the main constructive comments I have given is that a lot of the music needs more dynamic variety and, in giving this advice, I had to step back and look at my own music in the same way.

So I have started reviewing my own music in the same way. Not a comfortable thing to do but, I think, a necessity.

Know Your Limits!

We all have limitations, especially when it comes to home recording, but rather than fight them, I have chosen to embrace them. It’s like the bottle of wine theory…

You have to choose a bottle of wine. If you go to the corner store and they only have three to chose from and the wine is ok then you will feel happy with your choice. However, if you go to the large store and they have 50 to chose from and the wine is ok, chances are that you will berate yourself for not choosing a better one.

Long story short, the more choices you have, the less satisfied you are with your choice.

Back in the recording studio/bedroom. I know my equipment pretty well but I don’t have racks of stuff and a range of mics. I have learned how to be creative with what I know and what I own (a mac with Logic Express, a Mackie and 2 decent mics) and it seems that my limitations have gotten me to my end product in a timely manner with few frustrations. I have a found a vocal sound that I like and I learn something new everyday about production and arranging. The learning curve on this stuff is huge and I’m enjoying the ride.