Posts Tagged ‘songwriting’

Growth

Monday, September 6th, 2010

Where does true musical growth come from? This is a question that has been in my life for so long and in so many different contexts. Does it come from writing music in as many different arenas as are available to you and then several more? Does it come from listening to as many different kinds of music as are available to you and then several more? Is it about practicing your instrument 800 hours a day and then several more? Is it about starting at the right age (for you)? Is it about having music around you as a child? Is it about being in touch with yourself on a deep level so that you can have access to the emotions that are the root of your individual expression?

The answer is simple.

Yes.

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Hooks

Wednesday, August 11th, 2010

What makes a great hook? Is it the melody? The phrasing of the words within that melody? The words themselves? All three? Something completely different? I’d like to know so that I can become a gazillionaire.

I have recently noticed that common and unnoticed phrases like “now that you’re gone” or “put it down” or “are you there” are all great hook material. These don’t even really count as phrases. They are just things we all say sometimes. As I have become aware of this, I have become increasingly aware that we all use hooks all the time. Why then are we not all gazillionaires?

Come hear some sa-weet hooks on Thursday, August 12th at Kenny’s Castaways.

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“Sausage & Peppers…A Different Kind of Heavy Song”

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

I often feel like all my songs need to be about deep and moving elements of my life. I rarely let myself write about some small little pleasure in my life. It feels strange to write a song about the fact that I dig watching “24″ and “Survivor”. I would feel odd writing a song about the awesome Chipotle app that I got for my new iPhone. So today I am going to cross that barrier by writing this little ditty.

“Sausage & Peppers” (to a very major key jaunty tune)

Yummy yummy sausage in a nice warm piece of bread
Peppers in my mouth and joy in my head
Sausage Pepper sandwich, please never go away
You are different but you are as good as PBJ.

Yummy yummy sausage sits alone on my plate
I really should eat it after the PM known as 8
But down into my tummy you will simply slide
Sausage pepper sandwich, will you be my sandwich bride?

Oh, sausage pepper sandwich.
Oh, how I love you so
Oh, sausage pepper sandiwch
There are tears in my eyes
You are just the perfect size
And they also give you fries!

Yummy yummy sausage from the little place next door
You can be my sandwich pimp and I, your sandwich whore
You are the stuff of legends that will forever be told
Oh sausage pepper sandwich…you are even awesome cold

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One by One, Week After Week

Friday, December 4th, 2009

We are currently in the phase of making this album where we are finally mixing these songs that have been around for so long. A song’s life is made of many different stages. There’s the writing stage when the song is born. There’s the the singing it to yourself stage when the song and the melody locks into place…this is the stage when you figure out that that word on the 2nd line of the 3rd verse needs to go up instead of down like in the previous 2 verses. Many songs don’t grow past this stage.

For those that do, the next stage is the performance stage. This is where you find out how the song resonates with people other than the writers. This stage determines whether the song will become a staple in the set of will just fall back to stage two, where it should have stayed to begin with. The next stage is the recording stage where you work out all those little issues that have always bugged you about the song. This is also where you figure out what the electric guitar really should be doing on that 2nd chorus, etc.. Finally we get to the mixing stage, where the song becomes what it was always meant to be. Things fall into place and ideally the song sounds close to as pure as it did when you were in stage 1.

One by one, week after week, we have been hearing these songs arrive at this last stage. It’s an amazing thing. It is making me fall in love with these songs over again. I hope that you will also fall in love with these songs when the Hillary Step’s new CD, “Note to Self” arrives shortly after the beginning of the year.

In the meantime, come check us out on December 15th at Caffé Vivaldi…more info at www.thehillarystep.com.

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Insongnia

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

I’m curious to know what sort of things keep people up at night or what keeps them from sleeping in the morning? I, personally, have what I like to call “insongnia” because at 6am, on most mornings, a switch goes on in my head and it starts to fill up with lyrics and melodies. Maybe something Rob and I are working on, maybe something that’s been on my mind, but all of a sudden, it’s there and I can’t stop it and I can’t silence it until I get it out. Sometimes, it’s not ready yet, and I’ll just stay in bed and keep mulling it over until the answer hits me, and other times it’s fully-formed and I’ll go right for my digital recorder and get it down quickly before it vanishes. But it doesn’t end there…as those of you with similar afflictions (gifts?) know, we carry our idea around with us and let it gestate. So, after I’ve quietly wheezed something into my digital recorder with mock lyrics that I know will have to be changed, my insongnia usually finds voice in a songwriting journal or, in most cases, in the shower…Yes, the shower is my songwriting sanctuary, where for some reason everything seems to come together. I don’t know why, but something about the water and the steam helps me block out the world and just let my right brain and my left brain meet up and riff on an idea until it is truly mature and ready to be born (despite my pro-environment stance, I have to say I am quite guilty of overextending my showers just so I can work on songs! No finger-pointing from the peanut gallery, please, I know some of you do the same thing and I am not alone in this behavior…It is the best, and you all know it, so just ‘fess up). But, of course, the journey doesn’t end there, a lengthy shower can often lead to a verse or two and even a chorus, so, of course I can’t stop myself at that point. I keep developing the chorus as I boil the water for my morning soft-boiled egg, and more verses come to me as I dispose of the peel from my daily banana, and, if the song isn’t done by then, it will travel with me right on to the subway, where I will continue hum it quietly to myself all the way to work, courtesy of in-ear headphones, which magnify the sound in your own head and can make humming on the train, a very possible, and even pleasurable experience…The point is, I look at this behavior as a bit obsessive, but for me it’s something that (I think?) keeps me sane, otherwise all this stuff would just be stuck inside me, probably driving me even more crazy, I would guess? So, I want to know… do any of you share this with me? Ideas, that get your brain going and don’t let go of it until they’ve been exorcised? I want to know it’s not just me at 6am every morning, who can’t sleep because the thought train is burning at 100 miles an hour through his head. I want to know who else will admit to banging out an idea so hard that it feels like it has totally possessed you and held you captive for hours and sometimes even days on end? There’s got to be at least one or two of you out there who go through it, so be honest, be blunt…, but most of all, get it out! :-)

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Small Steps

Wednesday, August 26th, 2009

It does sometimes feel like all these songs are living creatures. Some are born in a matter of hours. Some take years to arrive. They all mature through performance and recording. Some are the favorites. Others are the problem children. There is always a love for all of them, even those that move away at an early age, not to be heard from for years.

If I had to pick the song we have written that means the most to me, it may be Small Steps, which we have just posted to the fanpage. It is a song that is very close to my heart for so many reasons. For one, it is the first song I wrote that I really felt proud of in terms of the guitar part. Secondly, it is a song of hope that was written at a tough time in my life. Thirdly, it contains my J.T. influence very clearly and I love that guy!

The song was written after having seen the movie “Touching the Void”, the true story of survival after a horrible mountain climbing accident. It is absolutely one of the most gripping movies I have ever seen. One of the two people involved in the accident states at one point in the film that the only way he could survive his ordeal of having to walk six miles over a tundra of ice and rocks with a shattered leg and no food or water was to make small goals for himself. Rather than imagine the six mile journey, he found a smaller goal…maybe a rock an eighth of a mile away. He felt that if he could just make it to that rock, then maybe he could make it further and further and so on. This notion of small goals was very helpful and inspirational to me in the tough time I was going through.

Since the songs birth it has been meaningful to many people including my Aunt Karen, who has had to undergo treatments for breast cancer. She has shared the song with the people she knows who are in similar circumstances and has reported back to me that it has helped them as well. I think that if I never write another song, I can be happy in just knowing that one of my songs helped people in the midst of that ordeal. However I AM planning to write more songs.

Last year my wife and I did the Avon Breast Cancer walk in NYC. It was a 2-day 42 mile walk all around NYC. I recorded this version of the song for that event. I hope you enjoy the song and who knows…maybe it will help you through a tough time!

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Connecting to a song

Saturday, August 15th, 2009

Hey everyone….Rob here.

So I’m wandering around the city yesterday and this little melody creeps into my head. I get on the train and start humming it (quietly) to myself and slowly lyrics take shape. I end up with something like…”The best I can do is say I’m sorry, the most I can hope is that you’re willing to try, the worst I can think is that you’re already saying goodbye”. Nice little words, catchy melody…all good stuff. Don’t steal it. Here’s the thin: everything is fine between me and my wife. Life is good. I am not in some argument where apology and concern is necessary. So, this begs the question…where did these lyrics come from? Maybe it’s just the sound of the melody that suggested those initial sounds of the first line, which in turn suggested the repeated hook of best, worst, most. However, there is an even bigger question here: what if I write this whole song and flesh it out and it never quite gets connected back to something I feel but still remains in the abstract? Does this lack of connection to the writer come through to the listener? Is that a remove that can be felt?

I pose this question to you our friends / fans: to what level does the writer have to feel an emotional connection to his/her lyrics in order for the listener to get something from the song?

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