Good Music Making Times and Surprising Myself

So tonight was pretty fun. It was the first time I actually wrote lyrics and recorded them all in one day. This is a project myself and a couple others were working on. A basic beat was laid out already, but we decided to change some guitar parts to a bit of a different melody. It was random, because it came from just fucking around really. That change actually helped me envision the vocal melody. I gave them an example with shitty filler lyrics and they liked it. At that point the decision was finalized.

While people worked on the instruments, I worked on my lyrics and vocal melody. I didn’t know what to write about and they didn’t have any concept ideas. So I asked each person separately what emotion the song made them feel. They both gave me pretty much the same answer just in different words. That was actually pretty cool, and also cemented in my mind that the song should go in that direction. If I don’t have any ideas off the bat, that’s typically all I need to get something going… some sort of starting point. So, I used that as my inspiration and watered the seed. No one objected to any lines so we stuck with what I wrote. It grew into a song that we all are happy with.

We arranged the song, figured out which parts should be verse, chorus etc. I knew vocally how to structure it, so it was the musical part that needed to be structured to fit that. To do this, I sang my lyrics and melodies for each section and we sort of picked the guitar parts that vibed with each one. It was interesting how some decisions about the guitar were made around the statements I was making lyrically. I liked that, it was fun. I think the arrangement is pretty good. After that we recorded some vocals. I need to do more takes of the bridge and I’d like to do some backing vocals as well. Other than that though, it’s basically done.

I’m looking forward to finishing it. It’s nice to know that I can write/record all in one day after all . I don’t know if it was fluke or if it was just the right vibe. I did have someone else reading my lyrics to me if I needed a refresher or forgot as well, which actually did help. It was nice to not have to read them myself believe it or not. I forgot/fucked up a line or two every now and then, but it actually wasn’t too bad at all. I don’t think it was any worse than when I have them memorized. I could record section by section no problem. I would have hated doing that line by line shit. Sorry not for me. I can’t get into the emotion that way. I felt good about the takes too. It seemed like they were coming out nicely.

I think we all did great on what we have so far. It’ll be interesting to see what else gets added or what other ideas any of us have. I know more synth layers are coming at the very least. It sounds quite great where it is already and can only get better from here.