a side order of insecurity

[solipsistnation]

Okay, so I'm getting better at guitar. And I can put together decent little synthpop songs if I sit down and put my mind to it. And I can write pretty well.

So, now that I have these skills, what the hell do I have to say?



This comes from a conversation I was having last night-- does art have to SAY SOMETHING? Does it even have to be about anything? Could I just put together songs about... nothing? (Note: I FUCKING HATE SEINFELD.)

There are a couple of ways to go about it-- songs about random stuff, a la Brian Eno, who uses sounds and puts words around them, generating tantalizing lyrics that seem to almost mean something but elude close examination. There's Wire, who just use words as sounds and although you could claim that "Kidney Bingoes" is a scathing attack on Thatcherism and the terrible economy of England during the Thatcher years, you'd just be making it up. There's The Mountain Goats approach-- write songs about whatever comes to mind. Peanuts? Yay peanuts! The Celts? Sure! Tollund Man? There you go! People sitting around watching game shows and drinking as their house and their lives fall apart around them? Yay!

I have this vague plan that, once I get my recording stuff set up again, I'm
going to attempt to do a Song-A-Day, or a Song-A-Week thing. Just sit down,
write a song, hash it out in, say, half an hour, and go with it. It'd be not
unlike ms. bustedwonder's speed paintings,
which I really admire. It's like the advice that writers give when asked the
most basic question: "How do you write?" You just SIT DOWN AND DO IT. I've
got all this new time every day-- I need to use it for something that means
something to me, because otherwise I'm just floating.

Barriers to this:

- my standards. I listen to lots of really good music. I hold myself to the
same standards. I need to loosen up and let things go. Favorite quote from
favorite
storyline of favorite comic: "If something is worth doing, it's worth
doing badly." In other words, you want to create? Go out there and damn well
create. you will suck at first. you will get better through practice.

- time. this, I think, has recently improved. That's the hope, anyway. Plus,
no lengthy commute means less exhaustion.

- gear issues. Having the wavestation crash and having to deal with MIDI and
software and the damn DP/4 was horrible. I have a nice cheap little multiFX
box now (QuadraVerb 4 or MIDIverb 4 or something-- it's in a box now and I
don't remember. "What's the best used FX box I can get for a hundred bucks?"
"Here you go.") for basic stuff, and a bunch of little tiny synths for
little tiny synth things.

- space issues. Well, okay, so all my crap is in big piles right now. I'm
going to attempt to build a space less cluttered. I know, fat chance of
that, but it's a thought. At least I have nice big closets in which I can
hide things. And I'm carefully considering my space-layout options in order
to make the space as usable as possible.

I dunno. It's the same whining I've been doing all along. "Eh, it's broken.
"Eh, effort." "Eh, gotta rewire that stuff." "Mmm, the software is flaky."

Maybe this time for sure?

Comments

[quaintance.livejournal.com]

The one enduring song from my cheezy band days was nearly one of these 30 minute wonders. I had the lyrics worked out, but no idea what to do for music. Our keyboardist went to dinner leaving the guitarist and I alone on the Persian rug in the garage. We practiced some stuff, then the guitarist sprang this riff on me he thought would be good to rework a different song. I offered that it was perfect for the new idea I had, and when the keyboardist returned from dinner, he was befuddled to find us recording some song he'd never heard.

So go for it. Lots of what you make might be awful, but you might find some real gems!

[charitypomaybo.livejournal.com]

ring me up when you are ready for some album cover art, rock star :D

[stophittinyrslf.livejournal.com]

first off, crowd of drifters isn't about vampires. you are super dead wrong about that. (sometimes we bring in the rat, etc, is about why people don't want the drifters hanging out in their towns. cuz they bring in diseases and rats and insects and stuff because they're dirty because they're drifters and drifters don't get to take showers. it's against guild rules.)

secondly, if you step back and look at the music you really like, how much of it says something really? i mean, how much of it says something GRAND AND SUPER MEANINGFUL? chances are, not a lot of it. like i was sort of talking about yesterday, songs... tend to have an intangible quality that effects people. it's more the feeling that you get from a song than the overall like, meaning or message. an example that i should have thought to toss out before - take leonard cohen's famous blue raincoat. the whole song is just a letter to some party whose overall role isn't ever disclosed. the lyrics are vague. there's no great meaning in them. yet, a million billion zillion people have been emotionally pummeled by that song. why? because it tugs at some feeling inside of them. there's something in his little story that is in other people's own stories - and that, at least in my opinion, is what makes music effective, not some sort of overall message.

so, just because you don't have anything AMAZING or GRAND or anything to say, you're not like, musically stranded. if nothing else, you have little stories. (i know you have little stories because i hear them all the damn time.) so my advice (again) is to work from there and see what comes out.

and do just sit down and fuck around. that's one of the most important things. sitting down and fucking around doesn't mean you'll make something good, or even make anything at all. but it does mean you'll get more used to the process of creating stuff, and more aware of what your gear can do, etc, etc...

as my dad would say, get off the damn internet and do something.

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Mm, yeah, I knew I'd forgotten one of the approaches-- the "songs that sound vague enough that lots of people connect with them" approach. REM are masters of this, too...

But, yep. That last line there, that's key.

[stophittinyrslf.livejournal.com]

no, i don't mean vague songs at all. :[

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Okay. I think I know what you mean anyway, although I'm not expressing it very well. Perhaps I shall go up and change that "good writer" thing to "incoherent word noodler."

[stophittinyrslf.livejournal.com]

yeah. i mean like, the antithesis of vague songs. songs that are hyperspecific to the writer (eg, they're stories from the writer's life), but there's something in them that strikes a chord with other people. the whole concept of most people really do experience the same sorts of things, with minor cosmetic differences... etc.

um. i'm not gonna walk over to fuller in the rain, okay? (lunch whenever, though.)

[chorus.livejournal.com]

Okay, I don't really do song lyrics, but I do do poetry. Not quite the same, but with some similar problems. (And I occasionally do song lyrics, except, of course, I can't write music to save my life, so it's still not the same. But I digress.)

Poetry is about saying something, but it isn't necessarily about saying something meaningful. You can capture a slice of time in poetry, or talk about your dead grandmother, or write verse after verse about your job frustration, or declaim your love in iambic pentameter, or write about how your cat's whiskers tickle you. They're all poetry. It's just an image painted in words.

Song lyrics, at least in theory, ought to work the same way.

Stop caring what the words say. Just say the words.

[twwombat.livejournal.com]

Amen, sister.

And Josh, thanks for expressing what's been in my head for ages.

[arafel2.livejournal.com]

It almost sounds like you feel you should do it, but don't actually want to, from all the excuses you've listed off. Which would kind of be a shame, since I've enjoyed some of your tracks, but on the other hand if it's not enjoyable it's not worth doing. (At least for fun ;-)

As for "what the hell do I have to say?", whatever's on your mind. Weather, work (within reason!), something that happened while driving or going round the shops, a conversation, a [day]dream, a random thought which occurs to you. Most of the great songs around don't actually have any deeper meaning - many of the Beatles songs, for example (with the exception of Hey Jude I guess). Electric Six's Gay Bar is what I consider an outstanding track - although in a very different way from the Beatles! - and I don't think anyone would try to argue that's a deep and meaningful song, even me. ;-)

If a track grabs you, for whatever reason, that's enough - whether it resonates with a memory, makes you feel bouncy (Gay Bar again), makes you feel good (You Get What You Give, New Radicals), makes you realise other people are going through bad stuff and coming out okay, reminds you of a good time you had (Lady by Modjo, for example) - hell, sometimes reminding you of a bad time is what you want. Music is one of the few things which can do that to most people (the other is smell).

Uh ... that wasn't intended to be a long incoherent screed, sorry. I can get quite talkative about music. ;-)

But while I can play some things - or could, anyway - I don't actually have any compositional talent. C'est la vie. ;-) You seem to, so just make the most of it. Play. :=)

[krzzl.livejournal.com]

When I was taking my standup class, our instructor told us that for every 10 bits you write, 9 of them will be crap, but you just have to keep writing anyway. I imagine most art and music is like this...

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Okay, so it's now three months later, and I'm finally together and moving on things.

I thought about this reply quite a lot over the past couple of months. At this point, I'm just noodling synthily. This morning I pulled a card from the Oblique Strategies, too, and it was "Don't be ashamed of using your own ideas."

Still not sure about lyrics or anything, but at least I'm getting a handle on making songs that fit together. Progress is good.

[arafel2.livejournal.com]

Just wondering whether you'd continued down the musical route...?

[solipsistnation.livejournal.com]

Wow, a year ago.

Since then, I've been playing guitar almost exclusively. I mess with Ableton Live every so often (usually when I'm at work and feel like playing with it), but most of my musicking is coming home at noon and playing guitar... I've played with a couple of people, but it's tough to find people who want to. I'm also playing finger-picked guitar on my Telecaster, but while I think it would work better on an acoustic, the Tele's certainly a nice guitar and is good to play and so on...

So, I have! Not the way I thought I would, but at this point I can pick up a guitar and plink out a bunch of songs, and I can work out new songs pretty easily, and all sorts of stuff. I'm feeling pretty good about it, actually. I've written bits of songs-- chord progressions and stuff. I would like to have somebody else to play off of, but even without, I can still make enough of a sound that it doesn't sound empty, or like half a song...