In the beginning was the music, and mostly, it was good...Got to have the songs to do anything.
The Music.
We all approach how we write our songs in our own way, to state the obvious. For me, the music always come first. It's possible that I've written a song from a lyric, but if I have I don't remember it. The music comes to me mostly in my head: I'll hear something (music is always dancing around in my head) and try to replicate it on the guitar, or every blue moon on a keyboard. Sometimes it comes from goofing around while I'm practicing other music and my mind wonders. This happens often. Sometimes I'm playing through a cover and that sparks an idea. I also tend to write in batches and have unfinished songs sitting around as I work through the other songs I'm recording.
It was in these unfinished songs that I went from Whispers (From a Forgotten Memory) to This Wonderful Life, with Winter in the middle.
Organizing songs.
Since the early 80s, I tend to organize the songs I'm working on around a common theme, and having written 2 albums, We Three and Whispers, around the personal and intimate, I wanted to work on something else. I wanted to talk about the world we live in, as I had in the late 80s and those times. (Remarkably, or perhaps not, little seems to have changed.) Some of this was started when I was asked to write a song for a benefit to support homeless mothers and their children. I don't generally write to spec, but it's good to challenge yourself periodically. What came out was A Mother's Arms, and it was the spark that got me moving.
I know that most of the people I associate with in the songwriting community are not recording artists (a somewhat pretentious term, but that's how I see myself, as recording is what I focused on most with my songs), and because of that, I always hear the songs arranged with multiple instruments as I work on them before I ever start recording, and being a DIY guy since the 80s, it seems perfectly natural to do this.
Consequently, all these songs were taking form in my head as they came to me, and it was as that point that I decided to push myself to create a kind of musical journey (more possible pretentiousness) that drew from all the years of listening to and making music. I wanted to, in a sense, memorialize the music of my life—to create my part in all the music that I'd loved over the years. In this instance, I tried to structured the songs based on the genre they came from, whether they would have definable verses, choruses, and bridges.
The lyrics.
For the most part, I'm a terrible procrastinator when it comes to lyrics. Songs will sit around for months before I put any words to them. Mostly because I want the lyrics to mean something. Some songs are just for fun, are meant to be simple; there's no need for them to be anything beyond that. Dance music is like that: it's meant to be danced to, you're not going to spend any length of time listening to them with headphones in order to really understand the song (think the difference between a disco tune and a Dylan tune). I like lyrics that can be read with many meanings, but in the simplest way. I think for the most part I've succeeded. This Wonderful Life is full of these kind of songs. I also like the music and the lyrics to work together, I want the mood the music creates to inform the feel of the lyrics if that makes sense.
All together now.
Once the songs have a musical structure and lyrics, it's time to record.
©2021 David William Pearce
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