I always tell my students to expect to hit a wall that they will have to work work to break through. Often times they progress quickly in the beginning, then they hit some more advanced rhythm and bam! they're stuck. They can't play the song with the same amount of effort that the previous songs required. They must push themselves to a new level, connect new parts of their brain that have never connected before. After you break through the wall the new technique you learned seems simple and you wonder what made it so hard.
I feel like musicianship and songwriting is full of these walls. I have broken through most of them with the passion of youth. I didn't have to work so hard to get through as I do now. Now I hit a wall and get what I call writer's block. I have written songs using my new skills, pushed myself, now what? I have no desire to just write the same song with new words or slightly varied chords. I hear SO MANY SONGS and I think, that sounds like 1,000 songs I've heard before. I want my songs to musically lead your ear (and heart, and maybe mind) to a new place. I want you to be surprised by what comes next, but not bothered by it. I want it to feel familiar or identifiable, but not redundant.
I am now brushing up my chord knowledge and improvisation skills. I used to feel like my instinct was enough, but through the years I've realized it isn't. There are more avenues I haven't been down. I don't utilize augmented chords. I don't know what mode of scale goes best over what chord. I have stumbled upon these things and developed some good habits (and I'm sure some not so good ones) but I believe that to push deeper into songwriting as art I need to have a good, or better yet great, grasp of it's foundations.
Basically I've hit a wall that is bigger than any I've come across before. I feel like I don't really have the time to work through it. That depresses me. I feel like I am either on the precipice of artistic death or the edge of an ocean of artistic discovery. Do I have the power to choose?
I am also constantly frustrated with the limits of my voice. That deserves it's own blog. I can't really change it, but I think I can learn to bring out it's good qualities. Or learn to live it.
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Hi Rachel!
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have put more into effort and study into the musical aspect than I ever have. I wish I could hear some of your stuff!
check it out at myspace.com/rachelanderson
ReplyDeleteThanks! I will!
ReplyDeleteI love the masthead image/painting by the way - like an ocean turned to dirt!
Wow! I wouldn't even WANT to write a song like that - but it's AWESOME!
ReplyDeleteI had to fight to keep from just re-starting "Endeavor" over and over from the start - there's something softly bewitching about how it gets underway. But it continues through the whole song, really - the guitar prickly-precise, yet surprising and hard to parse in the way you've put it quite together. Yet the feel is fairly effortless - it doesn't sound contrived, it sounds natural - something about the way the pick and strum plays catch with the rhythm is very appealing. It's quite as if your voice holds the song together and pulls it forward, so the guitar is able to let the rhythm swing a bit. It catches at, then lets go, then catches again, the tempo. It ambles without straying. Nice.
I see now what you mean about wanting to push your chord progressions and rhythmic techniques. My guitar style is positively jejune by comparison (albeit - it works fine for what I'm trying to do). But your voice is not - I mean, these songs are not pushing you to heights of American Rock Star high-pitch wailing and gratuitous ululation, but ew yuck anyway! Who wants that! People who can sing like that...often do. The tradeoff isn't worth it.
Your voice is what these songs need. It sounds good to me!
Oh wait - I just caught a quaver at about 1:48 through Endeavor. On what's probably the 4th listen. Maybe that's what you meant.
I wouldn't beat myself up about it if I were you!
Your voice is a fine musical instrument.
Thank you for sharing these! I hope you do not get discouraged. I myself am bitter as hell, why the world hasn't given me a living yet, clearly I deserve it. But then I get into a groove and run through a whole procession of songs and put my guitar down at the end and...none of that matters. I just wallow in that warm feeling: "I wrote those songs." Ultimately, your gift is a gift to you first, and above all. Writing a song makes a soul shine something beautiful, and it's so much more than worth it - even if all you get is the song you get.
But this recipient is also grateful!
Joe
p.s. I listened to all four songs, they all are good! I didn't want to give you some big unwelcome critique of them all out of nowhere. "Endeavor" really grabbed me especially, though.
>I see now what you mean about wanting to push your chord progressions and rhythmic techniques.
ReplyDeleteMy goodness, this sounds like I think you need to. Sorry, that's not at all what I meant! I meant, your hard work on the pushing the fundamentals beyond simplistic arrangements shows, and it pays off.
I'm abashed by the sprawling comment above. I typed it out half-paying attention to what I was writing, I was listening more closely than I was watching what I wrote!
I should just have said: I really liked it!
thanks! I truly appreciate any and all compliments.
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