Thursday, November 09, 2006
A Song From the Silence
Those of you who read me regularly know that I struggle to write words and music at the same time. My song writing pal, Kathy Feeney, and I have been doing words first for about five years. Of course that only netted five songs. With Helen Avakian, it could go much faster as she writes music with the speed of a juke box. But she's way more particular than I am about lyrics and so that slows it down to about 12 hours per song. Still, that beats my usual time by just under 12 months. I want to write with Carie Pigeon and a few other friends but she's a noodler by her own description. She noodles around on the guitar until a song, words and music, come together. My student Jim Salhoff writes sort of this way. He has song fragments come to him while he's at work and he stops to write them down then goes home and works them out on the guitar from what he remembered of the tune he had in his head while he was working on machine parts! Now that's impressive. He's a terrific songwriter too. Then, as I reported recently, my student James Braha made the leap from lyrics first to music and lyrics together and has churned out about four or five songs in three weeks.So I had to give it a try. But it wasn't working. Then one morning a week or so ago I was hopping around on the net and a song file opened. I have no idea who it was. Could have been a pro or a MySpace thing. But the lyric refrain was "at the science fair." I thought they were singing "The silence there" at first. When I realized it was "science fair" I was relieved because I really wanted to use "silence there." So I did.
I took a stab at writing around that phrase spontaneously with guitar in hand. A discordant riff came up first and a progression with the opening phrase came rushing out. Alas this just poured out of me in under 20 minutes. There's a first time for everything. As for meaning, I'm gonna leave you (and me) guessing. It came on the wind as Kathy Feeney would say. I no longer believe in Freudian psychology. I'm more into quantum theory these days. So this came from an alternate universe my atoms are living in when they're not here. YOU figure it out. I got a song out of it.
I know, I know, it's not gonna have much impact here and now without the sound file but I don't have a sound file yet. I'm working in a tiny little room with my stuff piled randomly in two rooms. But my studio is progressing and I'll get you a sound file when I can. Promise. In the meantime, If you are so inclined, I'd love to know what YOU think this thing means. I have some idea, of course, but I'm not saying. If I'm gonna write a song this way, I'm gonna shut up about what was going through my mind when I was writing. It works for Dylan so why not.
The very next day I wrote another song the same way. More on that next post.
The Silence There
Copyright Bud Buckley November 2, 2006
Sometime s I think I'm living in the wrong place
Sometimes I think I left too much behind
Sometimes leaving the rat race
Doesn't always treat you kind--ly
Sometimes nothing seems fair
I need the silence there
I need the silence there
I remember where I was
I can't go back and rearrange it
I can't remember where I'm going
It's only here that I can change it-- you see
To change the past would certainly be rare
But I need the silence there
I need the silence there
I need to keep my head here on my own neck
I need to keep my eyes here on my face
I need to keep from steering toward that train wreck
I need to make this a quiet place -- for me
It's a challenge not to sit backwards in this chair
But I need the silence there
I need the silence there
Late Extra:
PLEASE GO HERE RIGHT NOW and help my good friend Michael Manning with this project. It's a life and death kind of thing.
PLEASE GO HERE RIGHT NOW and help my good friend Michael Manning with this project. It's a life and death kind of thing.
posted by Bud @ 8:52 AM
Comments:
Bud,
It could be a good one! Without hearing the music it is hard to get a sense of beat/rhythm/mood. As one who writes poetry and also a few songs, I don't partake of the rules to the formats of writing, especially in song. It's whatever works that works, lol! I mainly hear the music as I write. For me, getting the music down is the hardest part however since I don't play an instrument well.
There are a couple of spots & lines here that I don't readily feel fit rhythm-wise, but I'm hearing the beat of my own drum too, so don't go by me ;)
I'd love to hear the sound file when you get it uploaded. I'm sure it'll all fall into place then.
BTW, I actually wrote a song in Bob Dylan style about 5 years ago. I'll post the lyrics soon just for YOU!
Post a Comment
It could be a good one! Without hearing the music it is hard to get a sense of beat/rhythm/mood. As one who writes poetry and also a few songs, I don't partake of the rules to the formats of writing, especially in song. It's whatever works that works, lol! I mainly hear the music as I write. For me, getting the music down is the hardest part however since I don't play an instrument well.
There are a couple of spots & lines here that I don't readily feel fit rhythm-wise, but I'm hearing the beat of my own drum too, so don't go by me ;)
I'd love to hear the sound file when you get it uploaded. I'm sure it'll all fall into place then.
BTW, I actually wrote a song in Bob Dylan style about 5 years ago. I'll post the lyrics soon just for YOU!
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