I’ve always had this image of the lone songwriter and his
guitar. As if creating music is purely a solitary activity. Maybe it’s the mythic
image of the Texan bard as a lonesome cowboy? In any case, band practice last
night was a breakthrough experience.
We were all just going through our respective parts before
starting to play a song together. Then, H just played a chord progression on
the piano that I didn’t recognize but liked quite well. “What’s that?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know…something I came up with just now.”
And we were off! Melodies just started coming to me, some
lyrics, too. H came up with a slightly different progression for a chorus. B
started messing with some possible riffs. We recorded the parts as fast as we
could. We were all swept up in the whirlwind of spontaneous musical
collaboration. It was beautiful and exhilarating.
Yes, I know that this was just the natural progression of
playing music together. It’s the whole springboard effect and is normal
songwriting procedure for many bands. But it was the first time for me. And it
takes off a lot of the pressure and fear of songwriting for me. Suddenly, I’m
no longer responsible for creating an entire song. All I have to do is my
little part and that counts as songwriting. J
No comments:
Post a Comment