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During Which I Bore The Entire Interweb About Writing A Middle 8..
By Craig | April 18, 2008
Anna and I spent a couple of hours bending another song into shape for the new record last night. Pre-production continues apace…
“Pour A Little Water” is something we’ve had hanging around for about a year and after demoing it several months ago we all acknowledged that what was the middle section should instead have been the chorus. So, we sat down last night intending to write a new middle section and then arrange the whole song from start to end.
Writing stuff with Anna is a challenge and a pleasure. She thinks very fast in terms of vocal melodies so it’s sometimes hard to keep up with her and find the chords she’s singing for, and she also changes her mind a lot and quickly because she’s looking for the right thing. Often, by the time I’ve found the original chord she’s started looking for a different one. It’s a very quick fire process and would look like lunacy to an outsider, but it comes from writing and working together over several years and seems to work. The song goes in several different directions, and often at the same time, before we eventually get what we want.
One thing we both agree on when writing together is being very careful to avoid the obvious. When writing songs, and particularly the kind of songs that we play, it’s very easy to take the path of least resistance. Often the song itself drags you with it because certain chords naturally lead you towards others - and there is nothing inherently wrong with that providing you can keep the song as a whole interesting by introducing something slightly out of the ordinary, something unexpected, to keep the ears fresh.
Yesterday, after much tweaking and bashing, we ended up with a pretty complex middle section that has a really sweet couple of key changes, a nice change of pace and somehow finds it’s way in and out of the arrangement very neatly and…
…and I realise I’m dancing about architecture here so I won’t go into any further detail. Suffice to say we are happy with it. Afterwards I made a quick, 10-bob demo so I could remember the chords and arrangement and I’m looking forward to working on a demo-proper over the coming days.
That’s 8 tunes in the bag.
Things are going well…
….a little too well.
Topics: Collaboration |