名作記

I noticed something about the way I’m writing these days.
Last night, I took this 16-measure sketch that’s been sitting around since 1999 and finally fleshed it out to a 3’20” song. At the time I wrote the sketch, I thought, “Well, that’s part of the song — I’ll need to go back and add more later.”
As it turned out, I added about six measures of new music to that sketch, then went about cutting and pasting the three different segments of the song till it reached a good length.
Back in 1999, I probably would have thought I needed a middle eight and a longer chorus and bridge to the chorus. Instead, I took a single melody and repeated it over and over again, but cut it up in asymetrical ways to keep it interesting.
A sketch that sat around for about six years was actually a song that was 72 percent complete.
I read a quote paraphrased from Igor Stravinsky back in music history class lo so many years ago, in which he said limitations stimulate creativity. A more specific way to say that is less is more.
I’m at the point with my songwriting where I even resist putting in middle eights. One of these days, I’m going to write an entire song on one chord!

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Another reason — probably the main one — this sketch went untouched for so long was because it’s a guitar song written on a keyboard.
I dashed out the main tidbit using a patch called Fluid Guitar, and I liked the way sounded. Thing was, I didn’t know much about guitar playing back then, and I didn’t want to end up writing keyboard music that can’t be transcribed easily to guitar.
Now that I’ve had time to get familiar with the guitar, I felt confident knowing I could avoid such pitfalls.
And it sounds pretty decent.

I’ve spent the last two weekends laying down tracks for about five new songs, hoping they would fit well with what I’ve already recorded for Speechless.
Instead of taking my time with these songs, I’m working as fast I can, throwing things up at random and running with the first idea I run across. I’m not sure I like the results.
When I listen to the entire “album”, it just doesn’t flow. The first songs I recorded all fit well together, but I could tell there were holes — there needed to be more songs between them to make them feel like part of something bigger. But the songs I’m using to fill those holes don’t seem to fit.
I’ve got one song with the working title “Stepwise” that’s very fascinating rhytmically and harmonically — and it sticks out like crazy. I’ve got a two-part song that uses the same chorus between them, and they go so far as to quote other songs on the album. And they don’t seem to mesh.
I even recorded two songs, one which sounds too much like “Laura Palmer’s Theme” from Twin Peaks and the other a Depeche Mode knock-off. It was obvious right away they weren’t right for this set.
So it looks like the method I employed with Imprint — writing only as many songs as I want to appear on the album — isn’t working for Speechless. I fear I’ll have to keep throwing things against the wall till something sticks.

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Another idea to consider is that these quick recordings need further refinement. Perhaps they really do fit with the album. They just don’t sound like they do because they’re the wrong mixes.
I know one song actually puts me to sleep. And it’s my own song!
The lion’s share of the work, though, is out of the way. Now that I have bass parts and drum parts and quasi-guitar parts and keyboard parts, it’s a matter of editing from here on out.
If it turns out all the editing in the world won’t make the songs fit, I guess it’s back to the drawing board.

About two years ago, I wrote an entry describing all the songs I hadn’t yet finished. At the time, I didn’t think I’d ever get off my ass and get them done. I think it’s time to mark through that old list and perhaps create a new one.
Doesn’t that sound like fun? I guess the only one to whom it does is me.

1. “The One to Make Me Whole” To tell you the truth, this song rips off U2’s “With or Without You”, but does something a bit different with the intervals. In fact, I’m also ripping off Duran Duran’s “Ordinary World” in the way the first two chords of the song move. And R.E.M.’s “World Leader Pretend”. Hell, this song isn’t much more than a rip-off of other songs. So it should sound pretty new.

   I finally recorded this song.

2. “Can’t Decide” I wrote this lyric during an alcoholic buzz, and I suspect this song was drafted under the influence of Madonna’s “Frozen”. I think I’m going to pass on finishing this one.

   I actually had a brief sketch of this song, but I’m not going to do anything with it. Well, unless I use it for something else …

3. “Speechless” I’ve actually written two different lyrics to the melody of this song. The first draft has long been ditched, and the second draft? I haven’t quited warmed up to it yet. Musically, I was going for something along the lines of “Yr Mother Called Them the Farmhouses” by Robin Holcomb.

   I’ve warmed up to the second version of the lyrics now.

4. Untitled (“elevator”) I don’t know what this chord progression stands for, but I’m guess “elevator” refers to “elevator music”. Still evaluating the potential.

   This song became “A Chance to Get It Right”.

5. Untitled (“C-Mixolydian”) No lyrics. I don’t think I even have a melody. But it was cool writing in this key.

   This song became “Without Nothing”, and it’s actually written in C-Phrygian.

6. “Strange Arrangement” I have some lyrics to this song somewhere. The only problem is the chord progression sounds incredibly familiar to me. I don’t know who I”m ripping off, but I feel I’m ripping somebody off.

   I still can’t figure out who I’m ripping off with this song.

7. Untitled (“Triads I”) This song is pretty eerie. E-major to C-major, G major to D major. I wrote two sets of lyrics for this song, neither of which I like.

   This song became “Letter”. I’m toying with the idea of extending this song to a number of versions, “Letter I”, “Letter II”, “Letter III”, etc.

8. Untitled (“Triads II”) Pretty much nothing more than an A-flat major chord broken up. I have a contour for the melody, but I haven’t figured out its pacing — 8th notes or 16th notes.

   This song became “Release”, and it’s probably the most overtly sexual lyrics I’ve written.

9. Untitled (“Guitar”) A two-bar phrase that sounds good on the guitar patch on one of my sythesizers. It hardly qualifies as a song. It’s barely the seed of an idea.

   UPDATE: I’m going to flesh this song out some more. I’m a bit more familiar with the fretboard now, and I think I can approximate guitar positions on a keyboard.

10. Untitled (“Dolly”) This song bears so much of a resemblance to Dr.StrangeLove’s “Dolly” that I may not finish it. I may as well cover “Dolly” if I’m going to write something that sounds just like it. The chorus, though, sounds more like BBMAK. How frightening is that?

    Against my better judgment, I’m standing by this song, regardless of its overt resemblence to Dr.StrangeLove and U2. This song became “Restraint”.

11. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #1”) “Stylish Number Girl” is a the code name for a project in which I write with a guitar, something I’ve never attempted. They’re inspired mostly by Number Girl and Cocco, the two artists who gave me the incentive to learn guitar. I think got the rhythm for this song from a Guided By Voices song, although a more immediate cousin would be Number Girl’s “Eight Beater” and “Drunk Afternoon”.

    NOTE: All songs labeled “Stylish Number Girl” will probably be recorded last because they were written on guitar, and I have yet to use Cakewalk for extensive digital audio, which these songs would require were I to play them (*cough*) on guitar.

    Despite having the guitar skills of a gnat, I managed to flesh out the songs that are part of the “Stylish Number Girl” set. The project is called Revulsion.

12. “Revulsion” The music is pretty much finished, and the lyrics are half way done. It could be mistaken for emo. God I hope not.
13. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #3”) I think I use these same chords in “Hear the Wind Sing”. It’s a slow song. No lyrics nor melody. Just a chord progression and a structure.
14. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #4”) A bunch of chords that sound way too close to fra-foa because, as it turns out, it is fra-foa. Skipping.

    I did eventually rip off fra-foa on another song, “Imprint”.

15. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #5”) A four-measure phrase in which I can’t remember why I jotted it down. It’s crap though, so I’m passing on it as well.
16. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #6”) A four-chord progression that sounds great on a reverb pedal. I get the sense, however, these four chords will be the entire song.
17. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #7”) This chord progression is subsumed into “Revulsion”, so I’m not sure if I’m still going to keep it spun out as its own song. It’s not like I haven’t “quoted” songs in each other before.

    I’m keeping this progression subsumed into “Revulsion”.

18. Untitled (“Stylish Number Girl #8/Blues”) It’s not written in the aforementioned notebook, but it’s a distant cousin to Dr.StrangeLove’s “Tenohira no Naka no Freedom”. Still undecided whether to pursue.

    Well, hell, if I already ripped of “Dolly”, I may as well rip of this DSL song as well.

19. Untitled (“ACO #1”) For an Eponymous 4 follow-up to Enigmatics, I’m drawing upon ACO and UA for inspiration. I may even pillage a ghost in my shadow for material. This song sets an F major chord against a bass line alternating between D and E-flat. In essence, Dm7 and F7/E-flat. This song is one of the two newest.

    This song became “Our Best Wasn’t Enough”.

20. Untitled (“ACO #2”) Another song similarly constructed as the previous entry. In both songs, I started with a beat, then started playing chords that seemed to match the tempo (both pretty slow). I look forward to hearing how both sound fleshed out.

    This song became “Your Gaze”.

21. Untitled (“Secret Oktober Dub”) I want to use the drum beat of Duran Duran’s “Secret Oktober” in a dub song. But I can’t seem to get ACO’s “Intensity (You Are)” out of my head when I’m working on it. The feel of each song is different, and I don’t know how to — or whether I can — resolve them.

    UPDATE: Although I wanted to include this song for Imprint, I couldn’t make it work. I won’t abandon the idea, but I’m prioritizing other song before it.

I managed to knock off about 9 songs off all but one from this list, and it doesn’t even include the songs I wrote after making it:

• Choices
• Here
• Imprint
• Late Thaw
• Love and Pride
• Rescuer
• Undone

And now that I’ve made some progress on the Speechless Restraint-era songs, I’ve actually sketched out a few more:

1. Untitled (Stepwise) So named because the opening chord progression is a series of stepwise major chords — C, D, E, F. I have a chorus that uses more traditional progressions, and while this progression offers its challenges melodically, I’m not sure how impressed I am by it. That is to say, I can’t hear much of a hook.
2. Untitled (formerly Shockwave) I wrote a song back in high school that bears a tremendous resemblence to Duran Duran’s “Notorious”. I took a second look at the underlying harmonic rhythm and noticed it could sound more like Zoobombs. The chorus, though, really sucked, so that needs to be rewritten.
3. Untitled (E-Lydian) I had a hard time picking out this song on a piano, so I switched to guitar, and the limited number of chords I know on guitar gave me better results. Then later, I ended up with …

   I don’t know my modes — this is actually written in E-Mixolydian.

4. Untitled (E-Dorian) The bass lines are nearly identical with “Untitled (E-Lydian)”, even though E-Lydian starts on a major chord, while E-Dorian starts on a minor. I don’t want to scrap either idea, so I’m combining them into a segued piece.

   As you can see, I’ve scratched off these songs as well.

I’ve also taken on the arduous task of combing through my high school notebook, a painful process to witness all the mistakes of youth! But I am finding things here and there to comandeer, but I think I’ll save that list for another entry. That is, after I’ve actually gone through everything to figure out what stays and what goes.
[UPDATE 12/13/2005: I went back and scratched off anything else that was finished since this entry was written. It looks like I just about gone through the entire list. I don’t know about that “Secret Oktober Dub” thing, though.]

Huh. That got finished faster than I expected.
Well, it’s not really finished finished, but the songs themselves are minimally complete — they have beginnings, middles, ends and lyrics. What am I talking about? I’m talking about 「風の歌を聴け」, the strange follow-up to the mostly mainstream Imprint.
It’s a five-track EP where the songs are decidedly more off-kilter than what I usually write. “Downtown Downpour” and “Hear the Wind Sing” (the title track) are the oldest songs of the bunch, having been written in 1991 and 1995, respectively.
“A Simple Song” was plucked out as far back as 2002 or 2003 — I don’t remember. I just knew I wanted to write something that sounded like Wayne Horvitz.
“Rescuer” and “Here” were both written in 2005, the lyrics for both completed within the last two nights.
I’m not sure why I decided this particular project would have only five tracks, nor am I sure why I wrote the songs as distinctly as I did. I just knew I wanted them to sound unlike anything on Imprint.
“Here” is a particularly cheap tune — the bass line spells out two of the best known initials in classical music, D-S-C-H (Dmitri Shostakovich) and B-A-C-H (who else?) The chromaticism of the bass line works well.
That brings my rough discography to three. I guess I should get cracking on the tenatively-titled Speechless and figure out what to do with A Ghost in My Shadow.
Lyrics and music available on eponymous4.com, of course.

I remember now why I procrastinate when writing lyrics.
I’ve recounted stories many times about writing lyrics before the music when I first started out writing songs. Nowadays, I write music first, and write lyrics later.
Much, much, much later.
I’ve had a number of untitled songs sitting around in unfinished form since 1999, and over the weekend, I managed to attach a bit of meaning to them now. It’s not an easy process, and I think it’s the most creatively draining part of the whole kit-and-proverbial caboodle.
You got your X number of syllables. You got the song’s tone to consider. Matching the two is a process of trial and error, and it’s slow going.
“I remember when the earth was flatter”
“There’s a picture hanging on the back wall”
“Someone somewhere told me something diff’rent”
“Circumstances call for diff’rent measures”
All these sentences could fit a single melodic line, but which one would I feel least silliest singing? It took me two days of wrangling a catchy line to what would eventually become a song titled “Without Nothing”. I scratched out lines on two different pieces of paper before I hit on something that felt like something I could draw out further.
I remember all the things you told me
I remember all the things you did
I was trying to avoid that kind of repetition because its an easy cop-out, but there was a sentiment beneath the surface I wanted to explore. So I continued.
I remember all the things you told me
I remember all the things you did
How can I remember all the things that you want me to do?
I believed that you could walk on water
I believed that you could raise the dead
How can I believe that what you promised will work in the end?
I had actually written the chorus a few hours earlier, but scrapped it when I couldn’t match come up with verses that matched the sentiment. It didn’t seem like a perfect fit, but it fit good enough.
I just know …
It’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for all my life
It means nothing without you to make it right
The next lines that came out of me surprised me. I don’t know where it came from, but they crystallized for whom the song is intended.
I remember all the times I wanted
Something in me to change overnight
I accept that it could never happen and I don’t blame you
That stanza is pretty darn gay. So I know what had to happen in the next verse.
I believe you cannot walk on water
I believe you cannot raise the dead
I don’t believe that you could never change what is done in the end
And repeat the chorus, but it gets a bit longer …
I just know …
It’s the one thing I’ve been waiting for all my life
It means nothing without you to make it right
Give me something to remind me how it could be
Without nothing I can never learn to be free

So this song is about maintaining spirituality in the face of coming out? Perhaps. I didn’t set out to write that song, because I’m a recovering Catholic, and I like to keep “gay” and “religion” mutually exclusive concepts. But someone trying to resolve both might adopt this song as their theme, and why should I stand in the way of that?

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Matching the right words to the melody takes time, and I tend to go with the first thing I latch onto. It doesn’t take long to tap the flow once it gets starting, and of course, I always edit while writing and for a good while afterward.
Other lyrics I wrote over the weekend came with much more ease, and I have to say some of the results even surprised me. The song that eventually became “Here” worried me, because the melody is plaintive and sits on a very odd chord progression. “Letter” and “Restraint” are auto-biographical to a point, whereas “Rescuer” and “Without Nothing” is fiction where my perspective is concerned.
I wish I could have set lyrics to a song going by the working title “Untitled (Hokuro/Vox)”, but, well, I haven’t settled on a melody for that song just yet.

I’m trying something slightly different.
I’ve got a bunch of songs that are little more than melody and harmonic rhythm, and some of them are years old, never having been set to MIDI, let alone recorded.
I don’t have a feel for what they may turn out to be — I don’t quite hear them in my head.
So I’m going to just program them all with as they are — chords and melody and hooks if there are any. I figure once I have a general architecture laid down for each song, I can start piling stuff on top of them.
It’s a method I stumbled across while working on “Choices”, and while I can’t say I’m married to the mix I created for that song, I like the surprise from seeing how it turned out.
Plus, it’s a good way not to be bogged down by a stopped dam. I was trying to create yet another mix of an old song — one I could never get right the first two tries — and I’m still stumped. This way, I feel like I’m making progress on work even if I’m nowhere close to finishing anything.

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At first, I thought I was going to work a little less traditionally, focusing on a particular project and finishing it before moving on to something else.
For Imprint, that felt like the absolutely correct working method.
I don’t think I can do the same for whatever comes next.
I’ve got a backlog of material sketched out, and a number of different ways to group them. I assumed I was going to dismantle A Ghost in My Shadow completely, but now that I’ve reconstructed the rest of it, I’m not so certain.
So now, I’m just working on everything to sort out later — which is how projects as these are usually done.
I’ll come back later when I have something ready to show. I hope to have something new done before the semester starts.

I have binders and notebooks full of old completed songs, and ideas for new songs. A lot of these binders and notebooks are a decade old, and while I’m open-minded enough to see the potential in some of those ideas, I actually cringe when I attempt to sift through all this material.
I was playing some of the songs I wrote back in high school this evening. I shuddered when I encountered a chord progression that doesn’t conform with my formal training. No, no! It should go to this chord, not that one.
But I forced myself to deal with it, and I have to say, I did find a few rough nuggets in all that derivative material. One of the first songs I wrote I was titled, “Ragged Edge”, and oh, are the lyrics juvenile. So was the chord progression. But then, I started messing around with what was there, doing things with the bass line I wouldn’t have known to do back in high school, using chords I hadn’t yet learned at the time.
And before I knew it, I was onto something I liked.
Same goes for this other song that was directly inspired by Arcadia’s “El Diablo”. I edited the harmonic rhythm a bit and liked what I heard.
I even unearthed this requiem I wrote in high school, which has Andrew Lloyd Webber and Enya written all over it. I hadn’t learned the correct cadences for the Latin text, so now the music strikes me as clumsy. But there’s an ambition to the work that makes me want to go back and mold it some more.
I guess what I’m trying to say is I have a lot of material, and I could conceivably keep myself busy editing, rewriting and recording this stuff from now till the end of the year. That, in addition to creating new songs to keep up with all this old material.
It should be a fun distraction.

Well, it looks like the next project I’m working on is a reconstruction of my old demo, A Ghost in My Shadow. I spent this past weekend reconstructing “Strivers for a Better Tomorrow” and “No Exit”.
In the past eight months, I’ve managed to reconstruct 11 of the 13 tracks I originally put online. There are many more tracks that I’ve left off from the original cassette tape (A Loss for Words), one or two I have no intention of re-recording. (I won’t rule out pillaging them for spare chord progressions, melodic phrases or lyrics.)
Six of those tracks are being redistributed to other projects. The remaining seven will probably end up elsewhere as well. Some may just remain outtakes.
Still, the momentum started when I considered putting “Faith in Religion” — the lyrics of which I seriously need to update — on Imprint. After that, I figured I may as well work on the old stuff while I take a break from trying to hash out new material.
I’ve noticed a few impulses that keep creeping up on me while I work on these songs …

• I need either to get serious about improving my guitar-playing or to find a guitarist. “No Exit” is driving me mad because it’s a guitar song, and I can’t fucking play guitar! No matter how much I tinker with it, it will never sound the way it should. I also think “Faith in Religion” would sound much better driven by ethereal guitar effects than ethereal synthesizer effects.
• I’m really tired of putting temporary melody tracks on these songs. I need either to get serious about singing or to find a singer. But I have a bad habit of writing melodies way out of my range, so I may have to go with the latter.
• The Korg N364 has 500 sounds, and very few of them ever really do anything for me. I guess that dissatisfaction is how gear creep happens. Can’t find the timbre you’re looking for? Buy more gear. I so want to use Propellerhead Reason, but I need to buy an entirely separate computer. (Preferably a laptop.)
• I dropped $260 on a used Kawai K4, and I keep resisting the urge to use it. The K4 has these odd habits that I won’t bore you with in detail. Suffice to say, it’s not the most user-friendly environment to work with the rest of my workstation, and it curbs my enthusiasm for employing it. No wonder I eventually stopped working on it.
• I think some of these songs would really sound better if they were performed by live musicians.

Reconstructing these songs, though, has a quicker pay-off than working on new material. It took two days to lay down the basic tracks for “Strivers” and “No Exit”. I took a week before “Choices” resembled something usable.
So I’m just going for the short-term thrill for now and leave the more challenging work for later. What a lazy ass am I.

I started working on the third track for 「風の歌を聴け」 when I realized I didn’t know what this song sounds like.
When I start fleshing out a song, I try to have some sense of a few elements — the kind of drum beat and tempo, what kind of guitar to use (if any), a sense for whether it’s busy or sparse.
This new song is kind of tricky — it uses only two chords, D and E major, with a rising bass line, D-E-F#-G#. And the melody is the kind that slowly rises close to an octave where it starts. In terms of raw materials, there isn’t much there.
Which means the focal point for the song is how it develops. And I haven’t yet visualized (auralized?) what that is. The only thing I know is I want to use Craig Armstrong as a source. I think I’ll have to study The Space Between Us more.
All that to say, I don’t think I should concentrate so heavily on finishing 「風の歌を聴け」.
Nothing derails momentum more than forcing out work that doesn’t want to be mishandled. And after looking at that list, I realize I can keep myself busy while I process this new song in the background of my subsconscious. The section of unrecorded and unfinished songs alone has a nagging quality to it.
So I hammered a quick rebuild of “No Exit” over the last two days. I put a mix of it online, but after hearing it this morning, I realize there are a lot of parts I can’t hear.
However much I like to think of these demos as near-finished products, the truth couldn’t be any further. There’s a lot of work that goes into making a mix sound just right, and I know just about all of the MP3s I’ve put online need lots of tweaks in those devilish details.
(I really hate how weak these mixes sound.)
So there’s still a lot of work to do. I am, however, impressed with the amount of work done.

I have no idea if anyone reads this sliver of the Internets, but I’m finding it helpful. I could have conceivably kept all these notes in on paper, but it’s so much easier plugging this URL into a browser and reminding myself, “Hmm. I really ought to finish that, shouldn’t I?”
I made a list. Yeah, I can sense you rolling your eyes through the monitor there.
It’s a chronological list of songs, divided into ones for which I’ve recorded in some fashion or other, ones I have yet to record and others which have yet to be finished.
This output covers about 15 years. Don’t be fooled — career musicians probably have lists far longer than this one. The dates are when they were first sketched out, not when they were recorded. “Speechless”, for instance, was written in 1998, but I never recorded it until this year.
I also have a binder full of songs I wrote in the first years of high school. None of those are really worth acknowledging. (Although one of these days, I’ll have to thumb through them to see if any are worth pillaging.)
I think I’m going to make this page somewhat dynamic — if I record something or finish something, I’ll edit this page to reflect that status.
[Edited to add: I think I’ll also link to any demos recorded and available online.]
[UPDATE 06/25/06: I reformatted this page to include a lot more information than the original post. I added revision dates, since a number of songs were changed extensively, and I added recording dates. The list is still organzied chronigically by original composition date. Or what I remember to be the original composition date.]
[UPDATE 06/20/07: Added a few more revisions since last year.]

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