Songwriting in an hour: playful and impermanent.

Most of my work this week has been related to songwriting, which I very much enjoy and that I'm currently taking a class on with professor Loren Dempster. One of the issues that I wanted to work on with him is my general inability to finish songs, often revising them ad nauseam until I get bored of them. I always want one finished final product with no variation among them. The technique that Loren Dempster has used to help me with this issue is to limit my songwriting to one hour, no exceptions. By the end of the hour, I must have a full song ready to perform for the class or to record. This last week, during class time, I wrote a piece that I've been really satisfied with. I was working from a prompt "The hill that goes up", written by a classmate. 

I find this approach to both be very effective in distilling the process of songwriting but also very playful in that it has no expectations of perfection or quality in general. It's extremely effective for coming up with thematic material but the pressure is not there that I generally feel when writing. Also, the worst case-scenario is that I need to change my song afterwards. 

The song that I wrote this week is a good example of this: I wrote the harmonic framework in the hour and recorded what I had but then went back and changed a lot to refine it. I added a verse and refined the harmony in 2 spots to better suit what I feel works with the motivic material. The third verse is one that I added after the hour had elapsed, to tie the song more explicitly to climate change. The harmony that I changed was in the bridge: on the line "It seems poetic that this is how it ends // betrayed by that which we defend", I used a tritone substitution to bring the song to C major, which suits the line a bit better. Later, on the line "when my kids put me in a home", I decided to play a Dominant 7 chord in 3rd inversion, while singing the major seventh of the chord to make a really discordant cross-relation on the word "home". I am going to record a version of the song on Tuesday with professor Dempster, the words to which I wrote out below. In the mean time, I have a recording that I made after the first hour that I am happy to share with the class, but which I would really rather not put on social media.

 

When my grandparents were young,

They'd walk to get to school

miles through the wind and rain

uphill going there and back again

maybe that's why they tore the mountains down

I was raised in the shadow of those giants of Greek fame

Heads in the desert, plaques bearing their names

Whose sunset gates are closed

on the wretched refuse who wash up on our shores

They swim through burning smog and acid rain

Was it the smokestacks or the semi-trucks that brought us where we are

ass in the gutter, facing to the stars

Will we regain our feet?

Is there mercy in defeat?

Twenty thousand and seven years.

It seems poetic that this is how it ends

betrayed by that which we defend.

As a child or so I'll say

I walked uphill to school both ways

maybe I'll feel better inside

when my kids put me in a home

If I have kids at all.