A Song A Day For A Year

‘Write ten songs, then throw nine away, cos for every nine yellow submarines, there’s one penny lane” - Bob Dylan

For the last ten years, songwriting has been a big part of my life. It has helped me to make many friends along the way, awarding me also the confidence and self esteem gained through live performance. Now as I head towards twenty I look back on my teenage years and past compositions, wondering where I shall venture next.My thoughts were answered in the arrival of professional songwriter Jason Kaye.

Jason led a music session as part of my Creativity module (to those who don’t know I’m a Creative Writing student), which was geared towards inspiring writing through music. I luckily got to perform an original of mine called ‘The Hard Sell’, the first song I wrote at uni. Impressed by my performance me and Jason talked about songwriting and our experiences of performing.

At this point Jason took me aback when he mentioned that it was his job, to write thirty songs a month. Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, an idea struck. ‘I could do that’ I said to myself, and slowly but surely, my plan for the year ahead began to unravel in my head.

I decided I would write a song every day of 2011, gathering ideas from friends, family and beyond for the songs and collating them on an online diary viewable by all. Then on 1st January 2012, I will present my creations in an as-of-yet undecided format. My friends think I’m crazy, my family thinks I’m crazy, I think I’m crazy.

But I’m gonna do it.

And so it begins…

Day 1

So New Years day came around with a big old hangover and a year of work ahead. My first song was to be about a fresh start, new years and all that jazz. The state I was in at the time (I was somewhere in space…) gave me a certain frailty which added to the gentleness of the song. I thought a good starting point for these songs was to utilize the images and sounds the ideas gave me at first glance. ‘New’ slipped straight out of me, maybe being hungover and writing songs is a good idea?

Day 2

High off of the ease that was behind writing the first song, I dived in - somewhat naively - to track two. This was a song from my friend Sam who I met at Uni, who wanted a song about ‘staying in bed all day’. Feeling more energetic than the day before, this song has a bit of a bounce.

Unlike the previous track ‘Lazy’ as I began calling it was a bit edgier and so more time went into crafting the ship. Still needs some more work, but is a good little nod to grunge and apathy.

Day 3

First monday of the new year and it was a busy one. I spent the day out with the theatre company I used to be a part of (Peer Productions), so it would be a late start to songwriting (yupp, six is late for me).

‘I’m Hangin’ is a slow blues track which I’ve become quite fond of writing as of recent. This was Leanne’s song and I think part of the blues inspired feel comes from our shared love of Albany Down (Leanne’s boyfriend/mate of mine’s band).

After the struggle on Tuesday I reverted back to something I was a little more comfortable writing, in order to keep morale up and to see how I fared using a familiar format but an unfamiliar song topic.

It’s about hangman.

Day 4

There’s nothing like a bit of banjo, eh?

I was craving the outside world and so headed over to Rosie’s with Tom for a lil jam session (bassist of my band, Rosie is his girlfriend). Once we arrived I burdened him with the fact that the jam session had been a ploy, we now had to write a song about jelly, there was no escape. Nevertheless the banjo wielding mofo got strumming away and the guitar vs banjo jelly-athon began.

Jelly turned out to be a lot of fun! We may have got sidetracked on the way (played two different songs between writing the bridge and outro) but we still got it done; if anything our lack of discipline made the song more carefree! Jelly features a banjo solo and a cheeky little harmony to boot, check it out at the nearest alternative country barn dance near you, yokel!

Day 5

‘Sub-jew’d’. What does that mean? Well obviously Miss Siobhan Wallis knew what it was when she asked me to write this little ditty for her a few days before. So was born a hefty half hour of looking up the term to no avail and no music ideas sprung to mind. Luckily, I had Facebook turned on and we all know the good old social networking site can be both a blessing and a burden at times.

Today, it was a blessing, in the form of a Scott Pilgrim fan page.

Yes Scott Pilgrim came to the rescue (if you haven’t seen the film, you really should). It reminded me of the distorted bass and fuzz-fuckified acoustic guitar of Michael Cera’s garage band Sex Bob-Omb in the film. There it was, riff, idea, paper pad, lets go!

Following on from the country jig that was my Tuesday is the Sex Bob-Omb flavoured ‘Sub-jew’d’ a song about a fictional hunter that’s failed in his mission to find the ‘girl with the cheap umbrella, swinging her heart like a pink antenna’. Definitely one I’d like to play with the band and something I will play Michael Cera, when we meet, one day… *looks to the sky fondly*

DAY 6!

Well so far so good, now, an ode to the American students for Mr Ed Dulwich (non-American). It had been a wild couple of days experimenting with different styles, I was beginning to get a feel for the challenge, but there was no point getting cocky. Time to bring it back to basics with a lone acoustic guitar: Ballad Time.

Not a great deal to say about this one. It would’ve been a nice track to end the week on but there was still one left. I still had to write about a rubber seeking attention.

Day 7

Finally I have reached the end of my first week of ‘the songwriting challenge’ (not that there really is an end to this twisted game). Today I wrote a song about a guy who wants to erase the girl he really likes with a rubber, however finding her pencil case wishes to be her pencil so that he can be closer to her thoughts.

Interesting right? Turns out all the positive energy I had the day before in writing ‘Home Away Ode’ was gone and instead there was a bit of fury. This blues rock track doesn’t rest in its verbal assault, closer to the kind of stuff I write in my band and probably a sign that I should finish writing the lyrics for my bands new show, it was a bit of a surprise when it came out but there you go!

So there it is, first week done. I’ll be updating the blog every seven days with updates in camp singsong, so venture back with us if you didn’t lose an arm along the way, there are more tales be told! Thanks for reading :)

Sco