A Side Project

elloHay orldWay!
Today, I attended a somewhat last-minute-scheduled lesson with Malcolm. However, the song I've been working on with Clio, "It's Not You That I Want", was not the one worked on because she's off in some far-away state or something. Instead, I started recording a song I wrote a while back entitled "But We Don't Talk" (I'm considering leaving out the "But" in the title). I had shown it to Malcolm at a prior date, but we had dismissed it because of its descending A-minor chord progression and piano part. This may not seem like a reason to shun something to an outsider, but if one looks through my compositions, one will surely find numerous instances of this A-minor pattern. It is not my wish to be predictable or repetitive, but I needed something to record for today and I had been toying with the song for quite some time prior to this. As a sort of compromise, I decided to play it on ukulele instead of piano. I thought it lost depth, but Malcolm said it was "plaintive", so I kept it. I certainly hope he's right. In our hour together, we got the uke part down as well as a vocal track. The song also obtained a solo in that time along with a second chorus at the end. I found it much more exciting after that.

I've really had fun in the past few weeks coming to Malcolm's and simply getting stuff done. In the past there's been a lot of writing and brainstorming that goes on in the sessions, but recently it's been a lot more structured. The songs that we're doing are already almost fully developed. This definitely started with Clio and I coming in to do "It's Not You", as we had already written and performed it. Even with "But We Don't Talk" I made a demo on garageband so I know what I want it to sound like (although the demo was piano-based.)

On a completely different topic, I'm starting to think this blog would be more fun to read if it had pictures. I mean, we all know that picture books are far superior to those stuffy chapter books. The same seems like it would apply to blogs. I'll bring a camera to the next session if I remember. Gosh, I could also make videos of songs. That would be intense. The cool thing is that I have so much free time (I'm far to lazy to get a job) that I can probably do that.

Summer has definitely set in. All productivity is lost. I find myself going to bed way too late, watching lame movies, and swimming obsessively. I should start getting to bed earlier...

...he typed at 1:00 am.

Ah, well. Such is life.

Happy (somewhat late) solstice!