Song clumps

[figmo]

When the muse hits, I wish it'd hit more thoroughly. I've got about half a dozen song fragments going through my head right now. The problem is they're all from different songs.

Some folks write music first; others write lyrics first. I tend to have everything come into my head at once. The "gotcha" is I tend to get segments of songs. There was a time when I'd have whole songs pour out at once. When they did this it seemed like they were pouring out in rapid succession. Eli Goldberg once told me Kanef thought I'd written all new songs for a concert. I hadn't for that one, but I've done concerts that were all new material (or at least were written within the past year).

Unfortunately, in the last few years the songs haven't been flowing as rapidly. I don't know whether Fuzzball's death sucked life out of me or what, but I haven't been quite right since she started going downhill. I've been perking up a bit with Lady, though.

We're starting to bond, though, and it's a weird kind of bonding. This past week I could tell when my fever was up by looking at the dog. When it was up, she'd start panting. My eustachian tubes are blocked, and she has "responded" to this by trying to suck my ears. Weird puppy.

The creativity is coming back. Two song clumps came into my head in the last 24 hours -- make that three (a third just started going through the back of my head as I was typing those last words). I write them down and then come back to them. Sometimes I decide the song clumps aren't worth using, like when the music and lyrics don't fit each other (and not in a funny kind of "don't fit" way). Other times I'll hear the tune with a different set of lyrics, or hear the lyrics with a different tune. Either way, I hear clumps rather than one or the other.

I now get to wait till more clumps of the existing songs come into my head so I can finish them.

Comments

If it's any help ...

[the-magician.livejournal.com]

Zander Nyrond I believe gets exactly the same sort of clumps and has notebooks full of song fragments ... and personally I used to have tons of bits of lyrics and *something* happened (and I have an idea what, but let's just say it was the end of a relationship without going into more detail) and I basically have written almost no lyrics since (I do have a song that I just made up as I went along that Zander helped me tidy and then wrote a second set of lyrics (as in Simon & Garfunkels Scarborough Fair Canticle) and that's quite nice but not BFKAJPF ready (yet? ever?) And I have a clump that is (at the moment) vaguely similar to Yellow Submarine against a tune on the bouzouki, which will be nice if it ever turns from a clump)

That's why I enjoy writing with other people, I present my clumps, they play around with them, work out middle eights etc. and turn them into songs. That's why five out of the last six songs in the BFKAJPF set at HarmUni2 were songs I co-wrote with other band members.

Inspiration is a bit like rain, sometimes it buckets down, sometimes you get drizzled on, sometimes it comes in bursts and sometimes you can go a while without ...