songwriting

Here at the End of All Things

No, it’s not really the end of anything, other than this very delayed wrap-up post for Song-A-Day 2025. Many of the blog entries were written over the last several weeks. Clearly I lost the energy to keep talking about it while doing it and I’ll say more about that a little later. How Did It Go? It was a solid year. I didn’t reach any new plateaus, nor did I suffer any setbacks or meltdowns. That’s not to say that I wasn’t challenged every day. When I go through the folder for the month, there are several days where I … Continue reading

Me and Hank

After finishing The Gathering, I was directionless. No idea what to do. Also, the week has been getting long and while the dog has been pretty well-behaved and accommodating of my musical endeavors, I’ve been getting tired early. I came up with the basic hook of the song and then decided that that was good enough. It’s time for bed. I was asleep before 11pm, which is a rarity. Even better, Olive let me sleep through the night. Olive is a Berger Picard,2behr-ZHAY … Continue reading

Falling

This was an “inspired-by-sound” song, which is strange since the sound was a piano. During the recent holiday sales frenzies, I picked up a sample library from Spitfire called Heirloom. The default patch is a piano with a fuzzy warm nostalgia to it. A bit out of tune, a bit creaky (a bit too much, actually), but giving all of the vibes of sitting in your childhood home playing the piano. I noodled for a few minutes figuring that I’d probably be scanning through the library to see what else was in there, when I came across the primary chords … Continue reading

Change Your Behavior

Hey, remember when I said that I’d learned that it was normally better to be mercurial and opaque when it comes to lyrics? Not to hit people over the head with the obvious hammer? Yeah. I kind of ignored that for this one. It should be no surprise to anyone who knows me that fall pretty squarely into the libertarian camp when it comes to political leanings. I’m not a purist – I recognize that structure is needed – but I think the government is best that governs least. Actually, I recently found a fantastic quote that captures where I … Continue reading

Theme from a Sitcom You Never Saw

Because I write in a wide variety of styles, I get a lot of “you should do a [$GENRE] song!” Sometimes these are intriguing challenges, and sometimes I have to politely say, “hey, yeah, maybe,” while internally knowing that it will never happen either because I don’t have any clue how to do it, or because I know that the end result probably isn’t going to be as satisfying as the person thinks it will be. This isn’t limited to my friends, though. The Song-A-Day folks will occasionally throw out a song prompt or challenge: Disco Monday; Write in Locrian … Continue reading