On songwriting (cont.)

I make it a point to play through all my songs periodically. (I mean, the songs I’ve written.) Yes, I even have them listed as a checklist in my Notes app to make sure I don’t forget any of them. At this point I have over 20: mostly music-and-lyrics, but a few instrumentals thrown in for good measure.

I worry that if I don’t go over them now and then, I will forget how to play them. I don’t have full chord sheets written out. Just lyrics. I suppose I should write out the chords at some point, and/or shoot videos of how I play and sing them. (I’ve been telling myself for a while to do that. That task remains on another checklist, yet unchecked.)

In any case, ever few weeks I make sure I’ve played through them all just to refresh. And so far it’s worked.

And what I noticed today is that it works, not just as a refresher, but also in the sense that it’s good for my soul to hear my own songs again. To hear my words in my voice accompanied by my music. This gets back to what I said in that previous post about songwriting, about the elements of self-expression and self-discovery. It’s good for me to hear again the songs that served those purposes, and when I hear them again I suppose they serve those purposes all over again.

Even my song about the former president and what was, early on, his favorite morning news program. My song “Fakes & Friends.” Even though that song is, happily, somewhat dated now, it’s still good for me to hear it again, and to be reminded of what I thought at the time and how I found a way to express it. That’s part of the journey that brought me to this moment, and made me who I am now. The fact that that song is tied to a moment that’s past doesn’t mean it’s now a useless song. Last year when I played that song for my music producer friend and raised this very issue—what about the pending dated-ness of political protest songs?—his reply was to say, among other things, I still listen to the protest songs of the 60s and still find them meaningful. And of course he’s not alone.

So that song, along with all my others, I go back and play again and again.

And I get better at playing them as well. Occasionally I even discover new ideas along the way. I seldom change my lyrics, and I don’t tinker with chord patterns much if at all. But there are different ways of playing those chords, and singing those words, and I enjoy experimenting with slight alterations.

So once more, with feeling.

Epilogue…

I have to overcome the temptation to go over a song fast, as if it were just a matter of making sure I remember the chord pattern. For several reasons…

(1) That robs me of the experience (described above) of really hearing the song again. If I just go over the chord pattern at blazing speed, I haven’t really played the song. Not without lyrics and tempo and rhythm.

(2) If I just go over the chord pattern at blazing speed, I haven’t actually played the music of the song. Because tempo and rhythm matter that much. And for that reason, I haven’t achieved the muscle memory refresher I’m hoping for, because tempo and rhythm are both aspects of musical muscle memory. Muscles remember, not only movements, but also pace and patterns and pauses.

(3) Related to that, singing the words along with the guitar playing is also part of the experience that needs to be refreshed, because it’s a mind-and-body, music-and-meaning experience. It’s not just muscle memory, but complete musical memory I’m aiming for. And that requires the lyrics too.

(4) The last time I played an open mic, it seemed it paid off. I mean, all this playing of my own songs over and over at home. I’ve commented before that playing them to myself in the privacy of my own home doesn’t really prepare me for the stage, because on stage you’re suddenly confronted with additional thoughts and factors and stresses that can’t be replicated in private. And to a degree that’s true. But what I’d say here is, it’s also true, that the development of musical memory (both muscle and mind) does make a difference when you’re up there, because you can be just a little more confident that your mind and fingers will make the right moves, so that you have to concentrate on that just a little less. So when the lighting guy starts flashing the colored lights halfway through “Colors in Kansas” you don’t fall apart. Instead you realize and smile and keep it cool and show the audience what it looks like to have…grace under pressure. (“Fletch” reference.)