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| This month I've decided
that this column is going to be devoted to blowing my own trumpet. For quite a while now I've been engaged in a new creative pursuit - writing and recording songs. Its something that modern technology and the internet lends itself to for us amateurs. I started with an ancient microphone designed to be used for skyping and the like. I used a free bit of software called Audacity which allowed me to record multiple tracks - this is vital because I can't sing and play at the same time! I'd made up a couple of tunes and this allowed me to 'put them down' and see if I could add words to them. About a year down the line I got myself an audio interface and a condenser mike. I also got a free bit of software which is more sophisticated than Audacity. This opened up things massively for me and I'd soon put my very first song 'The Fear' on Soundcloud. I told a couple of trusted individuals about it and I got some encouragement. Then I pretty much hit a brick wall. I don't know why but I just couldn't get inspired to record anything else. I needed something to spur me on. So at the tail end of December 2014 I decided I was going to record a new song every month in 2015 and stick them up on Soundcloud. And now in December 2015 it looks like I've managed it. (I also planned to do a Yorkshire Windbag column every month but in September and October I failed on that score!). I have to say thank you to all the people who've encouraged me over the year. Four people in particular played a big part and I'd like to name check them (so you know who to blame). Firstly Adrian Bates is a friend and singer songwriter who has given me encouragement and also insight as to how its all done. Check out some of his work here. My nephew George Senior is another songwriter who's given me the benefit of his knowledge. He's also studying recording at uni and has given me a lot of advice in that field. In a more hands on capacity Harry Rhodes has played a major role. He not only taught me to play guitar but his advice on many subjects from piano playing to recording techniques has proven invaluable. Last but not least of course Mrs Windbag who, as well as generally supporting and encouraging me, bought me my first guitar and guitar lessons. For the curious/tone deaf amongst you my soundcloud can be found here. **
Here's a quick guide to my year in songs. January I started with the song that was most current in my mind (at that time) - 'Pleasure vs Regret'. I had an idea to write something on the subject of adultery. The main inspiration was a letter in the Daily Mirror Problem Page about a bloke who cheated on his wife; got kicked out and ended up living with the other woman. I was originally going to call the song 'The Seventh Commandment' (as in 'thou shalt not commit adultery') but it turns out that not all versions of the bible have that particular sin as the seventh commandment. So I was really floundering for a title. I'm not that happy with the new title but it is what it is. The spoken bit in the middle was very much improvised. Originally that bit was just going to be instrumental but I decided to put something in there, as I was recording, and the words are pretty much as they came out of my mouth. I did fluff a line the first time and actually changed a couple of lines before re-recording. The percussive sound on the guitar that begins the song and recurs throughout. This is called muting. The reason I did it was because there was a difficult chord change involving what's known as a barre chord. The mute was my attempt to cover up the messy change. And finally I have to mention the happy accident. I was playing the song and I went to the wrong chord on the chorus. I quickly corrected myself. I liked the sound so much that I made the 'mistake' part of the song. To hear the song click here. February I already had a song called February. It would have been a bit weird to have recorded & released it in August. This is where it all started really. I had two tunes (the other became 'The Fear') and I decided to try and write some words for them. The original idea was to do a concept with every song related to a month of the year. The Fear was originally about the most horrendous hangover I ever had (on 1st January). The most momentous thing that ever happened to me in February was that I met my wife. So that's what this is about. In the end this was the first song I ever recorded (I got a bit stuck doing 'the Fear'). This was about 3 years ago and through a stroke of luck I finished recording (the original version) on February 13th. Mrs Windbag was working a night so I burned it onto a CD; made a quick cover; and left it on her pillow. Hey presto instant cheapskate Valentine present! This version is a bit slower than my 'Valentine' version. Rather than playing the entire guitar part in one take (like I did with 'Pleasure and Regret') I just recorded a few bars. I then copied and pasted it. The process becomes a little like putting a jigsaw together. The advantage of this is that its much easier to play a short section without major mistakes. The disadvantages include the fact that it can sound a bit odd when you put the bits together; and the fact it can sound a bit boring. To enable me to do the above I needed to play the song to a strict tempo which I find very difficult. I used something called a click track which was just basically a beep that I had to keep in time with. Trickier than it sounds. I added a couple of parts - one on electric guitar and one on a keyboard (meant to sound like a violin). I decided that they didn't go together but couldn't decide which to use so put two versions up instead. To hear the song click here or here. March 'Demon Drink' was one of a group of songs that I think of as my 'second batch' of songs. I'm a bit ambivalent about this bunch. They are a bit more forced than the first couple that seemed to just come out of the air (at least the tunes did). I had watched a guy called Harry George Johns play a song where he used a 'G chord shape' up and down his guitar neck. So I did something similar and came up with something that sounded a bit sinister. Lyrically I think the song title tells you all you need to know. The first verse really describes my early relationship with booze. The third verse could be almost any hangover I've ever had. The fourth verse is based on a real event when I was sitting waiting in the doctor's surgery. A local alcoholic who was pretty infamous in Wakefield turned up and caused a mild disturbance. The second verse was added late on to describe that kind of freedom you feel you get from booze when you are young. My aim was to describe different events happening to different people but with a progression. I was aiming for a kind of narrative similar to Dylan's 'Tangled up in Blue'. Of course you could just interpret it as 4 stages in one person's journey into drunken oblivion. I always like the idea that the same song can mean different thing to different people. Once again I used a click track and I think the tempo is a little too slow again. I also tried to vary the guitar sounds from verse to verse and it does sound a bit disjointed as a result. On the positive side I used a couple of keyboard sounds (1st and 4th verse) that add a bit of atmosphere. I also enjoyed doing the noisy guitar bit right at the end. To hear the song click here. April 'Dying in Slow motion' is another song from my 'difficult' second batch. I wrote this song on guitar. But when I came to record it I didn't like the guitar part I was playing. I decided to experiment a bit. I found a feature that allowed me to 'program' the song using something called Midi. There are a number of ways of using Midi but in this case I simply had to literally type in the chord names. I could then assign an instrument. Hey presto I had myself a piano ballad. I used the same feature to add organ at the end of the song. I actually also did a kind of 'dance' version of this song. Mrs Windbag isn't keen on it - but you never know it might see the light of day at some stage. I did add some guitar playing (based on a suggestion from Harry Rhodes - although my execution wasn't as sophisticated as his original suggestion). The lyrics are kind of personal so I'll leave them to your own interpretation. The title/chorus line came first and the first verse pretty much flowed out without any conscious effort. One thing I hope you've noticed is that I make no attempt to rhyme my lyrics. There are two reasons. Pragmatically its difficult and I just don't have the time. More ideologically I'd rather have the words I want than the wrong words just because they rhyme. Don't get me wrong I like good rhymes - "There's these 2 bouncers, one of 'em's alright, one of em's a scary un'. His way or no way, totalitarian" - is absolute genius for example. Its just that it isn't for me. Never say never though. I think the best creativity comes from challenging yourself. To hear the song click here. May Originally the plan was to record the song that became June's song. I failed and so instead I used my 'back pocket' song. This came to me nearly a year earlier. I was just messing about on my guitar whilst Mrs Windbag dried her hair. One set of chords played in a 'bass/strum' style sounded good to me. Later that day I slipped upstairs and recorded the music. I already had an idea for the words. Got a pen and wrote a verse and chorus just like that and sang them (quietly because I was self conscious about singing with her indoors in the house in those days) into the mike. The idea was that this was just a start to be filled out later. The more I thought about it the more I realised that the song was complete. Just a short story about a girl I had a crush on when I was about 14 or 15. Furthermore I decided that I wanted to do a series of these songs. Each one describing another failed episode in my 'so called' love life. A bit like the Waterboys' 'A Bang on the Ear' in reverse. Each one with the same tune but played in a different style. Sufjan Steven's released a number of different versions of 'Chicago' - so that was another inspiration. There's also a series of short 'postcards' on a Richmond Fontaine album which are a similar idea. By the way - I mention that the girl, in question, was a horse rustler. This is based on a story I heard that she'd seen a horse in a field and taken it home. She was pretty wild but I like to think she had a good heart! To hear the song click here. June In late April my sister in law Ali gave birth to twins. On the Sunday we went to visit them in hospital. I woke on the morning, of the visit, with a line on my lips 'Breath in, Breath out'. From this came one of my more optimistic song ideas. 'Living is Easy' is just pretty much what it says on the tin (the original title I had was 'Just Get on with it' which also had some relevance). Ultimately its a message to myself to be more positive. I had got myself a basic drum machine by this stage. My first attempt in May didn't work. I couldn't play in time to the drum beat. I was a bit more successful second time around. Ultimately though this song is probably the biggest disappointment of the year. It feels a bit like I'm trying to make something without enough material to work with. To be fair this was also my first attempt to write a song starting with a vocal rather than my normal approach which involves coming up with a tune and then putting a vocal melody over the top. On the positive side there is the bit in the middle where I used more Midi programming to create the 'choir sound' which I really like a lot. I think this is a song that I would like to revisit and see if I could make something of it. Also a confession I think I unconciously nicked the 'Breathe in, Breathe out' line from an unreleased Tiny Dancers song. To hear the song click here. July Another song that started from a vocal line. I'd just arrived at work when the line 'Not written in the Stars' came into my head. I soon had a melody which just kept going round my head. Eventually I recorded it on my phone. Another positive topic for a song. This one is kind of a message to young people (particularly my nephews and nieces) to just get out there and try stuff. Not always listen to the grown ups and their doom and gloom. My original concept (in my head at any rate) was for a Springsteenish epic. Starting with a gentle opening and then leading into something a lot louder and grandiose. One thing I did was to use a drum track as a click track. Its a lot easier to play to rather than a beep. Where I went wrong was to pick a different (and unsuitable) drum track and bass line for the 'epic' bits. Unfortunately I rather liked them. So I rather pig headedly decided to build my song around them. As a result the song sounds like a couple of things stitched together. A Frankenstein's monster of a song. At this point I was feeling the time pressures so decided to stick with what I had. On a positive side all the bits are in the same key and same tempo (everything even the bits without drums were played to the same 'click' drum track). I'm also pretty happy with the lyrical message I'm trying to put across. My spin on it is that it's a bit like a 'song cycle'. Buffalo Springfield have a song called 'Broken Arrow' which has a similar (but rather more technically proficient) approach. Oh yeah and I had set myself a few extra targets one of which was to play harmonica on a song. A couple of youtube videos helped. Was I the only person who didn't know that you play when you breathe in as well as when you breathe out? To hear the song click here. August For August I decided to revisit a third song from my 'difficult second batch'. Initially I'd decided I wasn't going to record '4am'. I thought it was too much of a dirge. However I listened to an earlier version that I'd recorded and it didn't sound as bad as I remembered. Besides I was running low on ideas by this point. This one started with me messing about with my acoustic one Saturday whilst Lizzie was at work. I found a two chord thing that reminded me of Television's 'Carried Away'(you can hear my take on this in the intro). I added extra chords and ended up with a verse and chorus. In my mind it sounded like a droney kind of song like early Waterboys (think 'A Pagan Place') or even War on Drugs. My ambition was to create several musical layers to this song to make it more 'dense'. From quite early on I came up with the idea of a backwards guitar part that would come in at the end of the song and be the last thing playing when everything else faded out. Several months later I was listening to a song by a guy called Mark Mulcahay and discovered that he finished the song with a reverse guitar and I realised where the idea had come from. As usual I played to a drum click track and 'copy and pasted' small sections of rhythm guitar. There is a second 'finger picked' guitar part that I actually played from end to end all in one take - first take! Insomnia was something that was on my mind at the time I first came up with the song because I'd suffered from it intermittently. So that's where the lyric comes from. To hear the song click here. September In September I had a slight case of writer's block. I had pretty much used up my stock of songs by this point. I half heartedly tried to make something of an idea I had for a song called 'Malcolm' but I got really stuck. Maybe I'll do something with it one day. So back to my concept of short songs about my teenage (lack) of love life. And so we have 'Falling for the wrong 'un #2'. Another aim was to use my ukelele sometime during the year - so I killed two birds with this song. The subject was the first girl I ever went on a date with. - back in the sixth form (I was very much a late developer). To hear the song click here. October October was a bit of a concern. I had ideas for my November and December songs but nothing for the current month. We had a day trip to Whitby and even as we were pottering around I was storing away things in my brain. I also had a little riff that I'd made up one day messing about on my acoustic. So the approach was utterly minimalistic with two chords (E minor & G) making up the song. The only nod to sophistication is a F# note kind of joining the chords together (a trick I got from Gary Stewart). I played the riff over the chords instead of having a chorus. I put in a simple drum track and then played a kind of percussive piano bit (just the same two chords basically). The words were like the sort of exercise you'd do at school where you have to come up with a piece to describe your holiday. Inspiration for the seagull bit came from a friend of mine I knew down South, Lindsay Parkin, he once pointed out to me how much the gull's seem to enjoy the gliding and swooping on the thermal currents. I'm quite pleased with the final result - its quite austere. To hear the song click here. November In November I reached the age of 50. I was keen to commemerate the milestone. I had already decided that I'd do a 'spoken word' type piece and that it would be quite light hearted. For the music I was keen to do something completely synthetic with no guitar. Perhaps a bit more dancey. I started with a piano part that was my attempt at something in the style of the intro to LCD Soundsystem's 'All my Friends'. I thought I was playing C and A minor. When I looked closer I was actually playing F and D minor. Still it didn't really make much odds. My keyboard skills weren't really up to playing at the tempo. So I just had a go and then edited it using Midi once again to get the simple piano riff that I could then copy and paste. This was using a piece of software called Ignite that I got with my keyboard (which is a little midi thing - rather than a musical instrument its more of a sophisticated 'mouse'). Within Ignite you can also generate things like bass lines and drum tracks (as used on previous tracks). This time I generated a little two part synth riff. Which is the only other musical theme on this song. I used this riff as the chorus. In fact this song has pretty much the same structure as 'Whitby' if you think about it - a two chord rhythm and a little riff instead of a chorus. The words came pretty easily. I go for a walk at lunchtime at work and I came up with quite a lot of them on these walks. Its obviously not to be taken too seriously. I don't really worry that women are mentally undressing me when I walk down the street! Its more like wishful thinking! To hear the song click here. December I can't remember when I first decided that I was going to do a Christmas song for December. It was certainly fairly early on. It didn't take me long to decide that I wanted it to be pretty grim as well. And 'Mad Friday' seemed to be an appropiate subject. The aim was for the musical equivalent of one of those grim sixties black and white films made by the 'angry young men'. The tune for the verse came to me way back in August or September which was pretty inconvenient. I was in the shower and I was soon annoying Mrs Windbag (even more than normal) by repeatedly humming and singing this little piece of music until I could record it on my phone. Straight away I knew this was for my Christmas song. It wasn't until December that I got round to sitting down with my guitar and trying to work out what chords to use. On my early songs I used to put quite a few chord changes in. My more recent philosophy is to keep it simple because it gives the vocal melody more room (well that's the theory). So in this case I decided I just needed a A chord. I stuck in a F# minor as well but that's more decorative than anything else. Since I seemed to be getting into a two chord rut (even the Ramones use 3) I decided that I needed to be a bit more sophisticated on the chorus so I made it a 4 chord chorus (D add9, F# minor, B minor 7, E 7 - in case you're interested). For once I didn't copy and paste the guitar track. Instead I played it in several parts using the now traditional drum click track. I used my newly acquired Boss pedal board and I like the sound I got on the rhythm guitar part. Learning from previous experience I made sure to select a more appropiate drum track and bass line for this one. The final musical touch was to add a guitar solo (another goal I'd set myself for the year). I got out the notes on pentatonic scales that Harry gave me. In the end its a pretty pathetic solo I gave myself 8 bars but it was one of those slow burning solos rather than one of those twiddly ones that would require faster fingers than I have. This meant I could only fit in a few notes. I like to think of it as a minimalistic solo. The subject was inspired by a trip into Wakefield on Mad Friday a couple of years ago. As I approached the city centre I could hear the cacophony of police sirens and the like. I was going to see some music in the Hop but downstairs it was so crowded I didn't feel like I'd get to the bar without starting a fight. Like most people I don't like the increasing commercialisation of Christmas. But I also don't like the over sentimental side to it all as well. And don't get me started on all the crap Christmas music that is piped into every shop in town (apart from Wah Wah thankfully). Originally the song was going to be more about getting old and changing from one of the young drunks making my annual trip back to the home town from uni or work down south; to a permanent resident of my home town. Somehow the subject of drunken misbehavior took it over. Originally the chorus was going to be a really boring stating the obvious sort of thing about how scary it all was. At some point I was inspired to put something a bit angrier in there. I quite like it but perhaps its a bit preachy? Finally another happy accident. I decided to put a 'backing vocal' on the chorus. The idea was to keep in time with the main vocal but on the last verse I got out of step at the end - but I really like it - it sounds a bit like something off a Jam song. To hear the song click here. |
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