Tag: music

I write in cafés

 This post on Edible Geography struck a chord with me. I’m definitely one of those people who sits in cafés for hours working.

Usually though, people can see what I’m doing, as I’m rarely on a laptop anymore since the death of my Powerbook G4, and I’m usually switching between a notebook (yes, actual paper one), manuscript paper (yes, more actual paper you use for writing music), and my phone (for my twitter addiction).

For example, I took this shot of my “workspace” last month while sitting in Kelly’s Bar & Restaurant, which is one of my favourite places to do some work:

Scoring an arrangement for NUIG's ChoralSoc

I love working while in cafés and actually prefer it to working at my desk at home. I’m more productive and more focused when I’m working in a café and get a lot more work done in that kind of environment than I do pretty much anywhere else.

It’s always been that way – throughout uni, I’d get my composition assignments written in the canteen, the students union bar, or any of my favourite cafés in town. The noise and the bustle meant I had to focus on whatever work I was doing. I had to really concentrate to get the work done. That kind of atmosphere works for me. True, I may have also been using the lunch hour before the assignment was due to both eat and get the work done at the same time, but a bit of last minute pressure always helps. ;)

These days, I sit and write out arrangements for songs of mine, or for various different work that I do with choirs, or singing classes. I work on lyrics for my own songs, or write other things like this that make me happy.

I do get some strange looks sometimes, if I’m sitting with a full score out on the table while I have lunch or coffee, quietly working away writing down notes. And it’s certainly not as handy as using MuseScore (a free, open source Sibelius-like software) on my iMac at home, but it’s a bit more comfortable for me and I don’t make as good coffee as those cafés do.

Videos uploaded

Added some videos to my youtube page over the last few days. Nothing that you won’t have heard already on my soundcloud page, or via this website, but some people prefer youtube, so I’m starting to use my account there a bit more.

youtube playlist with a number of my songs and performances

My First True Love (demo)

This song was written at the same time as Helen (don’t make a sound) back in 2007 sometime. Both songs were inspired by novels I’d read or recently read at the time. I’ve noted previously that I tend to work on songs in batches of two or three at the same time. Sometimes an idea splits in three, sometimes I’ve loads of little ideas that start to link together resulting in some different songs. With this one, I was working with a really basic straight-forward chord progression, and I was trying to write something that was musically quite simple and direct. Perhaps because the other song I was working on at the same time was the opposite of that.

I’ve never been so sure of this song, but I like some parts of it. I guess I’ve been playing it so long that I’m just used to it. One of my old housemates surprised me one day by saying it was her favourite of my songs. I think I have a music-snob idea that because it’s simple it’s not as good as some of the more musically complex songs. I’ve managed to completely over complicate the piano line as a result though, and I definitely fuck it up in this demo. I’d go fix it up before posting it, but my piano has been out on loan all weekend, and when it comes back I’m gonna finish off the new demo I start for “is this what they call romance?” instead.

my first true love [demo]
my first true love [demo] by misterebby

(lyrics after the jump)
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Helen (don’t make a sound) demo

I wrote this way back when I was sharing a house with Anna and playing piano with her a lot in gigs and the like. At the time I was focusing more on other people’s music than on my own, but the house was a very music filled house, which was inspiring. I was working on music arrangements for a musical at the time too, which had me working on 4, 5 and 6 part vocal harmonies. We were also practising regularly, as well as just messing about with musical experiments. We were a tv-less house too, and evenings that weren’t musical evenings, were often spent reading, listening to music, drinking tea and or off out in one of the local pubs having a pint or three.

It was during this period that I really started back writing my own songs again after a few sporadic bursts of songwriting. There’s a cliché that heartbreak is what inspires songwriting, but for me, it was being in a relationship that gave me the inspiration to start writing again.

At one point, I got hooked on waltzes, and kept showing people how everything can be turned into a waltz, and it’s instantly cheese-tastic. We turned a regular cover that we used to perform, into a waltz half way through the song, just to play around with it. In the midst of this, I ended up writing two songs that were waltzes. Musically, this song draws inspiration from two specific songs that I reference musically in a quite vague sort of way. It doesn’t really matter what those two songs are, as the musical allusions are something that I’ll get but not many other people would even notice. Even if I pointed out the songs, you’d more than likely go “huh?” than anything else, as it’s filtered through my own musical language. I know what I’m referring to, but it might not make sense to you.

Anyways, lyrically, it was inspired by a book I read that was recommended to me by a friend online. I was a bit wary initially, but I got completely hooked on it, and it’s probably one of my favourite reading experiences of the last few years, as I got completely wrapped up in this book and somehow related so much to one of the characters that I ended up writing this song and borrowing that character for my own story inspired by that novel.

Musically, the two different sections came quite naturally from each other, but are quite unrelated. I liked the chromatic bass movement in the verses, and that was something I deliberately set out to achieve. The other section has a chord progression that is sorta similar to something else, but I wanted the chromatic bass movement to be the musical link between the two sections. I also decided that although the sections were in different keys, that I wouldn’t try and modulate neatly between them, but rather have an abrupt change to reflect the different states of mind and change in the song lyrically.

When I perform this song live in intimate venues, I try to get the audience to do the backing vocal lines in the “chorus” as whispers while I sing and play over it. I’m a fan of audience participation, and it’s something that makes me very happy when it works. Generally, it has worked better than expected, and audiences seem quite willing to humour a silly piano playing songwriter in his silly little whims. But it keeps me entertained, and that’s a good thing.

The demo is just that – a demo. I tried a few times to demo this song, and just kept fucking it up, to be honest. And while I certainly don’t ace the song in this recording either, it’s at least close enough to be a half decent reflection of what the song is supposed to be like. Just without the strings that I’ve written in my head, or the female vocal parts that I’ve used in live performances a few times, or really, anything other than just the piano line and my own vocals.
Helen (don’t make a sound) [demo] by misterebby

(photos are hosted on my flickr page)

The Comfort Of The Keys

I’m not sure what I think of this song. It’s really in a style that is far more straight-forward than what I usually write. It’s odd, there’s little things about it that completely put me off the song, but other parts of it that really endear it to me. In essence, it’s a love song to my piano, but the piano part is clichéd and simplistic and really straightforward. Which makes no sense. I think I’ll have to rewrite the piano line completely now that the rest of the song has slotted into place in my head.

The song itself grew from a two line little snippet that I wrote down somewhere and kept with my little scrap pages of lyric fragments. I intended on slotting it into a different song, but one day it just grew and became its own song. I’m fond of it, and I think it’s cute, but it’s oddly out of place when put next to some of the other songs. However, the other two it has been hanging around with, in terms of being written around the same time, are also more simplistic than what I usually write. I’m sure I’ll manage to overcook and overcomplicate them in time, but I’m just gonna go with it for now and see how the songs come out. They definitely have a shape that emerges quite naturally as I work on them, and I tend to ignore the ones that need a beat/percussion/production led development in place of the songs I can go ahead and give shape to on the piano.

This song also has a chord progression that I myself don’t actually like, yet each verse opens with it. I just find it too clichéd and over used, and yet there I am using the very same progression. Even structurally it’s really straightforward. Oh well. It’s definitely a song that is probably completely out of step with music that is being written and released these days, and feels very 70’s piano ballad in some ways to me. But, I’ve kinda come to terms with it, and I do like it for what it is.

Oh, and this one is really a very rough demo, I dunno what’s going on with my rolled tongue on “added it to…” – you’ll hear what I mean. And somehow the piano sounds more muffled than on other demos using the same settings. I think I was forgetting to actually use the pedal. See? crappy piano line in a song that’s written for my piano. And the levels are a bit shaky, and I think I even got a line or two completely wrong. But I’ll do a better retake of it soon.

the comfort of the keys (demo) by misterebby

(lyrics after the jump)

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