I’m Fine Going Solo (a sort of anti-valentine)

This is a live take of a song that is sort of my “I’m single, and I’m fine with that, thank you very much.” It’s also about being able to love yourself – as RuPaul puts it, “if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?”. Yeah, I’m totally watching Drag Race in my downtime. Addictive isn’t even the word for it.

I’m also testing out a new webcam and a different sound set up for demoing songs at home. It’s basically the sound set up I used for Google+ hangouts, but the difference is that the Hangouts don’t like my firewire connection from my desk, but my recording software does. So, although it’s more of a headache to set up than just plugging in my little MBox for recording, it does give me stereo piano and a main vocal all in one take, which is how I like to demo newer songs.

So, yesterday, I ended up doing demos of three of the newer songs that hadn’t made it to being demoed yet. It was quite a productive day really.

Lyrics:

Today Amanda asked me a question, she asked my why I am still single,
I said that she knows full well, and she can’t marry me off to someone,
Just so that she can feel now I’ll be happy.

I’m an idealist – ideally flawed is the kind of a guy that I fall for.
I’ll know he’s not perfect but I fall for those imperfections.
They make us unique and that’s how we can define our own beauty,

So don’t fix your nose, and don’t pin your ears, and flaming red hair sure is pretty,
You’re not too short, your hands don’t look weird, and your eyebrows don’t need dyeing,
The lines on your face tell me you’re not a drone, and the grey in your hair is damn sexy,

I saw a photo online of a man who had rescued a puppy from drowning, shivering cold, and soaked to the bone, he wasn’t that handsome, but he was still perfect, actions speak louder, and that’s what’s important, as it’s the person inside that you fall for,

Two isn’t better than one unless it’s two sides of the same coin.
I’ll find my hearts when I flip heads from tails and the coin just keeps spinning,
perfectly balanced, an evenly matched equal pairing.

Now I’m in my thirties and I’m happy sometimes and I don’t give away love that easy,
It takes some time before I’ll even be friends but of course I’ll still meet you for coffee,
Where it gets tricky is I don’t need many more people in my closest circles,

I’m quite protective, and I take less chances, but that’s something I’m slowly changing.
So let’s take some chances, and fuck having coffee, we can have some for breakfast,
But don’t think that breakfast means anything more than I like you enough to stay over,

If you don’t fix your nose, and don’t pin your ears, and flaming red hair sure is pretty,
You’re not too short, your hands don’t look weird, and your eyebrows don’t need dyeing,
The lines on your face tell me you’re not a drone, and the grey in your hair is damn sexy,

I don’t know when I’ll meet a guy who is someone that I’d want to marry,
but I won’t rush into things, headstrong and blinded, just so I can close on that chapter,
I’m perfectly happy when I’m all alone, although sometimes I still feel lonely,

But happiness is something you share, not something you marry.

So for now I’ll go solo,
and I’ll eat by myself,
and go to see shows,
and travel alone,
and not lose the duvet,
and hang with my friends,
and visit my family,
and look after the cat,
and keep writing songs,
and that sounds like a good way of living.

Yes I’m fine going solo – I’m fine.

That said, I’m open to offers…

Songwriting and sunny days

I’ve been quite lucky recently, as it’s been wet on the days I’ve been working, and sunny out the days I’ve had to myself at home. Earlier this week I had one of those perfect days where I had the house and garden to myself (except for the cat), and spent the day going from the piano to the garden, working on two of the newest songs I’ve been writing.

Honestly, there’s not much more enjoyable than spending a day like that. It was perfectly sunny, but not too warm, and my voice was in good shape. I’ve been noticing a progression in the sound and even the style of the songs I’ve been writing more recently, and there’s a noticeable difference between the newest songs and the other songs from the batch I wrote for Wires. There’s enough left over from that album to be nearly a full album themselves, but now I’ve written nearly as many as that again since then. I guess I need to sit with these songs a little while, and finish some of them off, and see others take shape a bit more and find the sound that they need.

I’ve tried out some of the newer songs live already this summer, and it’s always that moment when you really look at the song and start to see what you really think of it. With one of the songs I was working on this week, I had that panic moment where I worried that I was just re-writing someone else’s song with different words, that I was unconsciously ripping off a melody from somewhere else. That happens and always threatens to kill the song while you’re still writing it. Usually I just ignore it, and keep working on the song and see where it leads and how it ends up. This time I went and listened to the song that I thought I was unconsciously ripping off, and felt the relief when I saw just how different the two works are.

I’ve another song sitting waiting to be written at the moment. There’s a little glimmer of an idea about it that I like, but the rest is sitting waiting as I’m not entirely happy with what I’ve got so far. It’ll sit in the back of my mind while I work on other things, and we’ll see how it works out.

Incidentally, one of the newest songs is possibly one of the most “pop song” like songs I’ve ever written. But I really like it.

I need a drummer.

Inspiration: Sarah Slean

Sarah Slean is a musician I’d heard friends talking about online a lot before I finally checked her music out. I think one of those friends may have given me a copy of two of her albums to start me on my path of discovery, but they were certainly right in their guess that her music would be right up my street. Piano? Check. Classical background? Check. Musical theatre influence? Check. Literate, clever, witty, and wry? Check.

Although Lucky Me was the song that grabbed me and pulled me in, it was the album Night Bugs that I took hold of and fell for utterly. Before long two of her songs started appearing as covers in my sets – the wonderful Sweet Ones, and the more dramatic The Score.

The latter was one of the songs that I did with the girl group trio I played with for a while. Their three part harmonies in that song really were something else, and playing around with harmonies with those singers was one of the big influences on the vocal layering on my debut record. We

Her most recent album, Land & Sea, is an absolute treat – particularly the second disc, which centers around voice, piano and strings, which is one of my favourite combinations of instruments. Despite the fact that it was her more pop leaning songs that I initally was drawn in by, it’s this disc that I find myself turning to.

I mean, check out this live performance of “Napoleon” performed with a string ensemble.

The album was finished off in a hut in Newfoundland, which features in the video for the song The Devil And The Dove:

It was here, in a little shack by the sea with a grand piano, a bed, a table, chair and kettle (little else), Sarah completed composing the songs and four orchestral scores for this incredible collection. “…one of the most inspiring places on Earth…. It’s impossible to be distracted from the powerful presence of Life itself here – the rugged land, the ever-changing weather, the magnificent, powerful ocean…it’s a place to ponder the vast expanse of time before and beyond us, to ponder the wondrous marvel of being.”

One of the songs from that latest record is one of those little inspiration touchstones you turn to at times. I’m always a music first, lyrics later, kinda listener when it comes to songs, and indeed sometimes it’ll be months before I realise exactly what the words of a song I love actually are. However, with The Right Words, it was the words that grabbed me along with that beautiful vocal melody in the chorus.

“throw your heart into the ocean, throw your heart into the sea
you will find that all the right words
will come out naturally”

Studio Days: week 5

Last week I had the pleasure of having two talented guys in playing on some tracks for my record. Aongus from Henrietta Game came in do some cello work, and Karl from The Young Folk was in on drums. It was a bit nerve-wracking for me initially, as it’s the first time I’ve had other people playing on my songs, aside from some friends singing with me or whatever.

I also don’t speak drums very well, and found it much harder to have a clear sense of what I wanted from the drummer. As opposed to the cellist, who I could deal with in terms of notes, pitches, and melodies, and felt way more at home with. Drumming is all about rhythms and textures or timbres – the different qualities of sounds used to create the rhythms and atmospheres. It really was a learning experience for me – the limit of my experience with drums was when I played with a rock band briefly in the UK as a session pianist, and then when Sweeney Lee had a drummer in her live band which I was the pianist for. It was always other people’s material, and never my own. But it was great to have the help of the engineer who was able to be a sort of translator between the two of us, and Karl brought some brilliant ideas and suggestions for songs I’d not even thought of having drums on.

When it came to the cello day, I had clear ideas of what I wanted him to play for some of the songs, and then just vague ideas of what I wanted and where I wanted them for other songs, so it was a mix of me quite explicitly telling Aongus what to plan and when, and giving him free rein to come up with a part for other sections. But even so, if there was something I liked better than another idea, or if he needed chord charts, that was all a musical language I was familiar with – notes, chords, keys – and I could express what I was looking for far easier.

Heading back in for the last few days of tracking tomorrow. There’s a bass player coming in, along with Meadhbh who is adding some beautiful vocals for me. The :fund:it backing singers are in too, to add their parts into the mix, and then we should be finished tracking the record at that stage. I’ll update after the next session, and I’ll definitely know where I stand at that point, but I can start to see the finished project coming together at the moment, and it’s quite exciting to see things taking shape.

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