Tag Archives: songwriting

My first songwriting notebook.

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I found it the other day when shuffling through a box in the garage and it was filled with good words and bad words and good ideas and bad ideas and scrap papers of anything I had near me when the muse struck but I was without this book. I scratched out notes on receipts and stickies and whatever, and then shoved them into this book.

It opened like a time capsule–dusty and delicate. And it felt familiar like the last stretch of dirt road before turning towards the house I grew up in. It felt reflective and nostalgic like watching an old home movie. It felt like me.

And, just like a time capsule, it held messages from long ago. And it told me things about my future that I’d forgotten.  And I’m not sure what I will do with these pages, but I want to do something monumental with them. I want to celebrate what they represent. And treasure it in ways more prominent and honorable than just a dusty box in our first garage.

I want to turn them into the works of art I’d always intended them to be.

Any suggestions for what I can do?

The Killing Ground (new song) (been too long) (hey that rhymes)

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I’m noticing a pattern. These faith songs usually end up a bit dark and lamenting. This one, though dark, pulls up.

In listening to this demo (of my own voice, which is always an odd experience), I’ve gathered a few notes of things I wanna change. But what I really wanna know is what you think:

1) what does this song say?
2) what lines/concepts could be more clear? 

So, if you have a second, listen to the demo–and/or read through the lyrics. And please look past the lack of punctuation, because I don’t use it because I don’t sing commas and periods and that colon that should probably follow the third line.

life leaves no survivors
hiding every eye to
the more beyond unopened doors
no suffocating sadness
no graying day of cynics
and they will see if we will fight

bring the bread and bring the wine
bring the sword and bring the sign
for the lost that will be found
we’ll march on the killing ground
we’ll march on the killing ground

for every hallelujah
waiting to be whispered
for every soul escaping more
we will fight until forgiven
with songs of our redemption
with shouts of light into the night

raise your eyes to paradise
there’s no time to compromise
when redemption bells resound
we will take the killing ground
we will take the killing ground

and all we know is all we’ve lived
and this is all we have to give
bring it there to bring them home
this life through death is all we know

breathe new life in every soul
turn the broken into whole
tear it up and tear it down
wiping clean the killing ground
wiping clean the killing ground
wiping clean the killing ground

There’s a Pavlovian dog inside me. And I’m going to find him, train him, and name him “Muse.”

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So I’ve spent the first three months of the year spending a pretty consistent amount of time on the elliptical. Finally. The secret? Watching Alias while swishing. The forty-five minutes fly by.

And then I got all into Alias and then I broke my rule and watched an occasional episode while *not* on the elliptical and, like magic, my mind and body go into “let’s get moving” mode (you know, like when you’ve had one-too-many cups of coffee).

Interesting…. I think the thing that’s happening in my brain is kinda like Pavlov’s salivating dog (I. Hate. Saliva.) experiment, except with more agreeable results. It’s a trigger.

Ooohhh! I can use this to make our brains get all creative! I need a trigger. A set of steps.

Right around the time I was thinking about how to trigger myself (that sounds awful), an article came out about the creative’s routine–their mundane morning routine that gets them in gear. This is some of what the 99 percent had to say:

The different elements of the routine become associated with this creative state of mind, so that they can re-enter it by simply repeating the steps of the routine.

So I decided I’d go for it, and I’d start using this method before any intense time of creativity. I needed something that’d take about 15 minutes. Get me away from technology. And still my mind.

I talked to Drew about it, put a routine together, and the results? Well. They were sparkling. They were mesmerizing. They were sedately explosive.

They were, to say the least, fruitful…