Pro Tools as a compositional tool

I worked on my arrangement of Theatre of Cruelty tonight using Pro Tools. I wanted to feel that step closer to the finished product in composing for this project - being able to hear the arrangements straight after I think of them. So far I have recorded three electric guitar parts and an electric bass part for the intro. My main reaction to what I heard was that it would be better suited to strings. I am going to continue these composing sessions recording in Pro Tools, because I feel like I will benefit a lot from this process, especially seeing as it requires me to actually execute parts written for other instruments on the guitar.

Heaven on Earth

The acoustic metal composed yesterday sounded dark and cold on the electrics at the Tetanus Rig jam this evening. The addition of Sally Wiggins' melodic drums got us fired up to try and write more as a group. What I said about the lack of confidence in material written on electrics wasn't an issue tonight, because all three of us seemed to be taking the sensible creative step of "let's keep moving and edit everything later." When there's a week between jam sessions, there can be a concern about not remembering how to play the stuff we worked so hard to come up with. I don't find this to be such a big deal when composing more regularly though, because I am just as content to be coming up with something else.

I wrote some more for the poem about my grandfather. It has distracted me from my folk song arrangement, but that can wait. I do have to stop myself from editing it as I go, because it is the difference between getting stuck on one line and writing five verses. I wasn't too worried about my clunky verses tonight as I know I can edit them later. I was just concerned that it might be too philosophical and self-indulgent. I decided to stop after 20 mins and put it away until tomorrow.

I was thinking about Christian heaven just before and wondered how well equipped a believer is for what happens before death? I know that Christianity has some worthwhile things to say about living with others on Earth, but that largely gets overshadowed by its answer to the BIG QUESTION. I would like to think that in the end life just slips away one loving memory at a time. That you could catch a whiff of every season and every object of your affection one last time before saying goodnight.

Acoustic metal and songwriting ideas

Songwriter's songwriter Nick Wilson and I had a much needed writing session on the acoustics this afternoon. I felt like we were challenging ourselves with the parts we were coming up with. I am looking forward to testing these out on the electrics at the Tetanus Rig jam tomorrow. The reason we prefer to write the guitar and bass parts acoustically is because it allows us to squeeze more musical arrangement out of a song's lyrics and melodies. Many times we have left a jam on the electrics unsure of the bogan riffs or arpeggiated chords that we have come up with. Anything that compromises the importance of structure or development over repetition will get junked.

Group writing and collaboration can also be a strange mix of the spontaneous and the deliberate. I often say that improvising in a group really exposes a musician's ability and breadth in listening. This is even more true for group composition because there is a higher level of mental engagement required. This is the essence of flow (which I mentioned in the previous post), where an individual's strengths are being used to overcome a challenging task. The sensation of losing track of time is one you often get from being in a state of flow [1]. Our writing session today suprisingly lasted roughly two hours.

Tonight I dedicated my 40 mins composing time to lyrics and it went better than I anticipated. I am trying to write a reflection of my grandfather's life and how much he means to all of his family. For a while I have had a vague idea of the verses describing different stages of life, where they all colour the refrain: "there's always something to leave behind" in different ways. I was happy with the ideas I came up with for two verses tonight, even though I didn't quite nail the word choices or the rhythm. One of the biggest things I've learnt is that it is important to get the ideas down first and then polish them later, rather than getting stuck and labouring over one line before giving up entirely [2].

I mentioned a couple of ideas that I must attribute to the following:

1. Sydney Psychologist Aleks Srbinoski's program Fulfilling Happiness (I composed the music in this program. Visit http://www.fulfillinghappiness.com/ and scroll down to the "Sample 1" link to hear some of it)
2. Pat Pattison's Writing Better Lyrics - http://www.patpattison.com/home/