Guitar fretboard workout

It has been almost a week since I last worked on the Britten arrangement; however, I have been participating in the creation of some new Tetanus Rig material. During these group writing sessions I have noticed the positive influence of piano lessons and composing by hand. I feel like I already have more of a grasp of the theory and a greater sense of the potential for note choices. It makes sense that composing and playing music more often is an effective way to study theory.

I spent about ten minutes figuring out what the Britten arrangement thus far would sound like. After convincing myself that it was okay, I wrote some more of the guitar chords with a vague idea of the direction that I wanted the melody to take. It is a familiar trait of the guitarist to strum some chords first and come up with a melody second. I feel the need to break away from this, although in a way I have already started with piano lessons and composing by hand. Already I am becoming much more aware of the actual notes on the guitar fretboard.

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/