This is a quick little post to wish my estranged brother James a belated Happy Birthday. His Birthday was the 5th, and 5 is exactly the number of years that have passed since I last saw him. He should be turning 38 today. Wow. I miss him. If anybody out there runs into him, tell him to check out my blog. I love you, James. Happy Birthday.

The wheels are in motion with the IHML 2. Rehearsals are coming along swimmingly. More about that soon. Ta.

We had our first rehearsal for the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2 last weekend. Jenny and I worked together in her living room. I stood next to her enormous piano and sang, while she played as much of the songs as she had under her fingers. I can't desciribe what it's like to have your music come to life from out of what seems like nowhere. I don't mean to sound naive, or overly romantic, but to hear these songs played on a real, organic piano, with wooden hammers and metal strings, by a human being in a little room was thrilling. Not that there weren't changes to make. I wasn't so elated that I couldn't see some of the weaknesses in my writing. We trimmed down some left hand chords to suit Jenny's little hands. We changed a 5/8 time signature to 6/8 because it was impossible to feel. Plus other little misspellings and things.

The road from conceiving an album to putting it out is so long, especially at my level, that when you finally begin to see everything take shape it's really something. But my favorite part by far is hearing the music played for the first time. Nothing beats that feeling. I don't say that because I wrote the music, mind you, but because...well...imagine you are raising birds. You watch the little creatures go from eggs to hatchlings to full grown adults, and then there comes a time for your little charges to fly out on thier own. How can you describe that feeling of elation when all of your labor culminates in the creatures effortlessly floating away from you off into the blue?That's what it's like, hearing the notes rise up out of the piano and drift out the window. You feel scared, proud, and relieved all at once. As for me, when I heard the music make its way up to the cracks and creases in the ceiling, all the questions and insecurities in my brain drifted away. Questions like: "Are people going to like this?", "Did I write that chord too low?", "Is this too high for me to sing?", "Will she be able to play that?", "Did I overwrite in this part?" and "Is piano accompaniment sufficient for the album?" promptly withdrew themselves from my mind.

Chad Crouch of Hush mentioned that when he heard the demos, he felt like some of the songs needed a different treatment than just voice and piano. But I'm confident that when he hears them performed on a natural piano, he'll change his...er...tune.

Enough. More later.

The latest film projects from Grammar School Pictures are coming to fruition, ladies and gentlemen. The film "Almost Everything" which we filmed in 2005 will be screening on April 27th. Go to the Grammar School Pictures blog for details (link on your right). Also, there are some tidbits about a new project that we did earlier this month on the Grammar School Pictures blog as well.

In the meantime, I'm working hard on some new songs. I really am in earnest about the new song a week thing. I'll keep you, erm, posted.

Tonight I'm posting from a bar two blocks away from my apartment. Two hipsters are dancing ironically by the jukebox to Madonna's Dress You Up In My Love. The boy has the obligatory blue hoodie, messy hair, tight dickie pants, and adidas black and white kicks. He's not smiling, but doubtless his lady thinks he's sexy. It's time I made my exit before things get ugly.

More later!

Hi everyone. I finished the string and horn arrangements for Parks & Recreation's forthcoming album. It took a month or so of work, but I finally finished. I thought you might like to hear the demo I made for the rest of the boys to hear. The song you're going to hear is called Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams. Once again, it's difficult to talk about the mechanics of writing and arranging here, but I can tell you a bit about my process, if you're curious.

Well, in my mind, the orchestral music in a song should function like orchestral music functions in film, that is, to underscore the emotional content of a scene, to move the story along, or to highlight the subtext of the song. That's what I tried to do here. During the overture I used some of the main melodies from the song to create a kind of fantasy world introduction. In the first verse I applied light strings playing long, light melodies. I left the strings off the choruses entirely, because the lyrics here are very down to earth and intimate. In the bridge parts, I used a fuller, more sweeping string texture, because I imagine these parts of the song to be about the main characters' fantasies. As the verses move along, the orchestral music becomes thicker, but more tender as the singer talks about his suburb crumbling.

Anyway, here is the demo version. Judge for yourself. More later!

This is supposed to be a surprise, so don't tell anyone, but my friend Kevin is getting an award soon. He's a writer and an independent book publisher, and some impressive Portland body is giving him an award for service to the community. I, along with many others among his friends and supporters were given the task of creating a 30 second audio clip dedicated to him. So I wrote a tiny little song for him. The lyrics come from one of his short stories. It's called "Vibrator" and it comes from his book A Common Pornography. His little story is only around six or seven sentences long, and I adapted the lyrics to suit the song. The lyrics run:

Dad gave me a vibrator once
To give to mother for a birthday present
Later they kept it in a jar by the bed
And Soon they were sleeping in separate beds.

Here is the little clip. Congratulations, Kevin!

The recital was an incredible experience. We had wine and snacks to eat. Jenny had hung a long, dark, burgundy velvet curtain up behind the piano, and little red clusters of Christmas lights bespeckled the trim around her living room. Her modest sized black baby grand looked like it was positively tickling to be touched. I was really impressed with all of the perfomances. Two girls played a violin duet, another girl played an incredible piece on viola in which she used a mute across the strings, creating a really soft, haunting sound. Jenny accompanied a violin player in a crazy duet that sounded like a maudlin, vaudeville shanty. She has a really good tone on the piano. The music she was reading from was crumbling; the piece looked as ancient as it sounded. It was nice, manic, and light. Comical. Jenny also played three little pieces by Shostakovich. Before playing, we each told everyone a little bit about the pieces and their composers, which was really great, because I learned a lot. It turned out Lisa, the viola player, had found her music recently, while abroad (she's also in Jenny's band), and had never heard of the composer before. The story of how she came upon the music and what she discovered about it was really entertaining.

When I got up to talk about Aaron Copland, I felt at first like I didn't have any business being there. But the moment I started to speak, I felt as though there wasn't any reason to separate myself from the proceedings this time. In fact, for only the second or third time since I've lived in Portland, I felt like I belonged here. Everyone was there to hear classical music as it should be performed: in a living room, among friends, with laughter and levity. Concert halls be damned. AND hipsters be damned. There wasn't a sheepish, limp, cloying, slimy hipster among them. But enough of that. I told everyone why I liked Aaron Copland so much, and sat down to play (after some clumsy adjusting of the bench, during which I was practically mooning my modest audience). How amazing it felt. I mean, I wouldn't say I played perfectly, far from it. Oh, I didn't play any wrong notes, but there were times when I came down on a chord and the balance wasn't quite right, lower notes sounded louder than melody notes, or I didn't get deep enough into the key or something and so the chord sounded a bit weak. Sometimes my shoulders would go up and I didn't use the weight of my arms. But these weren't life threatening mistakes, like last year at my recital. I remember feeling so much pressure then, like if I missed a note I wouldn't graduate or something. This time, there were no huge stakes, just me learning a beautiful piece and playing it for people. And there were lots of things I did well. I captured the sound of the piece. When it was supposed to sound simple and tender, I honestly thought it did. I thought I got a good variety of moods out of the piece, which I liked. And I wasn't thinking the entire time I was playing. In fact, I woke up and it was done. That's the mark of a good performance. I came away from the piano feeling like a pianist. Not a Van Cliburn, mind you, but a pianist as I define it: a person who devotes some chunk of his or her life to the endless persuit of playing the piano.

When I was in community college, you see, I started out picking at the piano and absolutely struggling. What do I do with all of these notes? What do my fingers do? I used to think to myself, when I get older, I want to be a music reading, piano playing person (among other things). Well, I came away from Sunday's recital feeling like just that. I accomplished Sunday night what I set out to accomplish all those years ago. Again, I'm not saying I'm Glenn Gould or anything, I'm just saying I can play piano. Isn't that enough? Who the fuck needs to be Glenn Gould in order to be happy?

What's more, back to last year, I came away from my recital feeling such relief that I didn't want to touch a piano afterward. But Sunday, afterward, I felt addicted to the piano. I couldn't wait to get home and start something new. Now, I've practiced pretty much every day this week. I feel affirmed. I feel like the things that came to light during that performance were delicious little occurences that I get to fix. It's such a pleasure to fix one's mistakes, or revise one's work. It gives us a chance to sit down and, well, get to work. Isn't that what life it about? Doing good work? Not necessarily work that will earn us fame and money, although, if it does we would hardly cast those things aside (some of us would), but work that requires real effort and that improves us and the people around us. That's good work.

That's music.

I almost chickened out. The next recital at my friend Jenny Conlee's place is next week. I've known it since last September and I've been playing around with a little piece and fantasizing about performing it. In January she invited me to play, shock shock horror horror. I agreed. Well, naturally I barely touched the piece again after accepting the invitation. Finally, last week I sent her an email telling her I'd positively wasted my whole month working on other things (wasted!) and that I wasn't prepared. I'd have to prepare something for next time. She replied with an invitation to just come and listen, which I accepted. But after I shut down the Mail program, I felt a tightening fist in my stomach. Fear was the only reason I hadn't prepared. I was a victim of pure performance anxiety in it's ugliest form. Oh, I've been busy, to be sure; but behind the bustle was that unmistakable rumbling in my tummy, that fear of getting up in front of people and playing solo piano. It's haunted me my whole life. Even at my recital last year I couldn't overcome it. Now it bit me again.

Last night, though, I sat down at my piano, having put away the night's work on Parks & Recreation orchestral music, and plinked through the little piece I've been flirting with. It's called In Evening Air, and it's by Aaron Copland. Now, it isn't a virtuoso piece, but it's really simple, and beautiful. And when I pecked through it, I found I could get through most of it pretty easily. Some of it was difficult, but I figured I could get it under my fingers in a week. It's a few pages long, and the last page is tough, but I think I can do it. So, with the proverbial bullet clenched firmly in my teeth, I sent Jenny another email telling her I'd changed my mind. Now there's nothing I can do but play.

Of course, the fist in my belly is tightening again, but this time I'm going to ignore it. I know how to practice a piano piece. Even if I mess up I'll be among friends, right? I mean, this won't be anything compared to playing a half-hour's worth of music with my professors staring at me, will it? In the end I'm going to just try to have fun. I really love the piece. I've been listening to it over and over again all day. I never get tired of it. That's nothing to fear, is it? Is it?

Last night, while the cars slushed back and forth across Stark St. outside my window, I busily penned (well, mouse clicked) almost the entire orchestra part for the Parks & Recreation song Tomorrow Never Lives Forever. I got home, hung up my jacket, sat down to write, and didn't wake up until I hit the double bar line. It was easier this time in part because I'd already had a lot of the string melodies in my head since the song was written two years ago. It was also easier because, unlike in Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams, there was a context for what I was writing. In other words, I could just write in a disco style. To get ideas, I listened to a lot of Rick James, Barry White, and even some Divine Comedy. I went for light, long lines in the strings and short, quick fills in the brass. It was really fun. Oh, but it's far from finished. I have to spend the rest of the week editing what I wrote. I just wanted to mention that I had a really good session last night. Up late with a bottle of mineral water and some crackers and cheese. Is there more to life?

I've been thinking that it would be fun to start up a new thread to the blog. If I can get the technology together, I'd like to write a new song every week, to be begun on Monday and posted on Friday. I could go back to my old style: acoustic guitar driven songs. I can record them and put them up on a special page where you'll be able to see the lyrics and download the songs. In this way, I can keep my songwriting up, while alleviating the pressures of putting out CDs, which is expensive, time consuming, wasteful, and, which, frankly, is becoming increasingly difficult to afford. What do you think? Shall I try it? I'll let you know in a week or two if I have the time or the nerve. In the meantime, did you see the little film we made?

Hi lovelies. The film This Song, which I did with Grammar School Pictures for the 48 Hour Film Festival in 2004 has been reedited. It's now a whopping 13 minutes long. I thought you might like to see it. You can download it here.

I'm still writing string music. This time I've moved on to a song called Tomorrow Never Lives Forever. I'll post more about it later. For now, hope you like our little movie.

As you may know, I've been working on the orchestral music for the next Parks & Recreation album. We thought it would be well in keeping with the doctrines of Postmodern Pop to open the song Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams with a full on overture, classical style. So, I've finished the first draft of the overture and I thought you might be interested to know how I went about it. But first a warning: this post will contain a spotty, extremely lo-fi Garage Band MIDI audio file, and a follow along score to download in PDF format. Won't that be fun? Let's go!

So, the first step was to decide on what instruments we were going to be dealing with. We decided on a string quartet -two violins, a viola, and a cello- trumpet, alto saxophone and tenor saxophone. Seven instruments. Great. So then I sat down and wrote out the main melody of the song on paper. From that melody, I found several little melodies, or motives, that I could use as fodder for composition of the overture. Of those little motives, I decided three were most identifiable with the main melody. In addition to the melodic motives, I also used harmonic motives. In other words, there's a really whacky chord that appears in the bridge of the song, we'll call this chord Linda. Well, I thought Linda should show up as often as possible in the overture. And since every chord has a scale associated with it, most of the overture contains melodies that use this scale. Got it? So the building blocks for composing the overture were 1) melodic motives derived from the main melody of the song 2) harmonic motives; i.e. Linda and the scale she's built on.

But there's one more thing: shape. The overture had to have a structure. So the next step was to come up with a shape for the overture. I decided on an intro, followed by a minuet, followed by some transitional material which would get us to the main song. In classical music, the shape of a piece is determined by melody and key. Same with in our overture. The intro is in the key of E, the key of the song. Then, after the chord Linda sounds, we move to D for the minuet. (FOR THE MUSIC GEEKS: What's significant about D is that the chord Linda is a D Major chord with an E in the bass.) Okay, so the minuet is a classical form made up of a theme, A, which is sounded and repeated before a second contrasting theme, B, shows up, after which A is repeated again. For the B theme, incidentally, I moved to the key of B Minor for contrast. Right, so the minuet happens and then you hear some transitional material leading up to Linda again, which then brings us to the main song. Neat, huh? Here's our structure:

INTRO (key of E)| Linda | MINUET (keys: D-b-D) | Linda | TRANSITION (various to E)

Simple. Now, all of the decisions I make about what the individual instruments will do at any given moment would be too hard to write about, I think. Instead, I'll just leave you to imagine that part. There are so many combinations and combinations of combinations that it would be a long, boring (that is, longer, even more boring) diatribe to go into it.

To hear what all this gobbledygook sounds like, albiet as a cheezy sounding MIDI file, click here. To download the follow along score, click here.

I've been busy, folks. All of the songs for the Ideal Home Music Library are finished, and my attention has turned to other projects while I twiddle my thumbs waiting for Jenny Conlee to come back from tour. The strings and horns for the next Parks & Recreation album are taking up most of my time. I've been up late every night working them out and reworking them. It's been fun, but crazy. The most time consuming venture was the "overture" that's going to appear at the beginning of a song called Don't Get Caught Up In Your Dreams. Right now it's quite long. It's hard to describe how I went about writing it without getting too technical.

The other half of my time has been consumed by the liner notes for the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2. As of today, I have no idea if the record is even going to come out, but that's another story. I cling very hard, however, to the possibility that it will, so I keep writing. Writing is hard. Real writing is really hard. I've been editing and re-editing, bent over my Thesaurus and The Elements of Style. Lyrics are so much easier than prose. Anyway, I wish I could tell you more. More later.

I hope you all had a happy holidays! It's been a long couple of months away from the blog. Some of you might be wondering where Reclinerland disappeared to during that stretch of time. Well, I needed to spend what little money I had on other things, I'm afraid, and Reclinerland had to relenquish its presence on the web. But now that the past is (happily) in the past, we can get on with things. I apologize to any of you who depended on me to make your work day go by faster. I flatter myself in thinking that I helped in any way to entertain you while the minute hand clunks along. If I let you down in any way, know that I'm deeply truly sorry. Now, to the news!

You will be happy to find out that, although I haven't been blogging, I've been writing songs like mad for the Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2. In fact, I'm one song away from being completely finished with the collection. When we left off, I was writing I'm Cookies For You. That was in August. Well, during my long break from blogging I wrote at least seven or eight more songs. That brings the collection total up to 11 so far. The lyrics and chords for the twelfth song are on my piano waiting for me. Once I finish that one, I'll be finished with the main writing. My goal, if you remember from past blogs, was to write 12 for the collection and finish them by the end of the year. Well, I came just shy of that goal. I'll hopefully have the 12th song done by the end of the first week of January. Yay!

I'm very excited for you to hear these songs. It's been oh so much work getting them written. Thanks to technology, I have a way to make a demo without having to practice all the songs and record them live, which could take years. The method is this: first, I record the songs really slowly into my KORG electric piano at 70bpm on the metronome. Then, I use the KORG to speed the songs up. This I record into garage band. Finally, I overdub the vocals. The first song I finished in this manner is called All Through The Morning. I had laryngitis when I sang it, but I hope you like it. Also, it's a little bit slow. But this demo gives you an idea of what the song will sound like. I submit it for your consideration and entertainment. Here is the sheet music so you can follow along.

As I make more demos I'll put them up for you to hear. The next step is to find someone to record the songs with me. I'm hoping my friend Jenny Conlee is free. She's one of the best piano players I know, and she's the first person I thought of when I started writing these songs. I even wrote the piano parts with her in mind. I hope she's available to work with me on the project. Keep your fingers crossed, because I'm going to call her after the first of the year. The nice thing about recording these songs is that all we'll need is a studio or a home with a really good piano to record in. Since the music on the CD will consist of it just be a piano player and a singer, we can concentrate on getting really good performances and not have to worry about overdubs and all those things that make recording pop music so time consuming and expensive. This will be a piece of cake once the piano player (Jenny!) has time to practice the piece. A nice thing about Jenny is that she's a great sight reader. So we'll be able to get through the songs pretty quickly. Ah, but I'm getting ahead of myself. I have to finish song 12 first.

I'll write a bit about that next song in my next post. For now, it's good to be back online. I really have missed you all. More later!

Wow, are you still reading this? I feel like some kind of musical Bob Vila or something: First, we want to grind down the corner fittings with our belt sander, making sure to sand with the grains of the wood, rather than against…you know, that kind of thing. Well, I'm glad you're still here, because this part is going to be fun. Having figured out the form, and having hung lyrics on the notes in our melody, we're now going to get into the music.

This happens in two stages. First, I have to notate the melody for the vocal line. Then, after notating the melody, I have to decide what the chords will be. After all of that is finished, we'll make what's called a "lead sheet". A lead sheet is one page of music that contains only the vocal melody and the chords. It's like an outline for an essay, or a map for a road trip. It shows us all the major landmarks, and lets us see the shape of the song all at once. Later we'll fill out the piano accompaniment. So, our goal for this stage is to build a lead sheet.

So, to dictate the melody, I usually sit down away from the piano and try to work out the melody on my own, without the aid of an instrument. It's a good exercise. The important first step is to pick a key. This is an incredibly important step. There are many factors in picking a key, but the most important factor is the vocal range of the person who's going to sing the song. I imagine that either I'm going to sing this song, or one of my male friends will sing it. So I'm going to pick a key that's comfortable for the range of a tenor. If the key is too low in the tenor's voice, the song won't have any energy. If it's too high, he'll have to strain. Another factor in picking a key is the range of the piano. In other words, if we pick a key that's too low, then the piano will have a majority of its bass notes in the lower reaches of the keyboard, which will make the song feel heavy and muddy. If we write a key that's too high, the piano accompaniment will sound too light and feeble. You also want to pick a key that's easy for the piano player's fingers to navigate. The less sharps and flats the better.

I've attached the lead sheet here. Click on it to enlarge it in a different window. It's difficult to explain here how I came up with the chords without getting way too technical. Email me if you want to know. For now, the next step is to fill in the piano accompaniment. This is where it all comes together. Stay with me.

Here they are:

“i don’t want to use an old cliché,”
gasped the chaplain to his strapping protégé,
“but having ducked into this candy shop
and nicked a bit of pecan drop
i’ve something to confess. So listen, pray!”

"i'm cookies for you!
simply speculatius!
positively peppernutty pfeffernüsse!

we're toffees, we two.
magical milanos!
manifestly mandelplaettchen, me and you!

i'm, cookies for you!
truly tortelletty!
unquestionably coconutty macaroons.

we're brownies, to boot!
lovely ladyfingers!
quite a pair of quadratinis, me and you!"

"my boy, i know i taught you sin was base
but my entire soul is pining for a taste.
To hike up these sleeves of silk
and dip this biscuit in your milk
would send my spirit skyward to some holy place!"

"i'm cookies for you!
passionately pralines!
decisively divinity: that's me for you.

we're plumb bombs, partout!
beautifully biscotti
wholly german honey cookies, through and through!

i'm cookies for you!
noticeably nut balls!
obviously oblaten, oh it's true, it's true!

we're wafers, we two!
completely cracking crumpets
a perfect pair of cinnamony snickerdoos!

So, before we get to the music, I want to make a couple of quick comments about the words. First, notice that I stuck to the conviction that all of the desserts in the song would be cookies. Also, I developed a pattern of using the cookies to describe the chaplain's feelings in the first triplet of each stanza and using them to describe his view of his relationship with the altar boy in the second triplet. Finally, I polished up specific words in the verse, such as using "pecan drops" rather than "carrot drops". I thought pecan drops would be a bit more recognizable as cookies. They should be recognizable since they're at the very beginning of the song. I like the second verse, though it's pretty obvious. I wanted to include lots of religious words like "sin" "soul", "holy", and that, just to remind the listener of the chaplain's faith, with the hope that it would underscore his fall into temptation. I like the "sleeves of silk" line because not only does it put an image in my mind of a priest's garments, but, it's also kind of sexy. Silk is very sensual, and I tried to emphasize this sexiness by using the phrase "hike up these sleeves" instead of "roll up these sleeves", because of the association of the word "hike" with "skirt". Women roll up their skirts when they want to put them in the wash or wring them out, but they hike up their skirts when they want to show a bit of leg. Oo la la! Finally, there's the obviously dirty biscuit in milk reference. Moving on, it wouldn't be the IHML if I didn't throw in some fake French. So the word "partout" occurs, which here is supposed to mean " all over" or "everywhere", as in, "everywhere we go" or "all over the place." I wanted that image to be kind of dirty too: plumb bombs exploding all over the place. It's also an onomatopoeia. When you say it, spit bursts out of your mouth. It almost sounds like "Kabloom" or something. You get it, right? I also want to tell you that I found a funny coincidence. The word "oblaten" is a kind of cookie, at least according to the Joy of Cooking. But I also found this definition of the word "oblate" in my dictionary widget: "a person dedicated to a religious life, but typically having not taken specific monastic vows." That, my friends, is a happy accident! Finally, somehow the last word "snickerdoos" doesn't sound as cheesy as "snickerdoodle", so I kept it in.

The pattern of the rhyme scheme for each triplet in the chorus is: a, b, a. All of the a's rhyme across stanzas, and none of the b's rhyme. The verses are all a limerick pattern: a, a, b, a. Also, wherever possible I tried to create assonances and alliterations.

So now that we have our lyrics and sketched out a form for the song, it's time for the really fun part: the music!

The next step is to envision some kind of shape to the entire song and map it out. This helps us to set up the invisible walls in which we'll contain the musical material. These walls will be defined by little moments of musical punctuation we call cadences. Cadences are chord progressions that come in the places where the song pauses. These pauses create the sense of punctuation in a song. Some cadences amount to a full stop, the grammar equivalent of which is a period, and other cadences amount to merely a pause. Expressed in terms of visual art, cadences are the lines an artist pencils in for guidance before she starts to apply the paint. Songs progress in sections. So far we have an introduction and a chorus. For purposes of illustration, I'm going to call the introduction A, and the chorus B.

Okay, so, how do we know what the overall shape of the song will be? Well, that depends on a few factors. One important factor is convention. There are a million established song forms in the world, stretching back all the way to, I'd say, the 17th Century. But we're not going to look back that far, of course. Looking through some old songbooks from the era I'm trying to place these songs in, I've observed that most of those old songs contain an introduction, a verse, then a chorus, and all of that repeats. So:

INTRO | A | B :||

The colon and two lines are a repeat sign. The first repeat is usually punctuated by a half-cadence (comma), and after the repeat, an ending cadence is added to bring the whole thing to a close (period). The next factor in the shape of the song is how much lyrical material you have. You can just keep writing lyrics until you finish the narrative of your story, or, in situations like I'm Cookies For You, where you have the same idea repeating itself, you might want to keep it short. So, we're going to keep it short. Another factor is balance. How does the shape of the song feel? Is there enough material to create a feeling in the listener that they've experienced a complete story? We will revisit the balance question periodically as we progress. For now, the way I check for balance is to sing the song to myself, imagining different shapes, and see how it feels. I sit back and imagine the whole song, just in vague terms, imagine someone singing it, trying to judge how much music should go in between the lyrics, how long the cadences should be, etc. This I do on the drive home from somewhere, or dancing around my apartment, or while playing with Lily.

Having done all that, experimenting with different forms, I think the best shape for this song is the one above. Having counted the measures, I think that the form should be:

INTRO (4 – 8 mm.) | A (8 mm.) | B (16 mm.) | interlude (4 – 8 mm.) |
| A ( 8 mm.) | B (16 mm.) | coda (4 – 8 mm.) ||

Okay, so, looking at this map, I see that I've written enough lyrics for one A section, and one B section. So I basically need one more set of lyrics for another A section and another B section. The introduction will be a little piano intro, and the interlude is going to be a little bit of piano music to get us back to the repeat of the first A section. It'll be a comma. The coda is going to be similar to the intro, but its chord progression is going to finish off the song. In other words, it's a period. Okay, now we have an idea of the shape, let's get back to finishing the lyrics!

Tonight it’s time to work on the chorus of I’m Cookies For You. The tools we will be using are our trusty rhyming dictionary, our dictionary/thesaurus widget, and, believe it or not, a crumbling, decrepit copy of The Joy of Cooking. Why the cookbook? Well, as I said in the previous post, the chorus of the song is going to basically be a list of various kinds of cookies, After all, the chaplain says: I'm cookies for you! So let’s consult our cookbook. I’m inclined toward the funny sounding or the foreign sounding cookies. Here is the list I’m going to draw from:

anise drops, profiteroles, croquembouche, charlottes, brownies, tortelettes, ginger snaps, pfeffernüsse, cocoa kisses, macaroons, wafers, pinwheels, speculatius, springerle, plum bombs, oblaten, gaufrettes, nut balls, pralines cookies, oatmeal cookies, crumpets, biscuits, divinity, butterscotch, toffies, peanut brittle, pecan drops, pecan puffs, sacher, ladyfingers, madeleines, milanos, pinaccios, quadratinis, hermits, biscotti, mandelplaettchen.

That’s quite a list. I'm sure it's incomplete. Additionally, each cookie will be preceded by an adverb that means “absolutely.” Now, courtesty of our thesaurus widget, here’s a partial list of adverbs: completely, simply, clearly, utterly, totally, positively, perfectly, wholly, fully, quite, thoroughly, unreservedly, definitely, certainly, categorically, unquestionably, undoubtedly, surely, decisively, conclusively, manifestly, exactly, precisely, without a doubt, to the hilt, every inch.

Okay, so these are the words we have to choose from, let’s try to put them together. But before we do, a thought occurs to me. We don’t have to use adverbs that make sense. I mean, it would be fun to just use crazy, meaningless words. We could make up desserts that sound real, but that aren’t quite real. After all, our chaplain is crazy in love. He knows not what he speaks. Also, we’re limited as to what words we can use by the number of syllables to a line, the stress of the words, the rhyme scheme, etc. Which reminds me: I’ve forgone the idea of having an end-of-line rhyme scheme in the chorus. Instead, I’m going to employ inner rhymes like assonance (vowel rhymes) and alliteration (consonant rhymes). I’d also like to try to use consonance. Consonance is a cool way to rhyme words in which every consonantal sound after the accented vowel is the same, but the accented vowel itself is different. For example: willow, shallow; hill, call. So let’s get to it. Here's the chorus:

i'm cookies for you!
absolutely anise!
positively peppernutty pfeffernüsse!

we're toffees, we two.
simply speculatius!
manifestly mandelplaettchen, me and you!

yes, cookies for you!
truly tortelletty!
unquestionably coconutty macaroons.

we're brownies, to boot!
lovely ladyfingers!
quite a pair of quadratinis, me and you!

You'll notice that I've played with the words a little. Where I needed an extra syllable I turned nouns into adjectives, as in "coconutty", "peppernutty", and "tortelletty". I think the line "unquestionably coconutty" is a bit wordy. I'll have to see if there are some other possibilities there. But for now I have to pause. We've written enough to get us started, but now I have to step back and consider the form of the song before I can continue with the lyrics. More on that in the next post!

Okay, back to it. So the fourth line gives me trouble now. I like the ending “lemon drops” but I’m not sure about the first half of the line. But there’s a bigger problem. There isn’t a sense of urgency in his words. I want it to feel like he’s overpowered by the weight of his transgression to confess his desire for his young charge. So a few words will have to be changed. First, the word “said” in the second line. Is there another word that might be stronger? That might convey the chaplain speaking the line in a hurried whisper? It has to have one syllable. To the Thesaurus! How about “sighed” or “gasped”? I like “gasped” because it rhymes with “chaplain” and “strapping”. Okay, so why would the chaplain be gasping, if the two men are just “standing” in the candy shop? No, I think another word here could better describe for the listener the urgency of the situation. They could “duck” into the shop. That word renders quick, sneaky movement into the shop and out again that could leave the chaplain gasping. And they could sneak some lemon drops. That creates an internal rhyme. As in:

But having ducked into this candy shop
and snuck a bit of lemon drop

Okay. I like these two lines, because the “bit of lemon drop” feels smooth and colloquial. So on to the last line. Here, the word “something” is too vague, although I like the alliteration with the word “sweet”. But he should be making a “confession”, or an “avowal”. Consulting the thesaurus for an “s” word that means “confession” turns up nothing. I could change the word at the end of the line. Looking at the rhyming dictionary, the word “pray” jumps out at me. That’s nice, because getting rid of the word “say” at the end of the line frees me up to use a verb elsewhere in the line that means “confess”. How about:

I’ve something to confess, so listen, pray!

That sounds very old-fashioned, doesn’t it? The urgency is conveyed by the fact that the chaplain is begging his young friend to listen to his confession. The alliteration is still there, between “something”, “so”, and the s-es in “confess” and “listen”. Plus I like the fact that I got rid of the word “sweet”. Leaving it in would call attention to the sweets in the candy shop, whereas the word “pray” is a nice double entendre, meaning in context “to beg”, but also relating back to the fact that our hero and his friend are clergymen. The word “confess” is also nice. The whole stanza now reads:

“I don’t want to use an old cliché,”
Gasped the chaplain to his strapping protégé,
“But having ducked into this candy shop
and snuck a bit of lemon drop
I’ve something to confess. So listen, pray!”

This is nice. I feel more urgency in his voice. When I listen to this, I get a mental picture of the two characters jumping out of the shop and slamming themselves against the wall gasping. I get a picture of what the chaplain’s protégé looks like, and I can see the chaplain, all out of breath and inspired by the thrill of sin.

Okay, so what is his confession? Well, what will follow is the chorus of the song. Remember that in these old time songs, the introduction was the “verse” and the main melody of the song, the main idea, was the “chorus”. This chorus will be a tirade about his feelings. Because they’ve been in a candy shop, and because our chaplain is much older than his strapping protégé, his confession will consist of a list of candies and sweets, which will serve to describe his feelings in pictures, as in:

I’m cookies for you!
Absolutely apples!
Positively pumpkin perielles for you!

We’re truffles, we two;
Simply snicker doodles
la la la la la la la la la la la

That’s all I’ve come up with so far. I’ve had those lyrics in my head for some time, but of course they need work. I’m not really sure, for example, if “perielle” is a kind of pastry. I thought I saw it on a menu somewhere, but I might have just made up the word. Also, the word “snicker doodle”, a type of cookie, sounds goofy. So, the next step is to obtain a list of pastries, sweets, and candies, and use it for the material for the chaplain’s confession. It would be nice to use ones that have sexual double meaning, like cream donuts and stuffed éclairs. I’ll do that, and we’ll start on the chorus next time. For now, my street cred in flames, tonight’s work is over. Thanks for sticking with me so far. As usual, if you’ve got any ideas or suggestions, feel free to post comments. See you soon!

Okay. So now that I’ve had my little break, I thought this might be a good opportunity to reflect on the songwriting process at the beginning of writing a song! Wouldn’t that be great, to actually see, in multimedia format, how a song is built from the ground up? I knew you would find it exciting. A word of warning, though, this presentation will have many facets to it, graphics, tool tips, and musical snippets in various formats. For example, in this post you will find links to little mp3 recordings of the melodies being discussed. All of this serves the purpose of illustrating and reflecting on the artistic process that goes into handcrafting a song. That’s, after all, the purpose of this blog. It’s why you’re here, and why I’m here. Why, if I weren’t giving you some bit of knowledge in return for your time reading this, your hard effort burning out your retinas and endangering your reputation at work, someone might think this was just narcissistic rambling, a cheap bit of self-indulgence. Well, they would be mistaken. So, dear friends, for your entertainment and consideration, I offer you a glimpse of insight into one person’s songwriting process.

Tonight we’re going to start on a song which is tentatively titled I’m Cookies For You. The tools we’ll be using are The Complete Rhyming Dictionary, published by Dell, edited by Clement Wood and revised by Ronald Bogus, along with the Oxford American Dictionary/Thesaurus widget that came with my Macintosh.

Work on the song actually began months ago. But it continued earnest this afternoon, when, at the late hour of two o’clock, I was lying in bed in a state of blissful half-sleep. There, in the black recesses of my mind, came swimming the melody for the introduction of the tune, which has been running through my brain for ages now. You may recall from a much earlier post that I came up with this melody and lyric all at once and recorded it into my cassette tape song idea catalog. The lyric ran:

I don’t want to use an old cliché
But my words are somehow getting in the way
la la la la la la la la
la la la la la la la
you’ll forgive this rather base public display…

The “la la’s” here, by the way, are place markers for heretofore unwritten lyrics. Well, I’ve always hated this lyric. It’s living proof that one’s first idea isn’t necessarily the strongest. I hate the second line, for example, because it is, in fact, a cliché. You need more than two hands to count the number of songs that use the words “words get in the way”. Plus, it says nothing. There is no story. There are no characters or settings for the listener to grab onto. But, for lack of anything better, I kept it, knowing that it would someday be crossed out when inspiration hit. Well, lying there this afternoon, inspiration fell on me like a grand piano. The melody for the introduction snaked around and around in my head while I lay there, and all the while an image came persistent and clear across my closed eyelids. Two foppish men in powdered wigs were standing around in a sweets shop. They were dressed in pastel colored frock coats with high collars, lace spilling from their sleeves and pockets. In front of them surrounding the counter were glass cases of cookies and cakes, pastries and truffles, and all the delicious things you might find in an eighteenth century sweets shop. It was a scene that the Retro Police might come and arrest me for, so I tried at first to shut it out of my mind. But it kept coming back. Finally, I went with it. A new lyric came also, in the form of spoken lines by one of the two dandies. They ran:

“I don’t want to use an old cliché”
Said Duke la la to the Prince of la la-lay
“But we’re standing in a candy shop:
A dandy and a randy fop,
And I’ve something sweet I really need to say,

And that is as far as my imagination took me. I like those lyrics so far. The story could be about an Edwardian man confessing his forbidden love to another Edwardian man. So now to fill in the “la la” parts. For the second line, all I need are the names of the Duke and Prince. Well, I can make up anything I want, really, with the sole requirement that the Prince’s name has to end in an “ay” sound in order to conform to the rhyme scheme, which is that of a limerick: a, a, b, b, a. So how about the Duke of Malta to the Prince of Bray? Where the heck is Bray? No, that doesn’t work. I like the Duke of Malta because I heard that in another song once. So I need a one-word, one-syllable place name that has the “ay” sound in it. To the rhyming dictionary! Scanning the many rhyming words with “ay” I see there are many geographical names, many of them French. That’s promising, because the French language seems to be a recurring theme in the IHML so far. The word protégé jumps out at me. What if it’s a duke and his servant, or young charge or something. That’s pretty homoerotic. Okay, so the line could read:

said Duke la la to his strapping protégé

I like that. It’s funny. Kind of Edward Gorey-ish. So what’s the duke’s name? It has to have two syllables. It can be anything really. It would be nice if it had an “a” as in “apple” sound, so as to rhyme with “strapping”, thereby making an internal rhyme. Back to the rhyming dictionary!

Well, I can’t find any proper nouns that rhyme with “strapping”, but I do see the word “chaplain” in my rhyming dictionary. Seeing that, the image in my mind changes. Now, instead of two eighteenth century dandies, I see a chaplain and an altar boy. That’s really homoerotic, and it’s a little taboo. I like the idea that a priest, overcome by temptation, has ducked into a sweet shop with this young man on the sly and is about to commit two of the ultimate transgressions: gluttony and lust. Oo. This is nice because now the story can take place further in the future. It’s more credibly nineteenth century. So how about:

“I don’t want to use an old cliché,”
said the chaplain to his strapping protégé
“But standing in this candy shop,
before a la of lemon drops
I’ve something sweet I really need to say!"

Hmm. This still needs work. Bear with me and we'll polish it up later.

Hey all. I just wanted to write a quick post to report that The Ideal Home Music Library, Vol. 2 is halfway finished. I completed the Sailor's Cat (working title) song two days ago, and that song was the sixth in the collection. You may think it unwise to limit myself to 12 songs. But I don't consider it a limitation. That's the way I work; within walls I can knock down if I want to. The first volume was 12 songs long, so I think another 12 will make things nice and even. I want the two albums to be book ends in a way. That doesn't mean I'll only write 12 songs. I already have way more than twelve song ideas, so, in effect, I'll have 12 songs for the collection no matter how many songs I actually write. See? The album as a whole is taking shape even as I finish each song individually. Sometimes it's necessary to step back and look at the whole picture before proceeding. So I'm going to take a few days off from the IHML and let the whole thing simmer for a bit before I start working on the next song.

The next song on deck is called I'm Cookies For You (if Marian will give me permission to cop her phrase) whose lyrics are giving me trouble. Anyway, until then, here's the sheet music for the Sailor's Cat for you to look at. Bye for now.

I'm all f***ed off today because I had to sell my PlayStation. Where is the justice in this world? Nowhere, that's where. The world has gone to pot and here's me without my escape mechanism. Now I suppose I'll have to look to all those papery flippy things with the words in them for my entertainment. How depressing. I mean reading a book is so much WORK. I sold my TV as well. Notice, I didn't sell my computer. Well, I'll eat that before I sell it. I used to say I would use my Beatle CDs for shelter, eat my Beck CDs, and use my Blur CDs to wipe my arse before I would part with them. But the Beatle CDs went last week, the Beck ones about a month ago, and the Blur ones (all cleaned off, mind you) went last week. So, I'm down to the bare minimum of posessions I will part with to survive. Damn you, Portland job market! I've been butting my head against this town for too long!

Anyway, now that I'm not tooling around San Andreas I'm going to say a few words about the death of snootiness. Snootiness must die. I know I'm supposed to be all uppity like all my contemporaries about McCartney songs like No More Lonely Nights and Say, Say, Say, and Silly Love Songs, but, truly, those are his best songs. And they are THEE best songs. The ones that instantly grab you and hold on. Those are the best songs. And I maintain that they are also the hardest to write. The simplest, catchiest, most together, tight, melodious music is the most difficult to write. So here I am, trying to pair down all of the crap I've written in the last two weeks, that gaggle of congealed pap that has become the Sailor's Cat song, into a cohesive, simple, well put together little tune. I mean, this song is like some kind of hydra. Every time I try to simplify a thread of melody, tighten up a bass line, or fill in a harmony, another problem pops up somewhere else. I suppose I should be happy that the construction of the song is so tight that each little change ripples throughout the piece and that each piece is dependent on the other pieces for the total cohesiveness of the song. But it sure is frustrating. I feel like I'm trying to bake a cake from scratch. Just a wee bit too little egg, and the whole thing goes.

Anyway, tonight I have promised myself that I will get the song to a point where I can stop and come back to it, if not get it perfect by tonight. I'll keep you updated. In the meantime, if you wander into a store in SE Portland called Stuff, please give my regards to my PlayStation. Tell her I'll be back soon to buy her back. I promise!