I’m on a roll with the lyric videos!
Seems like I’m still pretty knocked out with this cold. Nothing to do but drink hot tea and make lyric videos! Since I can’t really sing at the moment, (finally getting my voice back after losing it a few days ago), I might as well make it easier for others to sing my songs instead!
Here is Missed Connections:
A change in arctic winds has brought super cold air down to the northwest.. and it is unbearable! It finally got the best of me and I’ve been knocked out with a bad cold the past few days. To help make the most of it, I made my first lyrics video while laying in bed with hot tea.
I really enjoy singing along to lyrics videos, and I always look for something basic, just the lyrics, clear and easy to read, so this is what I wanted to go for. I chose ‘Confluence of Anomalies,’ since it seems to be my favorite song off of our recent EP right now.
Not being the most skilled in video making, I started very basic, using iMovie on my MacBook. I created an image in Photoshop with our logo and the song title, and another image that was all black, to serve as the background for the lyrics. I dragged the images and the mp3 file into iMovie, and typed the lyrics in white font using the text boxes. It was easy to increase or decrease the duration of each text box so that they lined up with the song.
Here is the final video:
Now the weather is looking much warmer today, the snow is melting away, and I’m starting to feel a little better.
With Halloween just around the corner, it is a fun time to think about characters!
Sometimes lyrics can reflect our deepest most personal thoughts and experiences. While I love to draw from my own memories to construct a song, it is equally rewarding, and sometimes even more fun, to put myself in the mind of someone else! Whether a dear friend, an acquaintance, a certain stereotype, or a made up character, playing a role can make for a great song!
Actors go to great lengths to get into a character. Tom Cruise apparently dressed up as a Fed Ex delivery man to sneak through a crowd without getting noticed, just as an assassin would, in preparation for his role villain role in Collateral. Actors might completely change their lifestyles and take on new hobbies for a short period of time while preparing for a difficult role.
For songwriting though, I say sitting quietly and thinking about the character you want to represent is more than enough. Perhaps with a glass of alcohol or some nice warm tea. Decide what and who your story is about.
Who: Depending on if they are strong or frail or troubled or content, etc, completely changes the perception of the experience. Think of someone, anyone, and channel the little nuances that make them so unique. Do they have a short temper? Unreasonable expectations? Unyielding patience?
What: Sit quietly and try to imagine something that you might not have exactly experienced before; a place, certain gains or losses, heartbreaks, historical events like the great depression or the infamous potato famine, a struggle with sexuality, a good day, a bad day, whatever you want to dive into.
Explore yourself! Then let the music and lyrics evolve 🙂
Right now I am imagining being on a beautiful island in Thailand, the song is very sunny!
I found that my mind flows most freely while in transit. For some reason when I’m walking, driving, or riding a bus, I just get flooded with ideas. Then when I arrive to the destination, my mind is distracted by the purpose of my trip and all of my ideas escape somewhere! Weird right?
Oh well, as weird as it may seem, I think we all have to find our special place where those creative juices can flow. When I think of writing, I picture an image of someone sitting at a desk with pen and paper in hand, furiously recording ideas. For some, that might be just the case, but if that doesn’t work for you and you find yourself stuck, why force it? Go sing in the shower, get out in the sun, go for a run, take a nap…whatever gets the brain-engine started. Sometimes we’ve gotta get creative to get creative!
So genius could strike at any moment, or a light bulb can suddenly flash on in your head, but don’t just wait for the ideas to come. Seek out inspiration, listen to everything around you, be a sponge and soak it all in! Sometimes inspiration can come from the funniest things. Like at work in meetings, on the bus talking to a stranger, waiting in line at the grocery store, the list goes on and on. I love it when my friends use silly expressions and cheesy metaphors because it gets my mind spinning with words. Be a sponge all day long and you’ll fall in love with the littlest things! 🙂
Here are the lyrics to our recently released song, Confluence of Anomalies!
Verse 1
Confluence of anomalies
Weather man explain to me
I couldn’t sleep last night
Cold air in my window tight
Verse 2
Boy you’ve got a lot of nerve
Climbing up your learning curve
World looks rough from here
And all it took to get you there
(Repeat)
Chorus
From a satellite
A sea of lights
Giving you away
And there are no lines
In real life
Dressing up the day
Verse 3
Run business as usual
Isn’t it unusual
So hard to break a trend
Even with an incentive
Verse 4
Weather knows no boundaries
Latitude complexities
Try to draw relationships
All this based on estimates
Chorus
From a satellite
A sea of lights
Giving you away
And there are no lines
In real life
Dressing up the day
And it looks so small from here
What a shaky sphere
Only currencies of lights
Giving you away
(repeat 3x)
And it looks so small from here
What a shaky sphere
Only currencies of lights
And we’re all here
The end!
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