Getting ready for a busy weekend ahead! Saturday is going to be a long day. First, The Rungs will play a benefit for the non-profit organization, Educate the Children, at Lot 10 4-8pm. Then, I will head over to sing with the Sutras, who are opening for The Fly Rods CD release party! This should be fun. Lots of music. I just hope I am over this never-ending cold by then!
I wish this is how every week felt, with a busy weekend of shows ahead. More shows please!
A talented writer and indie music supporter at emerging indie bands music blog reviewed The Rungs EP! It brightened up our day to read such beautiful words about our music, and we’re feeling very thankful for the indie music support that websites like this create.
Check it out the review because it is a good read! http://emergingindiebands.com/the-rungs-synth-dance/
When we started playing our first shows a little over a year ago, I wouldn’t have predicted us evolving into a ‘real band.’ I guess it all depends on what you define as a band, but now we have an EP out, a real music release! And I have stickers now. Band stickers! So based on the music release and sticker scale, I’d say we’re getting pretty close to real band material.
Boy were those first few shows rough. I made silly mistakes, forgot chords, mumbled mixed up lyrics, and the list of goofy errors goes on. Thankfully, Diwas exercised the most amazing patience with my newbie musician growing pains. Because you have to start somewhere right?
Okay lets be real here, I still do all of those things at our live shows, but at least less frequently!
The point is, if any closet musicians are out there reading this, then run out to your nearest open mic! Don’t be afraid of sharing your music because releasing it to the world and letting go of the hesitations is one of the most rewarding feelings! Take it from me and my new EP 🙂 And take it from folks who are supporting indie musicians, like our generous emergingindiebands.com reviewer.
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!
‘Front Desk Runaway’ is one of those songs that Diwas and I have been omitting from our set list. For some reason, something about it just didn’t sit well but we couldn’t pin point exactly what was wrong. So, we decided to avoid this song at our live shows, at least until we would have time to plop ourselves down and give it a good working out. As many of you songwriters know, some songs just don’t quite make the cut. We thought Front Desk Runaway would be one of our ‘close but no cigar’ songs.
Anyway, I’m not sure why we added it to our set last month at the Elephants for Autism Festival. We hadn’t changed anything since I first wrote it back in February, but I guess we both just missed it!
Turns out, we had a lot of fun playing it! So much fun that the song even creeped onto another set list, last Sunday’s show. Not to duplicate content, (I already posted the Front Desk Runaway from Elephants for Autism Festival), but here is a live video of the same song from our Chapter House show last Sunday. This neglected song just needs a little TLC!
Any other musicians out there with their own ‘close but no cigar’ songs??? Lets work on these babies!
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!
Since diving into music making I’ve also become a bigger music fan. This could be indicated by the correlation between the decrease of netflix movies and increase of musician/producer interviews watched on my computer. (trying to keep my math skills fresh here!)
I enjoy watching interviews of my favorite artists explaining their creative processes behind songs and albums and I wanted to write a ‘Top 5 List’ type of blog entry to summarize the key writing methods I’ve observed or practiced.
The thing is, my list of 5 kind of ended up at something around 20! Can you really sum up such a dynamic and creative process in only 5 key points? I concluded that each lyric writing technique deserved to be its own entry 🙂 So here is the first tip:
Accept the ideas that hit you!
My husband will sometimes jump out of bed when we’re falling asleep, grab his guitar and the i-touch I got him for Christmas, and fumble around the room in the dark exclaiming “I’ve gotta record this idea before I forget it!” I used to laugh at him when this happened, but now that I’m working on music, I find myself doing the same thing…
Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat Pray Love, explores this phenomenon in her 2009 TED talk, ‘Your Elusive Creative Genius.’ Is it some kind of genius that strikes us with noteworthy ideas when we are least expecting them? Well not exactly genius the way we define it today, but more like an ancient version of the word. Gilbert explains how the ancient Romans identified a genius as a divine spirit that mysteriously provided artists with rich content and inspiration. Instead of the artist embodying the genius, something that Gilbert believes puts unnecessary pressure on artists today, the Romans envisioned a separation of the artist and the mysterious creative spirit.
For anyone interested in watching Gilbert’s talk, here is a link:
Now I had watched this talk for the first time about a year ago, and one thing I took from it was to be prepared. Be prepared for your ideas to hit you at anytime! Be it pen and paper, or cool trendy smart phone, grab them and record them when they strike! Capture them before they vanish back into the mysterious world they came from, whether its a genius spirit or the intricacies of your subconscious 🙂
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