Writing Songs Is Like Catching Butterflies

August 5, 2008

Welcome, new visitor! My name is Ari, the man behind Aries9. Here I share my thoughts on music and life, so you can get to know me and my music. Thanks for visiting!

Last night, I started two brand new songs. One a children’s song which will be called “Balloon Boy,” the other a bluesy rock song.

It’s a great sign when I wake up in the morning and can still sing the tunes I wrote last night.

Starting a song is a bit like catching butterflies, or any other wild bug/animal. You just don’t know when it strikes you. I start more songs doing something other than playing my guitar. It usually comes to me when I’m humming while doing dishes or cleaning the house, which was exactly what I was doing last night when the phrase “balloon boy, balloon boy” popped into my head.

I stopped what I was doing and grabbed my guitar and my Macbook. It was a melody that came to me, so I tried to figure out the chords to it — which is a bit of a dangerous step. If it’s a melody I’m humming, I should just capture that first, and then figure out chords to it. Last night I didn’t do that, and I lost part of the melody. It’s as if my memory function gets turned off when I’m in the song-receiving mode. When the antenna is up and receiving signal, it just doesn’t have enough resources to also remember it. As soon as my thought drifts off somewhere, it’s gone.

Usually what I capture is not the initial inspiration, but a “patternized” version of it. I remember bits and pieces and structure them into phrases. They never seem as good as the original improvisation I hummed, but nevertheless most of my songs were born that way and most of them turn out to be very good, so I guess I’ve learned to accept that compromise. The original usually has more variations, though, not as repetitive.

Now that I’m heavier into blogging, I can’t help but see parallels between writing songs and writing words (which I do as a part of songwriting, too). The initial inspiration plants the seed. What I started last night were drafts. My songs usually come to me in the form of verse and chorus — so later I add intros and outros and bridge, then figure out what the songs have to say lyrically. That part is harder, just as structuring and finishing a cohesive piece of writing is more “work” than fun — though it’s a necessary part of seeing the final product, finished and presentable pieces that I can finally feel proud of.

I must say, I’m very excited about my business plan, which allows me to freely express the entire range of my writing. Aries9 is my first love, but Aries9 is also the most ambitious and has very rigorous standards attached to it, in terms of originality and excellence. I would reject most common chord progressions when it comes to an Aries9 song.

But my other “projects” are more relaxed, and I let myself write more conventional songs — titles after a line in a chorus, standard verse-chorus structures, and chords you may have heard before. They are still great songs, mind you. But they don’t need to push the envelopes, at least not as hard.

I can’t wait to share more of my songs with you!

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