gschmitt Blog – The SONG, a new idea

Hey all – thanks for caring enough to keep up with what I’m doing. I know I’ve been blogging a lot about the things that have been keeping me busy and the different gigs I’ve been getting, but I thought I’d start talking about being a songwriter and some of the things that go into it from my perspective. It’s obviously the heart of what this whole site is about. I’ve always considered myself primarily a songwriter and I [seriously] have a catalog of more tunes than I can remember at this point. (And for those of you who are curious as to the name of your friend ‘gschmitt Grapeharvestmusic’ in Facebook, the ‘Grapeharvestmusic’ is the name on the catalog’s publishing.)

In this one, I thought I’d focus on how I START writing a new song with more to follow in later posts. I would say that the most important part of working in a creative field if you’re a person like me is the quality of the original concept. It seems like a no-brainer, but I know a lot of people who put more emphasis (or maybe even EQUAL emphasis) on the later development stages and it seems to work well for them. That’s cool, but for me, those later stages only happen if the first idea gets me excited enough to go through them. I have never said “that might be a cool song” when I work with an idea. It’s either “keep it – it’s going to be good” or “dump it – you could do better.” With time, my “dump it” filter has definitely set itself higher, but nothing else has changed all that much.

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself is that I can’t really be too conscious in a song’s conception. In fact, the more I “step back” from what I’m doing, the better it all becomes. Whenever I felt myself in a creative slump (and everyone gets there from time to time) and sat down TO write a song, it always wound up feeling contrived and disingenuous; like a middle school book report. Indulge me here, but there has to be a little magic for me to keep the idea around. As I’ve written more and more, the thing I have become more conscious of is HOW it starts and I’ve pretty much figure out that it’s any one of 3 ways:

1. I get a little hook in my head from just randomly, unconsciously singing like a mental patient. This can happen when I’m walking through a supermarket, sitting in traffic, daydreaming while I’m supposed to be doing something else, ‘not working’ at work, etc. The funny thing is that I don’t pick up on it right away; it takes some ‘marinating’ time before I become conscious of it. Once I do, though, I pick up the guitar and quickly harmonize it (write chords/lines to go with it) and get it in the tape recorder/computer to be developed later. (remember how I said “more tunes than I can remember?”….you should see the “song ideas” files.)
2. I’m playing around with an instrument and a vocal melody just presents itself. It used to only happen when I was playing guitar, but lately, I’ve found that anything can trigger it. I’ve thought of some of my personal favorite tunes from behind the drum set, the bass guitar, the piano, and my latest new friend: the bass xylophone. (too damn cool, that one)
3. A lyrical idea comes to me that works so well, I can simultaneously hear the melody in it as I say it out loud.

Of the three, I really don’t have a favorite; each one’s exciting when they come….and the only thing I can really control is the surrounding environment to create a mood. But I want to be clear here: I don’t think there’s a “creative mood” like I’ve heard some people talk about. There are just moods that trigger ideas that people who are more in touch with being creative will capitalize on. I read once in a book on writing poetry about how, in order to facilitate more creativity, poets should be aware of what was going on around when they created their favorite pieces; the lighting, the emotional state they were in, the time of day, how tired they were, if they were hungry, etc. This was in order to re-create the same environment to see if the magic happened again.

This idea has definitely helped me; it’s at least opened my eyes to the fact that you have to be aware of the things you can control in order to help along some of the things you can’t.

Thanks for reading, all. I appreciate it. I’d love to hear what any of you have to say, so be sure to comment and give me ideas for new blogs in the future.

Take it easy,
Greg