Song number 6. As if we’re here already. The months fly on by eh…
July 2020 is going to a month I definitely remember for the rest of my life. The songs I’ve written so far, I keep listening to them and man, I love them. They’re all songs I’m really proud of and honestly, I cannot wait to perform them and play them around the world. Any musician/songwriter will know, when you play a song live you tend to think back to where you were and how you felt when you wrote them. The thought of future me thinking back to now whilst singing these songs, especially if I’ stood in front of a crowd of people who are singing them too, it amps me up.
Today I feel electric. It’s day 20. Yesterday I took a screen break so didn’t write a blog post. Anyway, let me take you thought days 16, 17 and 18 which ultimately resulted in me writing “The Shuffle”. It’s a fun song with a real groove so make sure you check it out.
Download the song here.
Day 16
Day 16 started like most of the ‘writing/idea’ days. Setting up my equipment and jamming until I feel something magic. A problem with writing so many songs in quick secession is that you tend to start repeating ideas because your muscle memory kicks in. The first few ideas just sounded far too similar to the songs that have been released so far.
So what do you do when you find yourself repeating ideas? You go different. Really different. As in, you completely switch genres.
Luckily for me, when I was younger I had a guitar teacher who was obsessed with Jazz. He taught me all the Jazz chords; 13ths, 9ths, 6ths, all of the weird ones. So I decided I’d take a leaf out of his book and go for some jazzy chords. A quick tempo change and I found myself playing a shuffle groove and like that ‘The Shuffle’ was born.
I recorded the groove and formed it into a nice structure. I knew the song should be called the shuffle straight away so my first thought for lyrics was a deck of cards. A quick google search of ‘poker terms’ and I found I had some lyric ideas. The idea of a gamble to me relates directly to life. Life is full of gambles, we are constantly rolling the dice; from crossing the road to making decisions like whether to quit your job. It’s all a gamble. Without having to think too much, I’d written the song. Demoed and done.
Day 17
As I said in my last blog post, I have a good routine going for this challenge. Day number 2 of the process tends to be the recording. The way this song is means it was a little tricky to record. The groove is very specific so there was quite a bit of effort put into tracking the guitar to make sure the takes all aligned.
This process is definitely the part I find hardest. Sometimes I can find myself being lazy with the recordings, having a bit of a ‘that will do’ mindset. I think it’s healthy to have the attitude of ‘nothing will ever be perfect’ in terms of playing and technique, choosing to go by feel over perfection, but I think in terms of production and additional extra bits like the ‘da da da’ vocals are always worth putting in. It’s about recognising whether you feel that your art is finished because you feel its the best it can be or whether you’re just being lazy.
I’m stoked with how this tracks recording a production turned out though. Especially with the added vocals.
Day 18
18 is a multiple of 3. This means it’s release day. An easy day for me; I made the video, uploaded and then just made sure to stay on top the social media updates. Easy peasy.
Make sure you check out the song and download it if you want, it’s free. Also I now have the website http://augustradioproject.com as well as a Twitter.
Good times.
BG
benedict. 