Random Musings

I am currently working on a new National Day song to be presented at this month’s Songcraft session.

Have been working on it for exactly one week now, but it’s still incomplete. It’s posing quite a few problems, but I kinda like what I have at the moment so I’ll continue working on it.

It’s the usual songwriting process that I’m going through…firstly I manage to come up a few verse and chorus lines that I like, both the melody and lyrics. (Basically the “hook”.)

That was the easy part. That took like less than 5 minutes at the piano.

The hard part is getting the other 80% of the song sussed out.

There are quite a number of lines which I still can’t decide on…and by that I mean both the melody and the lyrics. (To me, they usually have to come together. I don’t really like neither the melody or the lyrics to get too far ahead of the other.)

I’ll show you what my current draft looks like (these are dummy lyrics):

NDP Song

Verses 1 & 2
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipisicing elit,
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt,
ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
quis nostrud exercitation,
ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Chorus
Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit,
in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
occaecat cupidatat non proident.

Verse 3
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx,
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.

Bridge
Sunt in culpa qui,
officia deserunt mollit anim,
id est laborum, lorem ipsum dolor sit amet,
consectetur adipisicing elit!

…

Verse 1 is more or less fully complete. Verse 2 is half done. Verse 3 is totally non-existent at the moment.

The chorus is 3/4 done…I’ve got the first, second and last line down. I’ve been wrecking my brain trying to come up with both the music & lyrics for the third line of the chorus. I feel it’s important to get a good third line cos it would really make or break the chorus. (Well, then again every line is important lah!)

The bridge is fully done, and I’m quite pleased with it…but I’m having problems trying to figure out the chords to go with it. I’m not sure whether to modulate when it comes to the bridge, or to modulate immediately after the bridge.

I usually take time to complete a song, especially a song which I feel might be a good one and which I want to do a good job on.

I work hard on it, and I’m constantly thinking about it.

I think through every aspect of the song, from the meaning which the lyrics in each verse convey, to the rhyme structure, to the chord progression, to the modulation (if any), to the melodic flow, to the accompaniment, to the entire musical effect which the song portrays.

That’s why sometimes, for certain songs which I feel work needs to be put in, I might take up to two weeks to complete it.

I just keep running the lines through my mind until I find a nice solution which I can settle for, and from there I slowly build up the song.

This current NDP song still needs plenty of work. I would say there’s still 50% of it which needs to be completed.

I shall spend my next few days working hard on it!