SCP #31: Popcorn
Today marks the end of my first month of songs and I can't quite believe I've produced 31 new pieces of music in as many days. I can barely remember what I did last week, let alone the first week of this project. I think my next task has to be to book a gig, so that I have an excuse to workshop some of these songs to completion.
I think today's effort is one that is not finished yet. It felt complete enough for recording a first draft, but I think it definitely needs another verse or a new section to really finish it off. I started with phrase from yesterday's melody and reversed the direction of the intervals to create a new melodic phrase, so down a minor third from A changed to up a minor third from A. I then turned this phrase into an ostinato that formed the base of the song.
Lyrically, I took a line from yesterday's writing exercises that didn't make the cut: "the sound is like the crackling of a pan of popcorn". This line was originally about rain, but I wanted to take today's piece somewhere else so I did some brainstorming to find other things that sounded like the crackling of a pan of popcorn. The best idea I came up with was falling in love, a kind of metaphor for the way love can slowly build up inside you until it bursts and crackles. Writing this now I think I need to go back and do some more work on the lyrics, as I haven't quite captured the metaphor I had in my mind.
I find it interesting that I was OK with recording this piece half finished, when yesterday I really wound myself up and felt I had to get that song perfect. I wonder if it's because I was having fun tonight playing around with guitar pedals, and that side of the process distracted me a bit from perfectionism. Or maybe I was just having a bad day in general yesterday.
I really need to try to write and record these songs earlier into the day so that I can play louder than a whisper. My amp was barely above zero tonight, and the stamping on pedals is probably louder than the guitar. I also ended up with a slightly out of focus video, but it was too late to record any more takes so I just left it as is. Take that, perfectionism!