Into the Dark: Considering My Songwriting Practice
Last night I found myself alone again, the sun slowly setting through the windows of the kitchen where I've camped out with my recording gear while Elie and River are visiting family in the Midwest. It's been strange to come home to an empty house; I miss my people like crazy, but I'm also trying to use this small bout of bachelorhood to do some things I don't normally get to do. Last night it was rocking out well beyond bedtime.
I started with some new songs that have been taking shape over the past couple weeks before working on something brand new. Once I had a rough shell I got out my newest songwriting tool: my iPad. Seriously. This thing is invaluable for my creative process. I don't mess with fancy recording gear, just turn on the video camera, which captures surprisingly decent audio. And I go from there.
Last night was a perfect and strange example of what I get up to and how it helps me draft a song: I started out in the low light of dusk, recording something without much direction before doing take after take after take, slowly changing the shape of the new piece. At evening's end I had gone into the dark, all the while leaving a trail of the song's evolution, each growth marked in gradients of light. Literally, the darker it got—and the dimmer the video became—the firmer the song in its shape.
With poems, I lean into the page, working over and over at a single word or line. With songs I work the sonic phrase. I wonder at the feel of the thing before I nail down the words. Regardless, revising songs has never been easy. My songwriting practice has only recently begun to feel similar to that of my poetry.
In a way I wish I could submit these songs the same way I submit poems for publication. It's a winnowing, a test, both of the piece itself and of my belief in it. But seeing as that isn't how it really works with music, I'm going to have to play the untested piece in front of a crowd, trying to decipher some direction from a small reaction at song's end. Then it's back to the videos, which, not too long ago, would have been all memory, a worn notebook, and a pen.
