Music
I write songs for fun. I’m not particularly good at it but since I never planned on making a career out of it, I don’t think it matters.
For years, before there were blogs and facebook, whenever I felt the need to express something that was haunting me, I’d write a song. It was so much fun that I just kept doing it. It surprised me so much to be able to keep coming up with melodies that I actually liked and that I spent days humming to myself, until it became a normal thing to do.
This page is to explain how and why I make my music, for anyone who might care.
If you like my music and want to encourage me to make more, feel free to donate a small amount.
I start with words, usually just a couple of lines, and then sing the words in all sorts of different ways until a melody or rhythm that seems to make sense comes to me. This happens in the shower a lot (must be because there’s nothing else to think about and no distractions – I’ve had to jump out mid-shower to go record stuff lots of times). I then sit at the piano, do the actual hard work of figuring out chords and how to play the damn thing, record it and then I pick up the lyrics again and rewrite them, sometimes dozens of times, until they make sense to me. Doesn’t always work and there are lyrics I go back to again and again over the years. Others fit perfectly right away, usually because there’s something very specific I want to say.
The recording process can be easy or painful depending on how well I’ve learned to play the song before I record it and also how complex it is to play. I’m a terrible piano player. I studied for a few years but I only started in my twenties and knew I was never going to get really good. I can play a few chords and other simple stuff but sometimes I feel the song requires something a little harder and I torture myself until I can play it. Thankfully there are amazing computer programmes these days that allow you to fix all your mistakes if you don’t get it right even after 50 takes.
When the piano is done I record the voice. It’s another 50 takes and it’s never good enough but if it doesn’t make me climb the walls when I hear it, I leave it. Lately I’ve been transposing a lot of the songs to a more comfortable key that suits my low voice.
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Walking Forever
I wrote this song in college. It’s about dreams, trying to capture that moment when you wake up in the morning and still remember the dreams you had and the logic behind them before it all becomes complete nonsense. I was reading Lewis Carroll and Anne Rice and the song ended up a cross between Alice and Mekare with some dolphins thrown in.
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1842
This is one of those songs that has been reworked a million times. The music has always been the same with just a few key changes and some extra detail thrown in, but the lyrics keept changing. It’s a ghost story about a boy who drowned in the lake and has only been able to communicate with one woman, Claire, in her dreams. She helps him get revenge on the people who killed him but when she leaves (or dies, not quite sure but he’s been around for over a century) he’s alone again but won’t stop being angry and so he can’t move on. I started writing the story behind it but never finished it.
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Playground rules
This one is pretty self-explanatory, I feel. It’s about being bullied at school by older kids. I had a tough time during my first year in high-school with some older girls who felt the need to make themselves feel so big and strong by picking on younger kids. I got in a couple of fights because I’d get really pissed off and refused to just take it, and to this day fail to see the difference between a high school playground and a prison yard, quite honestly.
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Dreams
The song is called dreams but it’s actually about getting out of an abusive relationship and how violence will haunt you long after you’re supposed to be ‘safe’. The image of Jack Nicholson in Shinning kept popping up in my head as I was writing it so that may have something to do with the theme.
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Rainy Days
I was walking to my boyfriend’s home and it started to rain. By the time I got there I had all the verses – music and lyrics.
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None of these things
I think of this song as ‘nasty playful’. I like the intro and I love singing it because of the rhythm of the words. My favorite line is ‘I’ll always be there for you, even if you don’t want me to’. I think it sums up the mood of the song nicely.
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Drama Queen
This song is about perception – how other people see you and how you see yourself, how people expect all sorts of things you can’t give and how honesty is not always rewarded or even accepted. I’ve always felt a lot of problems could be avoided in a relationship if people would just say what they think. Musically, I was really pleased when I came up with the piano for the verses. It’s repetitive but it’s fun to play.
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Song for a Friend
The lyrics were written by my husband in 1995. I like them too much to let the song go so I made some music for it. The line ‘I’d hate to find you in a bar’ always makes me laugh out loud.
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Have a Nice Day
I just wanted to write a fun song. For many years my husband and I joke about how we must have somehow pissed off the god of small annoyances and the song is about that – all the little things that can ruin your day or a nice quiet moment and how you keep struggling to not let it get you down.
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Your Face
One of my first attempts at writing lyrics. It’s little more than a simple rhyming exercise.
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Paper bag
I’m amazed at the amount of couples I’ve met over the years who seem to almost hate each other and then one day decide to get married like that’s going to magically solve all their problems. Since no woman ever wants to hear the words ‘don’t marry that guy, he’s an idiot’ you have to swallow your words, plaster a smile on your face and hope for the best. I’ve decided to pour my useless advice into song rather than make enemies.
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