The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #110410 Message #2315731
Posted By: Genie
14-Apr-08 - 08:12 PM
Thread Name: Have you written a song recently?
Subject: RE: Have you written a song recently?
Alan Day said [[[
Writing songs is OK if you hit upon a subject to write about and the same goes for poems.]]]
That's kind of the way I am too. Oh, sure, in a songwriting workshop I can take just about any concept or phrase and write a song about it. (I used to do that a lot with the Mudcat Song Challenge!s, though those were pretty much all parodies -- theme-based lyrics set to older songs, usually playing off the original song lyrics.) And I can make myself write a song just to keep my hand in (though I don't do it often, the way I should). And occasionally a song will sort of pop into my head, usually while I'm driving or doing housework and just kind of singing to myself - but more often than not, those song starts don't develop into full-fledged songs.
The two real songs I've written in the past 6 months were both composed for a specific purpose. The last one was a Gospel song I wrote based mostly on Psalm 41, and I wrote it because I was asked to do the offertory for my church and that was the text for the pastor's sermon that day. (As for the "influences" for that one, I wasn't much aware of them, except that parts of my tune sort of sounded familiar - though the overall tune didn't. Upon much post-mortem reflection, I realized that I had piggybacked off melodic phrases from the following: Bad, Bad Leroy Brown; Loves Me Like A Rock (Paul Simon); Put Your Hand In The Hand Of The Man Who Stills The Water; and Say You Love Me (Fleetwood Mac) and pieced the various bits together, along with one other melodic phrase that sounds vaguely familiar (generic?) but I can't place. LOL The song is titled "A New Song In My Heart."
Nothing in that was consciously borrowed, but it can be hard imagining tunes that don't resemble parts you've heard elsewhere, at least in certain portions.
The other is a song I wrote as a tribute to my dad shortly after he died (at age 91). It is a Gospel-flavored country-folk style song, sung from the standpoint of my dad himself, as though he were saying the words. Partly a sort of biography, partly a song of thanksgiving for a rich and blessed life, and partly a "homecoming song." It's called "Lord, Help Me Fly."
Obviously, that one was influenced by the Gospel tradition. The tune and chord pattern are unusual enough that similarities to other songs aren't obvious. I think the song was partly inspired by Terry Pinnegar's song "Flyin' Shoes" as well as other "crossing over" songs such as Rick Fielding's "Sing With The Angels" and older songs like "Deep River," "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot," "I'll Fly Away," etc. But it doesn't sound like any of them.
The only part of the song that echoes any musical phrase is a couple bars of the chorus that sound kind of like the beginning of "I Hear You Knockin'" - but in a different tempo and with a different feel.
Sometimes I think I need to fall in love and get my heart broken again. I used to get lots of songs out of times like that - some of my best songs, in fact. *g*