you heard it here. this has been a good week. i pushed two more songs through to completion, bringing the total number of finished ones up to nine (including bethany’s song). so the writing continues; i want to try and get a bunch more finished so i can move on to the rough recording stage of the game. i am still playing some of them at church and stuff when the opportunity arises; nothing earth-shattering has been reported by anyone but most people seem to like the stuff or at least be indifferent to it.

the way i see it, if the songs can blend into the landscape without sticking out that’s a good thing — they are perhaps singable and fit well with the other songs we sing in church services. of course pessimistically it could also mean that they are not outstanding enough to really capture anyone’s attention…but then again some of the greatest worship songs in my opinion, when they are introduced, take awhile to catch anyone’s attention; very few of them are beloved right away, so time is certainly involved. but i could speculate all day so….

since i’m trying to write more songs than i need, i had an idea the other day to help narrow them down. once i have the rough recordings of all the ideas, i would make a cd and give it to some friends for opinions. i figure i could get a pretty wide range of personalities and whatnot of interested people and have them give their opinions on the songs — definitely include this one, make sure you leave that one out no matter what you do, etc, etc. i think that would be a cool way to let people hear some stuff and also get some good feedback — plus it would give some friends a chance to be sort of involved in the process which is cool. so i hope to do that eventually.

on an unrelated note, i got the electric set up and it works much better now. also i came up with this crazy riff on it and then some chords but they don’t match up rhythmically and i can’t decide which i like better to use as a basis for a song. bethany likes the chords better, but i like the riff better. it’s a different progression though, and right now i can’t see any words or tune that fit with it and would work in worship music. so there’s that.

as far as the two i just finished:

one is the one that was called ‘rise’ which was mainly the one badly in need of a bridge and whose second chorus line never satisfied me. i gave the tune some small makeovers vocally and just picked my favorite of the second chorus lines, and then gave it a whole new bridge which is now, in my opinion, the strongest part of the song. i’m not sure i think this one will make the cut onto the cd but it’s not bad.

the second is called ‘nothing else’ and it is one of my favorites right now. it used to be:

1. called ‘only to you’ or something like that
2. fingerpicked quietly
3. the proud owner of one of the weakest choruses i’ve ever written

but i’ve stopped all that now. now it is, although still a ‘slower’ song, strummed more fully and sometimes downright violently toward the end, and the chorus is much, much stronger than it was. in fact it contains no remnants whatsoever of the old chorus — not the words or melody. it is wonderfully better than it was and i am quite happy with it. there is one line in the song that does not even attempt to rhyme which i didn’t like initally but now i think it is good that it does not rhyme. you shouldn’t rhyme all the time anyway. you should half-rhyme instead. try it. it is better. or just laugh in the face of convention and don’t even try to rhyme it; just say what you want to say there instead and quit worrying about that pesky word that just hangs out there. brilliant.

the work continues….