since i did rough home recordings of all of the songs to work out arrangements and ideas, i thought i might make them available for anyone who is curious enough to hear what i thought wasn’t good enough.  will you agree?  will you say i’m crazy?  there’s only one way to find out!

the first song i’m putting up is called “make me whole”, and it’s available on NoiseTrade for free if you enter your email address and zipcode.  i’ll sign you up for my email list, and you’ll get a shiny free download.  win-win!

you can visit my NoiseTrade page or just use the widget below.  note that the “tip” thing is completely optional!  after all this is a rough home demo we’re talking about.  :)

here’s the hour-by-hour recap of the 24 hours in question:

thursday, january 19th
5am: wake up, drive to airport
7:35am EST: soar into the sky in metal craft
8:40am CST: land in houston
9am: pick up rental car
10:50am: arrive at red tree studio
8:50pm: leave red tree studio
10pm: arrive at lovely people’s home to sleep
10:45pm: sleep

friday, january 20th
4:55am: arise, bleary-eyed.
5am: eat bagel.
6am: arrive at airport for 7:03 flight
6:10am: enter single-lane security line
6:45am: leave single-lane security line
6:50am: arrive at gate
7am CST: barely make it onto plane, row 37 of 38.
10am EST: land gratefully in atlanta

all whirlwindyness aside, it was really a great trip.  now for a bit more detail.

i got to the studio before robbie and met the engineer, Jefferey, and the drummer for the day, Dave Keil.  we chatted while they got the drums set up.  Robbie arrived before long and we chatted about the song – where it should go, what it should sound like, tossed ideas around, etc.  mostly he gave me suggestions and i took them because, well, he’s basically wiser than i am.  :)

we picked a tempo that felt good and i recorded a rough scratch track first, just guitar and voice, to the click track for everyone to play to.  after a brief conversation about feel, Dave tracked the drums and they sounded really good.  drummers amaze me sometimes – guy heard the song for the first time that same morning and then just goes in and does it.  wacky.

then Robbie’s guitar player, Matt Kidd, arrived, who would also be playing bass as well.  he is affectionately referred to by everyone as ‘Frodo’, presumably because he bears some resemblance to said character.  i would have loved to call him Frodo since i feel like that nickname is awesome – but then again i had just met him.  so i called him Matt.  seemed like a safe call to me.   anyway,  he recorded bass next and it sounded great.  i think the chinese food arrived somewhere in here, which was eaten off and on while we kept working.

next i recorded one acoustic guitar track, and then Matt recorded a second.  it’s great watching stuff take shape one track at a time when you record  - each layer  you add just brings the song that much more to life.  first you have a beat and you really start to get the feel of the song.  then you add that low end and the thump is complete.  add acoustics and it gets even more depth.  and then come the electrics.

oh, the electrics.

adding electric guitars almost always seems to really fill everything out.  but you put someone as tasteful and creative as Matt at the helm and things really start to take off.  the sound and atmosphere the guy can make with a guitar is genuinely inspiring.  i told him later that he totally redefined my outlook on electric guitar playing, which is the truth.  i’m extremely proud of and grateful for the work he did on the song, and i hope it really comes out in the final mix so you guys can hear it too.

so then it was time for me to do vocals, which i did.  it took me a few takes to warm up but that is nothing new for me.  i think it was sounding pretty good toward the end there.

we finished everything except background vocals, which is set to happen in a week or so.  then it’s mixing and mastering and the song should be done and in my hands by mid-february sometime.

so far the trip was entirely worth it.  going out on a limb, having a crazy and slightly sleep-deprived 24 hours, driving a lot, meeting new people, leaving my comfort zone a bit, all of it was worth it.  all those guys were great to work with – nice, diligent, professional, had good ideas…it was great.  and if the final mix sounds anything like what we were hearing in the control room at the end of the day…then we are all in for a little treat.  :)

most of the pictures i took were kind of average at best, but i did shoot some video as well and some of that came out okay.  i chopped it together into this to give you a little taste of what the day was like — enjoy!

Watch this video on YouTube.

some of you may have heard of kickstarter – a fundraising site where all kinds of people raise money for all kinds of projects and ideas.  it’s a great idea, and i’ve seen it used to fund everything from saving the blue like jazz movie to brand new artists putting out their first record and everything in between.  you donate money to the cause you like and you only give it if the preset goal for the project is reached.  depending on how much you donate, there are varying levels of perks you get for doing so.

some of you may have also heard of the robbie seay band - a christian band out of texas that makes great music.  one of their songs you might be most familiar with from them is song of hope which has been one of my personal favorites of theirs to introduce at church, etc.

so the robbie seay band did a kickstarter of their own recently to help cover some of the costs to get their new record finished, as they’ve struck out independently again apart from their record label.  i stumbled across said kickstarter thanks to a tweet from the david crowder band (rest in peace).  being a fan of the robbie seay band, i checked it out, and one of the perks aimed at performing musicians caught my eye — donate x amount and you get to go record one of your songs with robbie – and have him sing on it, no less!  especially since i’d been writing new stuff recently we mulled it over for awhile — was this a crazy thing to do?

probably — but what is life without a little crazy in it?  so we decided to give it a go.

we did a bunch of scheduling and it’s almost time — this week i’m set to fly to houston to record one of my new songs!  i’m very excited about it.  bit nervous, too.

i’ll try to take a bunch of pictures and write about the whole experience in detail, because it’s bound to be interesting and fun.  and then before long there will be a new song that i will be very excited to put in your hands!

so wish me luck – i’m off to be a little crazy.  :)

lately i’ve been trying a lot of new things in my writing, as you may know if you tuned in for the ‘week of songwriting‘ project.  i’ve also found i’ve hit a little bit of a rut when writing on the acoustic guitar which, being my primary instrument, is what i use most of the time.  i’ve found myself using similar keys and chord progressions when i write on the guitar and i wanted to try to break out of that a bit.

so what i’m doing now is writing with no instruments at all.  i’ve mentioned before that sometimes words are just words — a cool thought or phrase, something unique, something that resonates, etc — but other times those words have melodies already attached to them.  sometimes i’ll ever hear the chords (which also makes me think i may use the same ones too much).  my aim in songs lately has been to finish songs and melodies just on paper and with a voice, and the plan is to add the music in later.  it’s been a nice change of pace — for one it’s much easier to write when all you need is something to write on and a head to hum in.  i hope it’s also able to break me out of the music rut and make me stop hearing everything with an acoustic guitar base.

what’s also interesting to me is that there is, naturally, more focus on the melody itself because, well the melody is the only thing that’s there at all.  it’s possibly such focus could lead to stronger melodies in general which would obviously be a great thing.  but it’s also been fun to see which melodies i remember a few days later just from looking at the words and which ones i forget.  i don’t know if that’s a usable test for strength of melody or not but it’s interesting in any case.  :)

later on this month i should have the details hammered out about something i’m probably doing in january that i’m quite excited about  – so stay tuned for more details on that.  for now let’s just say that you’ll have a new song to listen to soon and that it will be featuring someone that you may have even heard of.  :)

- -

today was tough, but it is done.  :)

i tried something else different this time — i tried to start from a drum loop.  the thought was that i might get an interesting rhythm idea and thus do something still more different than things i’d done before.  i think it was a good idea in theory, and maybe it was just today, but it didn’t work at all.  it could be that the loops i have are crappy — even when there’s one that is interesting and made for a cool groove, having the loop in the background the whole time felt like it was dictating to me how the song was supposed to feel, and i didn’t like being dictated to by sub-par loops.  :)  everything just sounded corny, to be honest.  what i might try in the future is using the loop just for a rhythm idea and then forgetting it exists.  i don’t know if that would work, though.

so after wrestling with grooves for quite some time i settled on one that seemed to have a tune attached.  i started in the verses again (huh) and sort of went from there.  there are 3 verses, not to mention 3 slightly different prechoruses, so the song might be really long (maybe too long) — not sure yet.

the bridge was last, and i thought i wouldn’t write one, but it seemed necessary.  it’ll be a repeater, probably — either 2 times or 4 times, i don’t quite know.

here she is:

- -

your kingdom come
your will be done
in our hearts
you will overcome

sin will flee
your light in us
our eyes will see
the wonder of all you have done

god of radiance, we live to speak your name 
high and glorious, we live to bring you fame

lead us in
bring us near
show us how to live in you
and not in fear

for we want
to know your heart
to stand in honor and in awe
of all you are

god of radiance be near and reign our life
high and glorious we rise and turn our eyes

even rocks cry out
heaven singing loud 
the name that conquers all
and lifts us up although we’ve fallen, oh

one day we will be 
in your presence finally
unending praise we sing
from this day to all eternity

may we learn
to seek your face
to know your life
to feel your grace

our stains erased
our sins are gone
son of god
(you are) the saving one

god of radiance your name is life in us
high and glorious your light will shine in us

awaken from your sleep  
arise your soul to sing
for the one who’ll reign forever
is the one who set you free 

- -

i think i like this one too, but it doesn’t resonate with me as strongly as some of the others have.

overall i am really, really glad i did this weeklong project.  it made me uncomfortable, forced me into things i wouldn’t have done normally, forced me to be creative and different, enforced hard deadlines that weren’t optional, and proved to me things that i would have previously called untrue (you can just decide “i’m going to write a song now” and it’s actually possible, namely) — and all of these are good things.  it is likely i’ll do this again sometime in the future.

i’ll let them digest awhile and a lot of them will probably get refined more or scrapped altogether.  or in some cases, stripped of their entire tune and redone entirely, as in the case of WOS #3*.  but i’ll keep you updated on what happens to them.  i may also record rough versions of them for you to hear and leave feedback on as well.

anyway, i hope you enjoyed yourself if you were following along.  :)  on we go, to whatever is next.

*it turns out that WOS #3, once i played through it again, started sounding familiar.  as it happens the chord structure and rhythm i chose are almost entirely a replica of ‘cannot escape’.  that probably explains why the chord structure came to me so fast — i’d already written it before.  :)  but hey at least it was one of my own songs i accidentally ripped and not someone else’s.  there is also one line in WOS #4 that bethany thinks is actually part of a hymn or something — i’ll have to look into that too.

- -

hey!  a song written from beginning to end!  who would have thought it was possible?

not me, that’s for sure.

i don’t think i’ve ever started writing from verse one and written the whole thing chronologically.  but sure enough, that’s what happened today.  i didn’t have much idea what i would do today — i kind of thought i’d go with a fingerpicked type of mood and the tune was just there.  there wasn’t an awful lot of editing done, either; i’m sure that will come later once the song has had a few days to digest with me.

the only parts that were hard today was coming up with the back end of the choruses (and, generally speaking, theme of the song).  i would say that i’m still not 100% sold on it as-is, but i really like the idea and feel of it.  it’s definitely an acoustic solo-tune.  it could change.  but that’s always the case.  :)

there was also a particular rhyme in the bridge that i couldn’t figure out for awhile.  i had two words to choose from in the phrase that didn’t rhyme.  i could keep one and cut the other in favor of finding a rhyming word.  but i didn’t know which one to keep.  and then once i did figure it out, it took forever to reword it.  rhymes are not necessary — they can be horrid sometimes.  but sometimes you just need it to rhyme in spots.  you just…do.  there are a lot of rules.*  in any case, my point is you can see why you have to either be some kind of wordsmith or be willing to work on your wordsmithing(? i don’t know) to be a better songwriter.

that’s about it as far as today’s process i think — here’s the beef:

- -

lord you came to me
though i would not see 
you restored my heart
and came alive in me

i do not understand
why you would bother with the heart of
a weak and doubting man
why you choose to let your boundless love 
run loose upon my heart i cannot say
but i will say
i thank you, i thank you

lord you formed the sky
created air and light
wrote your beauty in the heavens
that your glory would shine bright for all to see
for me to see

after all was said and done
you left a throne of glory
to come to earth and call me ‘son’
why you chose to let your boundless love
run loose upon my heart, i cannot say
but i will say
i thank you, lord i thank you

with all life your creation
with all the universe your throne
you still chose to live among us
you still chose us as your own
though my words they fail to give you 
all the love that you’ve shown me
lord hear the simple joyous cry
of a heart that you’ve set free!

i am yours   i am yours
i am yours   i am yours

- -

i still can’t confirm whether it’s getting easier.  this one was done in relatively short order too, but some songs are just like that — the melody is just there and the words come pretty naturally, so it’s hard to say that practice or deadlines or whatever might be the cause.  it could just be ‘one of those songs’.  there’s also a possibility that the songs are getting worse and therefore easier…but i think i’d have a fair sense if that were actually the case.  :)  in any case, i hope it isn’t.  ha.

one day left!

*if you can name that movie i’ll give you a cookie!

- -

i almost didn’t make it today.

i had a busy day and wasn’t sure i’d have time.  i had written nothing at all still at 7pm because i was running all over tarnation taking care of things, having meetings, etc.  i had 40 or so minutes to spare before band practice started and thought well maybe i can write part of it now and finish the rest late night.

to my surprise, i started and finished in that 40 minutes.  crazy.

it helped a little that i knew the kind of song i wanted to write today — a more upbeat, completely praise oriented song.   i don’t know why the tune came so fast – as soon as i played the chords i had it right there in my head.  the first half of the chorus came fast as a result — words just came out.

verses came out next this time.  the transition of the tune was easier than it’s been the past couple days, and the verses didn’t give me too much trouble.  aside from them needing to be longer than i intended…that took some time to come up with the two parts to each verse.  today’s song is also the first to have a prechorus — it just made sense.  i like prechoruses.  today’s are short, too — just enough to get you to the chorus.

the bridge came last and i can’t really tell yet if it’s the weakest part of the song of if it’s on par.  it might need to be rewritten, we’ll have to see.

- -

in your love we find
all we will ever need
we are forever captured
never alone in you

in your heart we are
more ourselves than ever
you are the one that holds us
the one that knows our names

because of who you are
you’ll ever have our hearts

we sing for love of your holy name
we give all we are
there’s no one more holy
no one more worthy than you
oh heaven’s son

you paid the debt we should have paid
you gave your life for us
all glory and honor
wisdom and power is yours
oh heaven’s son

by your light we see
night will never be enough
to hide us from you
to take us from your love

by your blood we’re free
sin it cannot hold us now
stripes they healed us
scars they set us free

because of what you’ve done
your name will overcome

forevermore we praise you lord
your name is great and worthy of all
let all we do give love to you
your name be ever honored
above all other names

- -

can’t believe i made it.  i can already see the value of this exercise — if i hadn’t committed to doing a song every day i just would have said “i don’t have time” and not done it.  but it like, wasn’t an option — i had to do it.  so i did.  imagine that!  pressure can be a good thing.

it’s also interesting to note that this was the easiest so far.  i can’t tell if it’s getting easier as i go along or if this one was just a fluke based on knowing what kind of song i wanted and time constraints…maybe tomorrow will clear that up some.

- -

day 2 is in the books!  it was different than yesterday.

i definitely think that not agonizing over the key and chords at the outset is the way to go with these things, because i could probably spend hours on that part alone.  the key can always be changed later anyway if it needs to be — although so far i think i’m utilizing my range well in whatever key i pick, so i don’t know if there’s even room to go up with any of these even if i wanted to.  but i digress.

today’s tone was a bit more on the desperate side.  basically being at a place where you’re going “i’ve got nothing to give and i really, really need help.”  someone close to me lost their job suddenly the other day, so i suppose that’s most of the impetus for this particular theme.  plus we’ve all probably felt that way and can relate.

most of what i started with ended up scrapped.  i liked the idea of God surrounding us and being all around us but i couldn’t unify a chorus around it.  and then the idea of asking God to bring us hope was in there too, but i canned that also due to previous writing.  (i’m going to try and use the ‘king’ and ‘hope’ ideas more sparingly this go-round since those were heavy thematic elements from the first collection of songs.  i love them, but i don’t want to overdo it and bore everyone, now do i?  :)

the chorus finally came together as a cry for help — each piece is asking God to show up where we have nothing to give.  i liked the central piece being something along the lines of “come lord Jesus” but it gave me fits for a long time as far as how to do it.  everything i came up with just didn’t seem strong enough for your typical ending chorus thought.  so i went with atypical — instead of ending the chorus with the loudest cry of all it ends more reserved, which i think works with how the singer feels after crying out.

the bridge is really not a bridge this time; it’s really more of another completely different chorus.  it came when i was trying to get the end of the main chorus sorted out — something about the way i was repeating the ‘come lord jesus’ line put this high counter-part in my head that i really liked.  i thought about replacing the chorus altogether with this new one, but then thought it would be cool to use it as a chorus-feeling-bridge-thing that you could repeat a lot.  it’s a welcome departure from my usual straight-ahead type of bridge.

i kind of thought this would be a single verse song — one where you’d just repeat the same verse the second time.  just like yesterday i had probably the hardest time getting the verse written.  i liked my first attempt (especially the second line) but it didn’t flow in with the rest of the song right:

here i am with empty hands
set adrift from all my plans
i’m a lost and drifting soul
i’m crying out for you

so i had to can that too.  i kind of felt like quitting for the day at this point.  :)  but the exercise must go on, right?  so i plowed ahead.

i decided to try writing it backwards again and that helped a lot.  i don’t know if it’s just yesterday and today’s attempts or if it’s the nature of songs in general, but having the tie-in there between the verse and chorus has seemed important to me.  i mean i can think of plenty of songs that don’t necessarily do that, so i suppose it’s not a requirement…but it seemed right to me.

the last change i made was when i tried to repeat the same verse — that didn’t feel right either.  so i just made a subtle change between the two which i think works well as the song progresses.

so without further ado: day 2′s product.

- -

here i am, a weary soul
feeling lost with nowhere to go
you alone can break these chains
so i call, i call your name

though i cannot stand
help me rise in you
though i’ve given all i can
give me strength in you
lord i cannot carry on alone
so come lord jesus, here

here i am, a weary soul
though i’m lost i know where to go
you alone can break these chains
so i call, i call your name

come lord jesus, come lord jesus
come lord jesus, hear my cry

come in fire, come in rain
come in sadness, come in pain
in your presence i’ll remain
come lord now, come any way

- -

so the ‘come in fire’ part is the counter-part that’s actually sung over the part above it.  i didn’t multitrack record it so i’ve only heard it in my head, but it sounds good up there.  :)

i think it has potential as well.  i’m mostly excited to see how the chorus-bridge thing work out practically once i’ve played it more.  it certainly could become an 8 minute song if i’m not careful.  that might not be so bad, though.  :)

- -

sitting down and saying “i’m going to write an entire song right now” is almost entirely against my nature.

now if i’m actually inspired, sometimes i’ll sit down with that inspiration and most or all of a song will just come out by its merry self; but that’s not what this is.  this is forced.  it goes against my creative sense.  and the odds of me being inspired at the exact time i’d write seem slim to none.

but that is, after all, in large part why this exercise was so interesting sounding to me; i just wanted to know what would actually happen if i tried it. so i sat down, said a quick prayer for what i was doing, and got to work.

i decided i wouldn’t spend much time thinking about what chords or key was perfect or cool sounding and just started working with the first idea that came to me.  if you’ve followed my blog for a long time you might remember that i have a tendency to write bridges to songs first.  i love bridges and i usually don’t fight that urge.  but for something like this i figured i would be entirely lost if i started at the bridge (who knows if that’s actually correct or not) so i decided i’d better start with a chorus.

i decided not to be too picky about the general idea either — that i’d just commit to whatever idea i had and refine it as well as i could.

the base idea was something expressing the desire to put yourself aside and have God come take over; to submit yourself fully to what he wants, to let him shape you and help you grow.  so shooting from the hip i started with something like this:

when all of me can finally say
Jesus have your way
in my heart, in my life
i am yours

because of the way the chords were flowing, that seemed like only half of the chorus, so i added another half to it in similar form and i was off and running.  but reading over it i wanted to avoid using ‘i am yours’ as a focal point of the song (mostly because of the ‘king forever’ line) so that had to go.  so i reworked that until i was happy then i played through it a few times, trying to see where i might go chord-wise and try to figure out what would come next.  i tried to get into a verse and got stuck pretty fast — wasn’t sure where to go lyrically or with the chords i had.  so i played through the chorus again to see about the bridge.

did i mention i love bridges?  :)  it was like a breath of fresh air to get to write the bridge.  it didn’t take long, either.  lyrically i wanted to make a declaration of dying to myself, and i loved the idea of saying “death to me”, so that was in straight away.  then as soon as i thought about singing i loved it even more — the image of singing “death to me” resonated with me a lot.   i just had to work out the cadence and make it flow right from the chorus and wham! — i had my bridge.

i sang through it some more to get the whole feel and was satisfied.  now back to those pesky verses.

it’s kind of weird to write verses last but that’s frequently the boat i live in.  it’s like going back in time; i have to go figure out how to get you where i’ve ended up, you know?  maybe you don’t.  but that’s how it feels.

i wrestled the verses for a long time.   although i think what helped the most was changing the chord structure.  the one i thought i’d use wasn’t getting me anywhere, but when i switched it, it helped a lot.  the first verse came from start to finish, but then i had issues with how to end it and get to the chorus.  when i finally figured out the chords and melody that would work, i realized i  had to change the chorus because all of a sudden my idea didn’t really flow together.  so i went and hammered that out and played through it some more.

the second verse is always easier to write than the first one.  doesn’t matter which verse you write first — the first or the second — whichever one you write first, the other one becomes easier, at least for me.  once you kind of have the way a verse is supposed to flow it helps a lot and it’s just a matter of figuring out what you want to say.  after a few terrible ideas i ended up writing the second verse backwards.  i figured out how i wanted to get back into the chorus first and then went back and wrote the rest.

i sang through it all again and changed some words that were bugging me and this is where i ended up:

- -

winds they blow around me
waves they rise above me
i will not be shaken
i will not be moved

for my God is with me
he will never fail me
so come Lord, now  erase my doubt
and reign in me

that all of me would finally say
Jesus have your way
all my heart, all my life
completely yours
watch all my failures fade away
into your smiling face
all i am is in you
completely yours
i am completely yours

pull me ever closer
lead me to your heart
give me eyes like your eyes
love for all you’ve made

let me see you moving
help my unbelieving
could i lay my desires aside
and crown you king

and i lay down my life at your feet before your throne
singing “death to me! my heart beats now for you and you alone!”

- -

to be honest i’m actually happy with it, which is something i would not have thought would be possible from something like this.  i’m sure it’s not in it’s final form, but i think the majority of it is there and has potential.

so there you have it — the day 1 recap.  i don’t know if i’ll go into as much detail each time about the whole process, but we’ll just see how it goes.  who knows what day 2 will bring tomorrow?