FAWM: February Album Writing Month 2004

numero 15 - in my back tavern years
WMA file here
el fin de FAWM
i planned to write a dylanesque ballad (or dylany ripoff, depending on how you look at it) all along, and like the spanish song, it always seemed like something i really wanted to labour over. so i kept putting it off.

in the end, i threw this down a little too fast to have a solid lyric, but i might work on it. ten monotonous verses. i was debating whether i should do straight monotonous music or throw in some twists. however, since i was late recording this, i decided to play it straight. it still turned out funkier than i thought it would.

i don't know where burr, hopper, and eric stand on dylan, but i figured i should throw this in here.
WARNING: EXTENDED NOTES ABOUT DYLAN INFLUENCES... More...

numero 14 - Michelada
WMA file here
from early on, i planned to write one song in spanish. and i decided on this topic weeks ago. but i put it off because... well, my spanish isn't very good, so i figured i'd have to put significant effort into it.

this is mostly a true story pulled from my holidays in mexico two months ago.
More...

numero 13 - F WMA file here
7 couplets does not a sonnet make.

the only reason i did this was because i like the first couplet (which is also the last). i thought i'd just fill in 5 other reasonable couplets and record the thing, but it got out of hand. oh well. More...

numero 12 - bridges are for jumping WMA file here
i just liked the idea...

bridges are good for crossing or for jumping. More...

numero 11 - gold WMA file here
gold is a pretty tired alaska topic, and i didn't really grab it and shake it up, either, although i meant to do so. still, i like some of them classic gold rush tunes that get tossed around for the tourists. and does my bio mention that i like robert service, the bard of the north?

my original intention was to alternate the verses of this song with something much rockiner,
but i ran out of time...

climate change... how i learned to love the bomb... etc. More...

numero 10 - the radius WMA file here
when i finished #9 on monday morning, that was the end of all my big fragments. i had a list of titles/ideas, but few words and no music. so... the last >4 are from scratch.

here's the first offering, which was only a title/idea as of late february 24. it's a bit of an alan turing, as the idea is much bigger than my 2-hour abilities...

but i thought i'd give it a shot.

there are some very rough spots on the demo... gotta love 'em.

after a day of meditation...
my fave bit is mostly stolen from others: "maybe we're perfect now" is more or less GOOD WILL HUNTING and "each thing in its place is best" is word-for-word ripped off from a longfellow poem.
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numero 9 - spit shine WMA file here
again... a bit rushed. i like some of this, but it's far from ripe.
not a goofy song, anyway... or not meant to be... a bit amorphous right now.

this is the third song i recorded between 10 pm and 5 am this morning,
and i was not being very particular with arrangements. time may change these... More...

numero 8 - jennifer ... WMA file here
(or "jenny" or "jealous again"...)

burr totally beat me to the drunken bar song, and then to the hasty tribute song to movie jennifer. of course, our jennifers differ in several ways... i had much higher hopes. not even good enough to be called a weird al ripoff.

the haste of the fawm is bringing out the goofy songs in me. usually i write down lots of titles, a majority of them are silly, but most of the silly ones never get written. i've been recording a album-like thing lately collected from the last 4 years of songwriting, and most of the songs are dead-serious.
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numero 5 - nasty little heart WMA file here

from now on i'm going in order. #8-11 coming right up.

there were little candy hearts in the office last week, and at one point i looked through them (touching almost all of them) for a good message. i put one my pocket hoping it would get all dirty and then i could give it to somebody and have a good laugh. the idea of a nasty little candy heart in somebody's pocket sounded like song material...
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numero 2 - gilligan's wake WMA file here
hooray. number 2.
i am way behind.

what do you get when you try to record an ill-conceived pogues/gilligan's island song with only a guitar and a vague idea of how to work pro tools? More...

numero 7 - sunshine & moonshine & you WMA file here
the technology aspect of fawm is killing me. as if the songwriting wasn't enough of a problem. i should have 8 by day's end, but only 4 or 5 recorded, and maybe zero mp3s...

i did set up some mics to record to midi in my cabin, which is a fun development.

and i wrote and recorded my first "shine" song on sunday morning. it's a hackneyed sound, i suppose, but i've never written anything like this, so i like it and have fun playing it. that might wear off. More...

numero 6 - scurvy song* WMA file here
i really hope to put some decent demos up tomorrow, including the challenge song. i started 2 very different shine songs...

valentines day was also winter folk fest day here in fairbanks, and i played this new thing which i just wrote last night... it went very well... if i had a copy of today's performance, i'd post that as my demo, but for some reason they didn't broadcast or record the show (they have in the past). More...

numero 3 - writers block (it's you) WMA file here
YEAH! Pro Tools practice
never used it before. come hear the fruits of my first play session...

i'm numbering them according to the order i started them... this one i started feb. 4, as i was sitting at the coffeehouse not really coming up with anything. with my limited time, i figure i better run with any idea that pops into my head, so i thought i'd write a song about feeling the FAWM pressure. since hopper had put up 5 or 6 songs by then, he made the subsubtitle. i thought i'd start it like a guy trying to write a tough love letter and not getting it done... then toward the end i'd shift to the fawm theme.

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numero 4 - we all reinvent the wheel .wma file here
i like the way this song is working out, but you might not be able to hear it since i'm still having trouble with "mp3s" and "software". maybe you can play the windows media audio file till i get smarter. i think i'd like to make it a duet... make the overlapping lines into a bit of a dialogue... i didn't practice the higher vocal till i recorded it, so that was a stretch.

i'll probably refine a lot of the lyrics and the structure, as they just kinda grew out haphazardly while i sang the repeated line over and over and over. i have in mind the balance between "you don't need to reinvent the wheel" and "you only learn by trying (and seeing what works)". seen through the eyes of two people goin' down them same hard roads that we all gotta go down. shucks.
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numero 1 - dusty boxes - .wma file here
i'm submitting this so that FAWM seems slightly less like matthopper.com

this is definitely a song that wouldn't've seen completion were it not for FAWM...
the crucial last line is missing. written between 10 and midnight last night.
i'll comment more later...
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(LATER)
well, i haven't grown to love this song, but if this turns out to be the worst of my fawm collection, i'll be pleased. i wrote all the words before thinking of a melody, which is something i rarely do. i sat down at a coffeehouse and tried to think of something appropriate for the first song of the project. i was doing some preemptive thinking, realizing how i'm really glad to have some of the things that i've forced myself to write in the past. some of them evoke memories and images more strongly than anything else can. and then i personified that into a girl, as i usually do. thought about somebody come and gone, and people scrounging around for the tiniest shred to remember her by. a tiny bit of that came out in the words. More...

fight test
i'm gonna have to learn to make mp3 files.
from way lo-fi demos.

nice.

no major chords.