I took part last year, and wrote loads of great songs (and a few silly ones). But the ones that really caught my imagination were the 12-second songs I wrote right at the end. So this year I’m writing short songs. Not 12 seconds, but definitely under a minute.

I’m going to find 50 brilliant tweets and set them to music. I’m calling it Tweet Suite:

Help me find the best tweets

So far I’ve found a few sites that claim to list the “best tweets”, but none of them have really delivered what I’m looking for. Maybe you can help. I’m not after funny tweets – setting them to music would be weird and horrible. I’m looking for the kind of tweets that make Twitter seem worthwhile. The tweets that inspire you. The tweets that restore your faith in humanity without being humourless. You know what I’m talking about.

You can submit tweets (or tweeters) to me in a few different ways:

• Tag them 5090tweetsuite on Delicious.
• Retweet and tag them 5090tweetsuite on Twitter.
• Send me a link on Twitter, email or Facebook
• Post a comment on this article.

I’ll put up a page with the candidates and the songs as I write them once I’m a couple of weeks into the challenge. Wish me luck, and keep your eyes open for brilliant tweets…

In case you haven’t come across it, AudioBoo is an iPhone app that lets you record a short podcast (5 minutes max), title it, tag it, attach a photo and upload it straight to the AudioBoo website, which is set up like Twitter (you follow people, they follow you, everyone has a party, etc.).

Idea 1: An insight into the songwriting process

My first inclination was to record song fragments or ideas as I write them. It’s a romantic idea, that listeners could have a direct line into the songwriter’s head as he toys with fully-orchestrated sections of potential song. But that doesn’t really fit my way of writing. I tend to have an almost complete lyric before I start strumming, and a podcast of me reciting half-written lyrics doesn’t sound great. It’s not that I’m precious about my unfinished works (I tend to publish first, rewrite later), but a photo of a notebook or a Tumblr post would be more useful than AudioBoo.

Idea 2: Bootlegging and reviews

Secondly I tried AudioBooing gigs. I recorded one on the way to see Little Feat, with the intention of using AudioBoo to capture the atmosphere of the gig later. But I was having too much fun to bother fiddling with technology, and there was zero signal in the Academy anyway. And if I can’t upload straight away, I lose the motivation pretty quickly.

I had more luck at an acoustic Stornoway gig at the Rusty Bicycle, where I embarrassed my brother by sliding my iPod Touch across the floor (Ghostbusters style) to record a song before videoing it with the N95 in one hand and taking stills with the ES400D in the other. Because the gig was completely acoustic and I was two feet from the band I could get decent recordings of Fuel Up and We Are The Battery Human. But I don’t think AudioBoo is going to be the next killer bootlegging app.

Idea 3: Covers and quick demos

I was working on a cover of The Beatles’ It Won’t Be Long for Roger and Dave‘s Complete Beatles On Ukulele project, and my third AudioBoo strategy was to record a quick version of that mid-rehearsal. That worked pretty well, helped by Colt Seavers‘ AudioBooTH project, which gives context to musical and art-related boos (and happened to be in the middle of a “covers” week). A few days later I recorded a Sunday morning cover of a Little Feat song. I think using AudioBoo to record quick and dirty versions of songs (covers or not) is something that I’ll be playing with more.

Idea 4: New life for unsung classics

I had an idea a while ago that I could use AudioBoo as a dumping ground for the best of the old, unfinished songs that don’t make it onto albums and websites. I occasionally listen back my archives of demos and experiments, and I always come across something brilliant. It might not be a polished recording. It might not even be much of a song. But it’s a snapshot of a particular interesting moment.

I guess it’s like the “outtakes and B-sides” you get on albums and DVDs. There’s something very immediate and personal about them. Thinking about it now, some of my favourite albums are made up of tracks that didn’t make the cut. Hoy Hoy is a wonderful Little Feat double gatefold album of live tracks, demos, alternate takes and b-sides. Naked Baby Photos is the same for Ben Folds Five. In the post-album digital chaos of ihatemornings.com, maybe AudioBoo can be my outlet for outtakes and B-sides.

On the train home from work my iPod shuffled me up a song I wrote for the 50/90 challenge last year, and which never made it onto my website. It’s called Putting Your Hand In The Blender Again, named after a phrase my girlfriend uses to describe somebody revisiting a bad relationship. In a fit of excitement I recorded a quick intro, then rummaged around for some jack-to-phono leads, plugged my laptop into my stereo, plugged my stereo into my iPod and recorded the song into AudioBoo in glorious hi-fi stereo:

Getting a line input into AudioBoo

If you’re an AudioBoo user, you might be wondering how I managed to get a line in to AudioBoo. It just records from the mic, doesn’t it? Not if you have a 1st Generation iPod Touch and a MicroMemo mic. This random combination gives you a stereo mic or line level input into which you can plug just about anything. I’ve bookmarked a couple of useful links to get you going.

If you have an iPhone or iPod Touch you can get AudioBoo from the App Store (for free!), and if you don’t you can still check out my boos on the website.

[The track isn\'t included in the RSS feed. Visit the blog to listen. ;o]

Beaten Up was an exercise in textbook songwriting, and it turned out really well. It doesn’t push any boundaries, and it’s not edgy in the slightest, but it works as a song. And I like it.

I’m trying to relate each of these articles to an aspect of songwriting or creativity. This one is about writing songs by the book.

Starting with the title

During the 50/90 I was very good at always having my notebook to hand so I could record title ideas. I overheard someone say they felt “beaten up” and wrote it down. When I sat down with a guitar to start writing the song I wanted to find the perfect way of setting the title, so I spent a while singing “Beaten up” to a load of different tunes and rhythms. It’s always a good idea to try to match the contour and rhythm of natural speech for a title. It doesn’t always work, but it’s a good start. In this case, it was perfect. By this time I was singing “Beaten up and beaten down”, which I liked. Say it aloud, and you’ll naturally raise the pitch on “up”, and lower it on “down” because of the structure of the phrase. It’s a bonus that the cheesy word-painting is built in…

Textbook structure

With the chorus saying (essentially) “I feel crappy”, I started building a structure around it based on the tried and tested “contrasting sections” model. If the chorus is set in the present, you set the verse in the past or future. The chorus is a general statement, so the verses deal with specifics. The chorus melody goes quite high, so the verse melody is lower. And so on. I ended up with something like this:

• Verse 1: I’m sitting around with friends telling sad stories about you.
• Chorus: I feel crappy.
• Verse 2: I’m trying to think of a fun story but I can’t.
• Chorus: I feel crappy.
• Bridge: I just want to be able to tell them something great about you.
• Chorus: But I feel crappy.

Simple yet effective. There’s no need to over-complicate song structure. In fact, it’s usually a bad idea. People have very specific ideas of what to expect from a song, and usually you only ever want to surprise them with one aspect. Pop songs are all about familiarity.

Chord progressions

I wanted this to be a real campfire strumalong of a song, so I went with some classic progressions in D. The verse progression (G, D/F#, Em, D) was straight from Van Morrison’s Caravan (the Last Waltz version with The Band, obviously ;o).

The bridge (D/F#, G, A, D/F#) was a slight variation on the Alanis Morissette Ironic chords with the classic guitar trick of holding the same notes on the top two strings and changing the bass note. I like a bridge that teases you with inversions, never quite hitting the root of chord I, so when the chorus kicks in you get a real sense of return. If I had used a straight D chord at the end of the bridge progression you would get the feeling that it was complete without another chorus, and that’s not good. A bridge’s only harmonic function is to make you ache for the chorus.

The only harmonic surprise in the chorus is the F#7 chord on “back around” (lifted from Ben Folds – think Tom and Mary) that gives the section a bit of character that it might otherwise have lacked.

Melody

The melody is quite simply built around the chord notes, but it has a couple of good hooks: the title line, and the “sick and tired” line, which I used as a piano hook to tie it all together. My favourite thing about the melody is the rhythm. It sings really easily, and I spent ages getting all the lines to scan perfectly. Sometimes that means ditching great ideas because their syllables just don’t fit. But you end up with a song that sounds familiar, catchy and easy to play along to. Beautiful campfire fodder.

Click here to view the embedded video.

You can buy it (or even download it for free!) in my new online shop.

So far I have written 50 songs and I have ^KBCOUNTDOWN||fiftyninetydates$ days left to write the other 0!

Check out all the song demos and videos over at my 50/90 page, and if you want to be helpful, give me a song title!

Photo by BdwayDiva1

Good question. Not anyone you’ve heard of, that’s for sure. In fact, although I fully intend to get my songs covered by big names, to cowrite with rising stars and to make a fortune in royalties from random Japanese TV ads, for the moment I’m writing for me.

h3. Who am I?

Andrea Stolpe “wrote about”:http://andreastolpe.berkleemusicblogs.com/2008/08/04/write-what-you-know/ authenticity of songwriting this week, and it hit a nerve:

bq. Back then it was Nashville, and so I my plan was to dive right into the types of songs that were making it as singles and basically write my version of them. This was always a frustrating endeavor. Just when I’d think I’d get the groove down, acceptable lyric material, and some good melodic ideas, I’d realize I’d be writing too close to the original. Even if I managed to draw a clear line between my tune and the one that inspired it, I was left with something that was an excellent caricature rather than an innovative trend-setter.

The only way I’m going to end up with a catalogue of great songs is to write for myself. Not for myself as an artist – I’m not planning to get famous that way – but for myself as a songwriter. Of course, this leads to some tricky decisions, and some serious self-assessment. If I’m writing for myself, how am I going to get the songs out there? And how am I going to build the reputation I will need to get them covered?

One way is to network and schmooze my way to the top. Although I’m not great at this I’m getting better and networking is absolutely necessary to get anywhere. But… there’s not much point networking if you can’t back it up with at least one success story. I will get my name known, which is a start. And it’s always fun to learn the new-media-speak lingo…

The second way is to sing my songs to people, either live or recorded. It seems like a weird way to do it because the songs are supposed to be for other people. But I can’t afford to produce top quality demos with session singers and producers. I know that I can deliver my songs the way they were conceived and with the right kind of attitude. The songs will need to stand on their own at some point and if they can impress through my strumming and wailing, they can go a long way without me.

h3. Brand awareness

So I need to build a solid brand around “Ben Walker, Songwriter”. Which is what I’m starting to do. I have started a good songwriting “blog”:http://www.ihatemornings.com which is starting to get noticed, I have introduced myself to hundreds of people as a songwriter, and I am writing songs (almost) full time. The blog, my business card and “all”:http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=529602587 my “online”:http://twitter.com/ihatemornings “profiles”:http://www.last.fm/music/JB+Walker are tied together by the “I Hate Mornings” “cartoon dude”:http://www.ihatemornings.com/images/2.png and I’m working on a redesign of ihatemornings.com to clean it up and highlight the good stuff without losing the cute, hand-drawn feel that people always seem to like.

But what about the songs? The production rate of songs for the “50/90 Challenge”:http://5090.fawm.org/writers.php?id=1747 is forcing me to write in a very natural style – I don’t have time to pastiche or pretend or rework. The process is starting to reveal my “true” style, which is (rather unsurprisingly ;o) sort of folky-country-pop with quirky and/or funny lyrics. It’s not everyone’s bag, but it’s what I do best. And if I can be known for writing great quirky pop, I’ll be a happy man.

h3. Going forward…

By the end of the summer (and the end of the 50-song challenge), I’m going to have a couple of healthy heaps of quirky folk/pop classics on my hands. October will be the month of rewrites and rehearsals, then I’m going to get back into the gigs as Ben Walker, Songwriter (hopefully with the “Legendary Swordsmen”:http://www.legendaryswordsmen.com rhythm section). I’m not going to waste my precious evenings playing no-hope support slots in Oxford pubs. I will organise decent gigs, roughly once a month, with other songwriters, and I’ll put on a good show. ‘Cos if I don’t do it myself, nobody will.

children on unicycles

“Nick”:http://www.nickfuckinggill.com is drawing graphs to keep track of how many words he’s written each day. That smacks of meta-productivity and procrastination to me, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. Either way, his admission prompted me to calculate my song rate so far in the “50/90 Challenge”:http://5090.fawm.org.

50 songs in 90 days means 0.556 songs each day. That’s a pretty heavy songwriting schedule. So far I’ve managed “five”:http://5090.fawm.org/writers.php?id=1747 in 26 days, which gives me a rather disappointing rate of 0.192 song/day. That’s no good. I’m running at just over 1/3 of the minimum rate. I need to write 45 songs in the remaining 64 days (a rate of 0.7 songs/day). That’s insane. I need to run some kind of songwriting “dash”:http://www.43folders.com/2005/09/08/kick-procrastinations-ass-run-a-dash.

So from now on, no more Mr Nice Guy. I’m going to spew out a song every single day. Even if it means I don’t eat, sleep or leave the house. I’m afraid we’re talking communication blackout (apart from “Twitter”:http://twitter.com/ihatemornings, of course ;o) until October 1st. Don’t expect me to answer the phone or read email. Facebook is definitely out. If I have a really productive day (ie. write two songs) I may resume contact long enough to shoot out a few 1-liners.

A song a day wouldn’t be too bad if I had nothing else to do but life gets real sometimes, and I’m taking on some web development projects to pay the rent. Speaking of which, if you need any XHTML/CSS/PHP coding done, I’m your man. ;o)

Wish me luck. I may be some time.

The list looks like this at the moment:

“Glider Man“:http://5090.fawm.org/songs.php?id=38

“Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall“:http://5090.fawm.org/songs.php?id=556 (lyrics finished, no demo yet)

You love what you already know (most lyrics done)

I Just Want To Be Pretty (transvestite self-pity song, started writing with Ben Salmon)

Cat and Fish (half written on the plane to Boston)

h3. Songwriting on steroids

I’m happy with the progress. Forced productivity (or active creativity) is quite amazing. It makes you realise that there’s never an excuse to sit around not writing. If you want to be a songwriter, write songs. By the end of the summer I will be a fully fledged songwriter, with a catalogue of songs in different styles and a work ethic to die for. ;o)

One thing that has suffered is the blog. Now that I’m spending any downtime writing song ideas, I haven’t been scribbling the blog ideas like usual. I’ll find the balance soon.

h3. Why would I do this?

I was settling in for a 3-month writing session this summer anyway, and the 50/90 Challenge coincides exactly with that. More importantly it offers me a structure for my writing, on many levels. The 50-song target means that I will have to aim to write a song a day for at least 4 days each week. That forces me to imagine, write, rewrite and demo each song in less than 8 hours (much less if I want to earn any money over the summer ;o). So I also get a daily structure out of it. More of that later.

The second main benefit of the 50/90 is that it offers me community involvement and feedback. The 50/90 “forums”:http://5090.fawm.org/forum.php are hyperactive, with hundreds of songwriters posting daily on their progress, frustrations and adventures. And because I will upload a demo of every song I write to the 50/90 site, other writers can give me feedback on my work, which is always invaluable. I will also be posting here on ihatemornings.com with songwriting stories for the creative crowd and tall tales of my time locked up in the barn for family and friends. ;o)

I’m also looking forward to cowriting a few of the 50! I’ve talked to Rob Stevenson (“A Silent Film”:http://www.myspace.com/asilentfilm front man and songwriter) about trying some cowriting sessions over the summer, and Ben Salmon has already pitched me his vision for a “Hinton-in-the-Hedges”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hinton-in-the-Hedges,_Northamptonshire concept album of folk-country comedy songs. I can’t wait!

h3. The routine

To meet the challenge I will need to run a pretty tight ship, with early mornings and some serious concentration. This is my plan (which will undoubtably change):

• 10 song ideas before breakfast. I find sitting on the lawn with a cup of tea is ideal for this.
• Hearty breakfast (probably porridge, with some sort of banana, blueberry and maple syrup combo), while picking 2 or 3 ideas and storming the brain.
• “Berkleemusic”:http://www.berkleemusic.com songwriting assignments (1 hour).
• Short walk
• Write the song. 2 hour limit. Rewrite and craft as much as possible, but try to get at least 2 verses and a chorus.
• Lunch
• Demo (simple piano/vocal or guitar/vocal)
• Email, feeds, etc.
• Listen back. Re-record if necessary.
• Upload. Blog, forums.

I usually spend days working on a demo but for the 50/90, that’s not possible. I’ve fired up the old laptop with Pro Tools, which means two things: that I have a permanent recording setup, which is super-conducive to creative flow, and that I don’t have all the usual MIDI instruments and loops that I usually tinker with in Logic. It’s going to be simple and pure. No click. No MIDI. No options. ;o)

h3. Prolificacy is underrated.

I overheard some random dullard shouting about art in a café this afternoon, saying that true artists should never be forced to create, that they should be allowed the freedom to create only when inspiration strikes. “Balls to that!”, I shouted across the room. “Waiting for inspiration is just a pathetic excuse for not understanding your creative process!” Well, that’s what I might have shouted had I been the kind of random dullard who shouts in cafés. ;o)

I’m a convert to the Jack London school of creative thinking: “You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.” (via “fawm.org”:http://www.fawm.org/). And I’m not the only one. If you’re interested in examining your own creative process, here are a few resources for you:

Check out Joshua Pearl’s podcast, “Hear and Now: Debunking the Myth of Inspiration“:http://www.soulofsongwriting.com/sos-episode-25-hear-and-now-debunking-the-myth-of-inspiration-part-4-of-7/ for a healthy discussion of inspiration and songwriting.

Steve Lawson posted today on the very topic of teaching creativity over at the “Creative Choices site”:http://www.creative-choices.co.uk/server.php?show=ConBlogEntry.134, saying that “the act of creativity as a musician begins with playing two musical phrases, choosing which one you like and playing it again – that’s the root of composition and improvisation.” Sod inspiration!

Andrea Stolpe also posted today on “kick starting your creative process”:http://andreastolpe.berkleemusicblogs.com/2008/07/03/time-for-change-expanding-your-writing-process/:

bq. Every few months it can be a great idea to change up our process. Not only do we realize greater depths of skill, but we consistently knock down the tower of hesitation that keeps us bound within our typical melodic, harmonic, and lyrical styles.

And one of my favourite art movements, “Crap Art”:http://crapart.spacebar.org/, sums it up perfectly in their 4th Principle of Crap Art:

bq. That which is created rapidly and in high quantities contains more variety and is more likely to be successful/innovative. Applying the 80%/20% “rule”: If only 20% of the effort is needed to get 80% of the quality, then spending by spending only 20% of the effort, we can create five times as many artifacts at 80% quality!

h3. Wish me luck!

It’s going to be an amazing adventure full of rural drinking songs, lofi demos, massive creativity, hearty breakfasts and maybe even time-lapse photography (“Oooh! Aaah!”). If you want to be involved in the adventure, read this blog! Subscribe to the RSS or just check back whenever you’re bored at work, and watch me create an entire catalog of legendary songs in 3 months! For free!

If you’re down with the technology, check the “cash and cake post”:http://www.ihatemornings.com/blog/cash-and-cake-a-call-to-arms for details of how to watch me on Twitter, Youtube, etc.

And be sure to tell your friends. ;o)