January, 2022 A Month of Songwriting
January seemed the perfect month to jump into the new year, and set a new goal: How many songs can I write in one month? Dedicate the month to just writing new songs.
Twenty-three became the answer for this first attempt. I have written a song a month, two songs a month, for years. I had heard Stevie wonder used to write a song a day! I had heard of those projects where in a weekend or twenty-four hour window, folks write and record a new record. Or how about The Beatles writing a new album in a week in those early days?
I was crazy inspired watching The Beatles, Get Back 7+ hour extravaganza. Most notably watching as Paul,”went in” and dug for, the number one hit song, writing it on camera mind you: Get Back.
It’s like I’ve experienced and my creative friends say, you just reach in for it and come out with a song. I love the creative process for this experience. It’s mind blowing to have something, when there was nothing. And so, I faced the blank page everyday wondering each night, what am I going to write about tomorrow.
I wrote an instrumental. My creative friend, Kate Chadbourne suggested a series: The Beatles, a John, Paul, George, Ringo song, one for each, a perspective, or nuance or flavor of, or a song they each might write, and that worked. I jumped in on DADGAD cause that’s a fun place to start. I wrote another birthday song, another song about writing songs, and I put a paragraph that mc escher wrote about falling asleep, to music. I wrote a love song, missing you songs, songs about waiting, and a couple of story songs. Some were suggested by mumbling along to a progression, some blurted right out, and suggested a song. It’s amazing what happens when we choose to find the inspiration.
You can check ‘em out in this playlist:
I loved knowing that was the focus. My day was planned. I chose January to give myself as many days in a month, in case many days passed where no writing happened, I’d still have time to write a couple. But as it turned out I often had the song written before 11 am, and wrote a song each day, many days in a row. Sometimes it took all day, with many interruptions and very few ideas. Sometimes I hit it out of the park in an hour.
What we teach ourselves again, and again, is that what we choose, and focus upon determines everything. That is our power. To be able to focus and do. Imagine, create, invent. It’s exciting.
I have a lot of original music out in the world on iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, all the places but I also have many older songs I have never professionally recorded or released. So, my February plan was to record a bunch of those older songs to 1 inch recording tape. I would still like to do that but I got inspired and sidetracked with a new mixer in mid January. Which then led to buying cables, much set up, a steep learning curve, routing, and then figuring out the parsing from computer to analog back to computer. And yes, even getting the mixer became a story for another song for January.
So there you have the beginning of 2022. Then I got back on the schedule of one new song a month and some of those are here too.