Elephants, Song Writing & Project xxX

marcreck » 13 November 2007 » In Bloglife »

After a while away from the blog, i thought i’d drop a quick update, and share a few things i’ve found most useful

A few days after our last Project X event, we were straight onto organising the next one with a very interesting feedback meeting at the anchor. Rich Batsford blogs about it here, and for those that missed the event, here’s a collective round upSince then i have been concentrating on the forthcoming Mr Elephant plans ready for a meeting with Aart and Dubber next week. The third mixtape, entitled Mr Elephant’s Falling In Love came together really quickly, and I redid a section of the second mixtape, inspired mainly by some feedback from Ant, and to make sure it levelled with the amazingly high standard of the cd covers designed by our very own Aart Tanner. I’ve really enjoyed putting the mixtapes together with music that isn’t the latest or biggest breaks. Aside from learning about some of my favourite artists through Last.Fm, and playing and sharing the music i love with people i like, it feels pretty satisfying on a creative level, to be telling a story, with music i like, without the added focus of mixing, or making people dance.

The other thing i been doing, largely due to having the whole house (and more importantly the kitchen!) to myself for a weekend, is making noise on my guitar. After 4/5 hours work on Mr Elephant a day, i relaxed with some food, a glass or 2 of red, and did a few searches for things i been wondering about for ages, namely singing, guitar and songwriting. Thanks to the magic of the internet, i now have a better understanding of the basics of singing, the importance of song structure, a first lesson in guitar technique (that video above), and (very importantly for me) how to restring my guitar without breaking strings! (though i did bust the one i’d already put on in the attempt to “correct it”!) :(

For anyone similarly musically interested here’s what’s helped and inspired me this weekend.
Singing -
http://www.wikihow.com/Sing
http://www.rogerlove.com/tips.html
http://www.essortment.com/hobbies/becomebettersi_svpd.htm
http://in.answers.yahoo.com/

These are all just simple searches, and the songwriting tips were from this (rather christian, but surprisingly useful) website

Inspired to write a song after 3 glasses of red, I came up with a nice little ditty on my guitar, and then with song structure, and rhyming structure in mind, i sat down to write the lyrics. Normally the point to skin up, but after almost 3 weeks of giving that up, i decided to look elsewhere for inspiration..So, i went for a ride on my bike…. 5 minutes later, i had a few characters for a story, and 30 minutes later, i had somthing that resembled a pretty decent song :) As i bust my string on the restringing tutorial afterwards i can’t work on it anymore, but this is definitly an improvement on any previous attempts, and hopefully will be something worth posting soon.

After a couple more youtube tutorials, i watched an amazing gig on http://www.moviesfoundonline.com/ of Jeff Buckley afterwards. A real emotional and inspired performance, and reaffirmed just how easy it is to find inspiration, and great music stuff on the net these days. (Here it is for anyone who wants to watch it.)

Who needs a t.v when you want something inspiring eh? ;)

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