Well, carnival season is over, and if the facebook pics I've been tagged in are any indication, I really got my money's worth this year. I got everybody's money's worth this year.
Now is the time of year for me to harness the nebulous guilt that normally just loiters in air pockets outside my major organs, and channel that energy towards something productive. (I said "my major organs") Starting in 2004, I've been making myself write and record 40 completed songs between Mardi Gras and Easter every year. Which is technically more than 40 days, but you get the point.
My problem, like most songwriters, has always been with finishing songs. If I don't give myself an arbitrary deadline, there's no gittin' 'er done. So that's one benefit to this whole deal. I think the absurd volume helps me out, too.
Sometime before '04 when I started doing this, I read something about an experiment in this pottery class that was divided into two groups---one would be graded according to the quality of the one piece they'd put all their time into, and the other group would be graded strictly on the quantity of pieces they could produce. The moral of the story was, the quantity group had learned so much from the "bad" pieces they made, they were able to make higher quality projects than the group that labored over the one piece.
In my experiences, some of the songs I've been happiest about writing have been the handful that came to me all at once, in a few minutes. I love hearing about how some of my favorite songs were written on the
spot, or thrown together to fill up a b-side, or to kill unexpected
studio time that was paid for. "Wild Thing", "La Bamba", "Push It", "Heart Shaped Box", "Sweet Child O' Mine"--just a few songs I remember reading were conceived wholly on the spot. Maybe the chords for "Sweet Child" were written out later, but the riff was Slash's spontaneous joke. And "La Bamba" was a folk song, reinvented spontaneously. But you get my point. There's something about intuitively writing in the flow that cannot be denied. Much psychological research supports the idea that the unfettered subconscious is capable of much more when it can perform in rhythm, than when the self critical eye tries to control the process.
Then there's the other side of the coin. Paul Simon's famous quote, "Great songs aren't written, they're rewritten." You can find just as many anecdotes about songwriters not finding the perfect bridge to a song for 20 years, until it all just clicks one day when they're raking leaves or something.
With 40 songs in 40 days, I get the best of both worlds. I write so many songs that the weight of each song is minimized so much that there's no point in getting held up agonizing over a certain decision. The revisions come intermittently whenever I'm in the mood, which happens a lot more during a concentrated span of writing. What usually ends up happening each year is that out of 40 songs, 2 or 3 of them accidentally turn out to be awesome mega-hits that cannot be denied. Monkeys at a typewriter stuff. Maybe another 7-10 are fully formed concepts that just need to be revised over the course of the 40 days. Another handful are songs that have good ideas, they're just have to stay on the backburner, and get gotten to at some later date. And it's great when I'm in a revisin' mood to go back to the ol' bag o' tricks and finish a few good songs without having to start from scratch. I've had a bunch of songs that I hated, that totally worked once I changed one pronoun. Sometimes it takes major surgery, or fixing different verses up with different choruses--like a suburban key party. I digress.
Then there are usually 20 songs or so a year that are unquestionably horrible. They're of no use to anyone, and I'm embarrassed that I ever took the time to finish them. I'm embarrassed they ever even spent one second living in my consciousness. And there they are, committed to hard disk, impossible to deny. And I think that's the whole key, for me at least--to not let these thoughts, or the fear of them stifle creativity. This is easier than it sounds.
Over the next 40 days, I'm going to kick things into high gear. I'm not sure how it will affect the songs I'm doing on this blog, but I'm guessing positively. What I lack in real time recorded songs, I will make up for in posting some old songs from 40songs past. Maybe we can do discussion driven stuff to songs I'm not doing anything with (and not too embarrassed to post). There will be a lot more musical content soon. Plus, some new features that should be exciting and give you guys something more to follow and discuss on here.
When the 40 days (ish) are over, I will share the highlights with you. I really look forward to it. Also, if I meet my goal, I'm buying myself a next generation gaming system---I haven't decided which. But I already kind of cheated and started laying down some tracks, and it's already off to a great start. I will have a lot more to keep you posted about, and hopefully my mind can start to get into creative mode and not the mentally doughy feeling I've had for the last few months. Wish me luck!