At the end of September last year I got up in the middle of the night along with thousands of other people to see the red super moon. It was rather magical and I decided to make a date for the next one, it turns out that it is not due until 2033.
I then wrote a song about how the world might be in 2033 called “Jetpacks, Monorails and Rayguns”. In December I recorded it with James NTTB on Piano and it’s now on Spotify for your listening pleasure. Every time the track gets played I will get a tiny, tiny, tiny bit of money from Spotify. 250 plays will get me 1 US cent.
If the song gets 10 plays a day for the next 18 years ,about 65,000 plays, then I get to buy a mug of tea, which I shall of course share with James.
If you want to help with this project then just listen to the song and share it with a friend. If you want to be extra helpful then after listening to the song, click my name on Spotify and click “Follow”, I think that pushes the song up a list.
Thanks for your help and I will let you know if I ever get the Mug of tea.
(Update)
Sometime ago I wrote about my EP and that if it gets 65,000 plays on Spotify I will be able to buy a cup of tea. I set a target of 2033, which is when the next red super moon is due.
Exciting news, I just got my statement from Spotify and all your plays so far have earned me 23 cents. That’s almost a quarter of a Dollar. !!!!
This is amazing news; I am well on the way to my target. Thank you so much.If you haven’t listened to it yet, or if you want to listen again then head over to spotify
If you want your own personal copy to hug and to hold forever then you can get one on itunes.
I’m making a set of mini CDs with my songs on them and giving them out when I play live. Each CD contains at least two songs and there will be six of them. Red,Orange,Yellow,Green,Blue and Purple. The CDs are called the Rainbow sessions (Indigo and Violet are combined to make the purple CD).
I chose this format as it is easy to stick in the pocket and it’s more fun for me putting out a couple of songs at a time rather than waiting until I have recorded a dozen or so. It’s also a bit of a treasure hunt to see if you can get a set. You should only play it in a drawer loading CD player. If you don’t have one then you can listen to the tracks on You Tube below.
The Orange CD contains 1. Jetpacks, Monorails and Rayguns and 2. Space Dogs . Yellow will be out soon.
I’m making a set of mini CDs with my songs on them and giving them out when I play live. Each CD contains at least two songs and there will be six of them. Red,Orange,Yellow,Green,Blue and Purple. The CDs are called the Rainbow sessions (Indigo and Violet are combined to make the purple CD).
I chose this format as it is easy to stick in the pocket and it’s more fun for me putting out a couple of songs at a time rather than waiting until I have recorded a dozen or so. It’s also a bit of a treasure hunt to see if you can get a set. You should only play it in a drawer loading CD player. If you don’t have one then you can listen to the tracks on You Tube below.
The Red CD contains 1. Club59 and 2. Coffee Monster. Orange will be out soon.
I have no idea how they do it (perhaps they have a selection of pictures of songwriters in compromising positions) but they have interviews with an amazing range of people. There are 69 podcasts at time of writing, many of them famous but there are a lot that I think “Who is that?” I then check them out and find they have written loads of songs that I love. For example Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil who wrote ‘You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin”, ‘On Broadway’, ‘Saturday Night at the Movies’, ‘We Gotta Get Out Of This Place’, ‘Don’t Know Much’, ‘Just Once’, ‘Here You Come Again’ and ‘Somewhere Out There’. There are loads more people like this who write classic songs, all the way from the Brill building up to more recent times.
There are also more recent writers that I haven’t heard of but I know their songs, check out the chat with Eg White, he sounds great fun. There are also loads of singer songwriters that you will know Chris Difford, Glen Tillbrook, Rufus Wainwright, Billy Bragg and Tom Robinson. There are so many classic song writers in the list that you owe it to yourself to take a listen.
I started writing this blog because I want to get good at song writing. Part of that process is understanding how other people go about writing songs. The problem is that most people who have got good at writing songs, particularly those who make a living doing so, don’t talk about it. I also suspect that those who do, don’t want to give all the dark details about how the song evolved, just a glossy version.
I decided I would write a “warts and all” description of how I write songs in the hope that it will help others who, like me, are still learning. Here is a description of how I wrote “Best Year yet”.
I was listening to a news program and the politicians were talking about the “Great Austerity” in the UK. The phrase had echoes of “The Great Depression” in the 1920s and I wanted to write a song about it. I collected together Ideas and wrote a song focused on how bad things are at the moment. It had the following chorus and was generally rather downbeat.
G
It’s called austerity
A
the great austerity
D
put your life on hold
C
The future was sold
Am D
The bright tomorrow’s been delayed.
I liked parts of the song but the whole thing was just all doom and gloom so I filed it away.
Sometime later I read Carole King’s Autobiography and one of the reasons she wrote so much is that she was always trying to write a follow up hit when she was working in the Brill building. It was a good way to get very focused.
It gave me an idea for an exercise. I have no idea what has been a hit over the past year as I generally take little interest in the charts but I thought it would be interesting to choose a number one single from the last year and try to write a follow up hit. I listened to a few and in the process I realised that a lot of the choruses used a lot of repetition and a single memorable phrase. There is a good book called “Best Year Yet” around the idea of New Years Resolutions so I chose that and wrote the following chorus.
A D
Gona be the best year yet
E
best year yet
D
best year
A D
Gona be the best year yet
E
best year yet
A
Gona be the best
I then added it to the verses of “Great Austerity” and thought it balanced the downbeat words with a more positive feel. This is a live demo that I did of it.
I tried it out a few times and thought the song worked well but I had some feedback on the recording from a guy that I respect a lot. He was a little harsh but I think he was right. He said that the recording needed a lot of work and that the chorus repeated a bit too much. So I simplified the chorus and rerecorded with a bass part and two guitars.
G C
Gona be the best year yet
D
best year yet
G
Gona be the best
This is the final version.
I’ll be interested in any feedback and would love to hear how your songs developed. That is one of the main reasons I am writing this.
When writing songs, poems or other creative words ideas always seem to occur when we are out, walking, driving, working or otherwise away from home. Unless you get those words down quickly they may get lost. A book or phone works well but there is always the fear that it too will get lost. The best option for many is to use a phone or a tablet to capture the idea and immediately make a copy of the work . This article explains how to automatically save the notes using the internet (“In the cloud” is another expression) and make copies on your other device(s).
There are lots of different places you can store the information. Apple has icloud, Google has “Google cloud”, Amazon has “Cloud Drive” and there are many others. I have written about Dropbox here as I have a lot of experience with it and it just seems to work every time. It is free ( for 2 GB) and there are Apps for all the common devices. The ideas should work for all the other varieties but you will need to adapt them and check they work with all your devices. e.g. iCloud is focused on Apple kit. Setting up DropBox
The first thing to do is to get a free account with Dropbox. When you sign up you get 2Gb of space included. Unless you need more than that then you need never pay a penny to Dropbox. (2 GB is roughly equivalent to very roughly 50,000 A4 pages of text.)
Go to www.dropbox.com and choose “Signup”. You then need to enter your name (first and last), your email address and a password. Select agree to conditions and then “Create account”. Now choose the “basic” plan. And click continue.
Now download the free app that works with the device you are using (PC, MAC, Tablet or phone). Once this is installed you will be able to copy a file onto Drop box and have it available on all your other devices. You can also access the file using a browser. This could be handy if you need to print a copy but you only have an internet café available.
So you now have the basic set up, your words will always be backed up if you copy them to Dropbox. There are a couple of other things to think about to make the system work smoothly. Automatic copying and updating
If you want to make some changes to a file then you can copy the Dropbox file, change it and then copy it back again. This is OK but there are ways to make this automatic.
On a PC or an Apple Mac the Dropbox program you download will have a copy of your files on the PC. If you change the file it will automatically synchronise those changes with all your copies.
On an Android phone/tablet you need an app to do the synchronisation for you. I use “Dropsync Pro”. There is a charge for this of a few ponds but I think it is good value as it means I never forget to sync things. It just works and I don’t have to worry about which copy is correct.
On an ipod touch, ipad or iPhone it is part of the dropbox app.
I also have a tablet running WebOS. There is a great app for that called “Tapnote” which does everything for you. Unfortunately HP don’t make WebOS stuff any more.
When you have the system set up the way you want then test it a few times to make sure it is working properly and that you understand what it does.
Use a standard file type.
I always write my songs and ideas as a text file (.txt), this will work on all tablets, PCs, Apple MacBooks and phones and tablets. It is a simple file type and doesn’t have a lot of formatting options but because of this it works on everything. Change on one device and you will be able to read it on another.
There are other file types that are almost universal like Microsoft.docx , .Doc and “rich text file” .rtf but I think .txt is the safest option. It just works on everything.
Most devices include a program or App for opening .txt files but if not they are available at a low price. I use “Jota+” on my Android Phone. I want to hear from you
I’ve described what I do with my equipment but I expect many of you will have interesting variations worth sharing so please let me know if you have any tips.
I wrote this with the feeling of a 1930s smoky club, possibly with a jazz band. I heard the sound of the song in my head before the song came together. I then worked on building the chords to give it a bit more punch. Someone commented “Yves Montand is alive and well and living in Southampton!” after hearing it, so I think the feel of the song worked out.
I’ve performed this with James from “Notice To The Builder” playing some excellent piano. I’ll be recoding a piano version with James early next year as he does a great job on it.
UPDATE: At last I have a recording with James on the Piano.
I bought this book to find out a little more about how she wrote songs. “Will you still love me tomorrow ” and “You’ve got a friend” are two of my favourites but she seems to have written for everyone. Check the Wiki Page. Lots of interesting stuff about how songwriters could go into a publishers office and play some songs. She talks about the Brill building and working in a small room with a piano and table as the only furniture. Lots of songwriters competing to write follow up songs for big artists. It’s a great book but from a song writing perspective she doesn’t give much away.I recommend that you get the audio version of this book as carol sings all the bits of songs that she refers to. This seems a lot better than just reading it on the page.
I have only given it 3 stars because you won’t learn a lot about songwritign but it is an interesting history of the 60s and 70s.
Best Bit: Goffin and King worked 9 to 5 at the office. All those amazing songs were the result of solid work.
I thought it would be interesting to write happy birthday in a new way,So I flipped it around to my point of view and ended up with a chorus “I’m so happy you were born”.
I know you get asked to sign a lot of petitions but sometimes it helps to get things moving.
Under the Agent of Change principle, an apartment block to be built near an established live music venue would have to pay for soundproofing, while a live music venue opening in a residential area would be responsible for the costs.
Sounds fair to me. qr.net/changenow
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