Thursday, December 27, 2007

All it took was a single, accidental chord to lend some coherence to the bits of song I’ve been kicking around. I can’t tell you which chord struck my fancy, try as I might, because my formal guitar training primarily involves slamming my fingers on the frets in uncomfortable positions. But it sounded good, and that’s really the only compass I possess right now.

Songwriting has always held a certain inaccessibility. How do you turn a page full of blank staves into something pleasing not only to yourself, but to others as well? And it’s not enough to have a catchy tune, you need words to resonate and briefly illuminate life’s great mysteries. On top of this, as if we really needed a third axis, you basically have a limited three-and-a-half minutes to be qualifiably timeless.

People do it all the time, though, some of them extremely, multi-platinumly well, and whether guided by talent or raw stubborness great works are produced. Great works, however, do not describe the output our music factory is trying to create. It’s more like a work. But even doing this produces something far more valuable than the music itself, and we’ll cap off the year by discussing this tomorrow.