sONgwriting - Mountains

I started writing a song called ‘Mountains’ about six months ago. I liked the epic title and the suitably epic chord structure that went with it. I knew that I would never be able to sing it myself but I figured Mary would do it and so I worked on it without worrying about the limitations of my voice. Originally I recorded it onto my phone, one long ago forgotten night with the baby in bed and Mary up in her office working. This would be me voicing wordlessly over guitar chords. I never remember to inform my future self what key it’s in or if Im utilising a different tuning or a capo and sometimes I can’t work out what it is that I’m doing on the guitar. These first drafts are extremely important, not just for the melody and structure (if one exists) but for phrasing and inflection. I tend to find that on the first draft, which is usually me singing the same thing over and over again, there are tiny pieces of interesting harmonic accidents (or rather, incidents, the whole thing at this stage could be described as an accident; groping as I am for some kind of compelling melodic structure) that only happen once but which are worth keeping and every now and again a word or a phrase will surface from the nonsense that makes complete sense, that fits the mood or gives me a title or a subject to hang the lyric on.

I find it worthwhile to do a number of these drafts, after the first I usually start singing and playing into Ableton (for the uninitiated Ableton is a music sequencer, basically a recording studio on my desktop) over the course of a few days or even weeks (I’ve usually got quite a few song ideas going on at the same time). This helps to hone the melody and I can also start working out harmonies and instrumentation.

With ‘Mountains’ I had the same chord structure and melody until a couple of nights ago. This was when I sat down to actually ‘write’ the song i.e. to finalise the structure, write the lyrics and find the definitive melody. I knew I was going to have problems because, although I hadn’t listened or played the song for a couple of months, my brain has been constantly working on it, working on all of them. They present themselves to me while I’m doing something else as if to say, “Well, here I am, what else have you got for me?” and whenever ‘Mountains’ nudged me I was at a loss, certainly lyrically. I had a big build up ‘bababababa like MOUNTAINS…’ and nothing else. ‘Like Mountains’? What can be associated with a mountain that will reflect a facet of humanity, make it empathetic to the listener? Longevity, scale, solidity, beauty.. sounds like a love song. But I don’t believe that love lasts forever, or Mountains for that matter so unless I bury my personal beliefs and write that kind of song I’ll have to write that idea off. Well, it’s easily done and since I’m trying to write songs of a commercial nature it would be an obvious step but for me the joy of songwriting is that they (the songs) mirror my life and experiences or lack thereof and to write something that I don’t feel or believe would take all that away and I wouldn’t enjoy it and then I may as well go work in an office for the rest of my life.

So I sat here and I played it over and over and recorded myself doing so a couple more times but nothing was happening, or nothing new was happening anyway. I then tried out just singing the word ‘Mountains’ in the chorus, this was much better, freeing me as it did from having to explain myself in the chorus (songwriting is odd, it’s the most important thing in the world to me yet I understand that it doesn’t matter at all and I’m happy to throw out ideas I’ve had for months, years even, if I think they’re not going to work). Now I can work on a lyric that can be a little more opaque. I also started singing different melodies, the one I had was pitched a little low, one of those verses that you have to sit through twiddling your thumbs waiting for the main event (see every Leona Lewis song, in fact almost every modern pop song on the radio). I swapped a couple of chords round, changed the key and suddenly a new melody presented itself, one that I sang again and again because it was so good to sing. A good melody can feel good in your mouth, coming out of your mouth and into the air, creating hues and harmonies that bounce of the walls and it feels natural and simple and true.