LA MUSIQUE

I recently watched the absolute best musical instruction DVD - Victor Wooten's Bass Groove Workshop. It breaks down music into 10 equal parts. Even though the lessons are given to bass players they are directed to all musicians. I, in turn, am currently attempting to share these lessons with all of my co-musicians as it provides for the most efficient communication. I cannot recommend this enough...

In letting these thoughts marinade, I applied them to my vocals, of course. They are easily applied to drums, even piano and guitar is more accessible because of this instruction. What I did not expect was an application of these principles to song-writing. 

Fun fact: my new job (Vision Therapy) also shed light on the process of song-writing. Thus, I present...

THE SECRET SEQUENCE OF SONG-WRITING ORGANIZATIONS

1. Recognize

2. Describe

3. Reproduce

4. Remember

5. Cognize, perceive, know

6. Manipulate, elaborate, extrapolate, transfer

7. Automate, abstract, generalize

8. Imagine, create

It wouldn't be enjoyable to write through each step of this sequence, so rather I will start off with an example. Without further ado, I present the case of the album version versus the live version:

Feist - "When I Was A Young Girl"

Album Version:

Live version:

Do yourself a favor and watch all of this. 

Ok, so which version of the song is better?

I willing to bet a solid $5 that most people would say the live version is better. 

Same artist... Same original song... What's going on?

I believe that Feist used the recording process as part of the song-writing process. Basically, the song-recording was finished around steps 5-7. But playing this same song night after night on a tour and is when Step 8 actually occurs... it's when you decide to get creative and imagine the song in it's truest form. 

"People used to make records as in a record of an event. The event of people playing music in a room." -Ani DiFranco, "Fuel"

I am not saying that I would rather a recording only after step 8 - in fact, the opposite is probably true. I would bet another $5 that I enjoy the Live Version so much more because I can see the history of how far the song and artist has evolved. 

Another artist that has beautiful re-interpretations of their own songs is Andrew Bird - check out Live In Montreal as compared to The Mysterious Production of Eggs.