FAWM and its aftermath
Mar. 2nd, 2014 03:13 pmOn one level, FAWM went very well, and I'm generally quite pleased about it.
1) It broke me out of what had been feeling like a long dry spell. Half way through FAWM I had already written more songs in 2014 than I did in the whole of 2013, which was a good feeling.
2) I wrote two songs that I had promised out and then never written--a song about Fairies and a song about James Madison. I had been feeling guilty and low about never writing those; I had resolved half a dozen times that I would write them *next* but hadn't been able to get started. Now they are written, if imperfectly, and it feels good to not have that hanging over my head anymore.
3) I have yet to go carefully through everything but I have a feeling I wrote better tunes than I would usually have expected for a fast writing spell like this. Several of them--Gift Enough, Bed Of Moss, The Silver Snail and James Madison--I'm very pleased with. They seem unusually melodic to me, perhaps because I made more use of arpeggios than usual.
On another, minor, level it was a bit of a disappointment, in that I was hoping for more comments and feedback than I got, especially in the last half of the month. I wrote 81 comments and got 70 which is pretty close, so perhaps this is a result of me not commenting enough, or perhaps of me being a Fawmling so nobody knows me yet.
Now I am going through and getting caught up on sheet music for everything. I'm not terribly fast at that (though *much* faster than I used to be, now that I've published two songbooks) but I've been trying to do sheet music for two songs a day. (Just melody for now; this will give me a good framework for going back later and adding harmonies and such.) So far I have sheet music for:
The Underwear Song
Honey, Sugar, Cream And Salt
James Madison
The Silver Snail
and
Gift Enough
Note that these links take you to the lyric pages; the sheet music is linked from the top of the pages, just under the song titles.
So I'm glad I did it, and hopefully this isn't the end of my songwriting this year, though things will be slowing down from here as I want to get to work on other projects. I'm not sure if it's warmer weather or more light but I feel like doing more things.
1) It broke me out of what had been feeling like a long dry spell. Half way through FAWM I had already written more songs in 2014 than I did in the whole of 2013, which was a good feeling.
2) I wrote two songs that I had promised out and then never written--a song about Fairies and a song about James Madison. I had been feeling guilty and low about never writing those; I had resolved half a dozen times that I would write them *next* but hadn't been able to get started. Now they are written, if imperfectly, and it feels good to not have that hanging over my head anymore.
3) I have yet to go carefully through everything but I have a feeling I wrote better tunes than I would usually have expected for a fast writing spell like this. Several of them--Gift Enough, Bed Of Moss, The Silver Snail and James Madison--I'm very pleased with. They seem unusually melodic to me, perhaps because I made more use of arpeggios than usual.
On another, minor, level it was a bit of a disappointment, in that I was hoping for more comments and feedback than I got, especially in the last half of the month. I wrote 81 comments and got 70 which is pretty close, so perhaps this is a result of me not commenting enough, or perhaps of me being a Fawmling so nobody knows me yet.
Now I am going through and getting caught up on sheet music for everything. I'm not terribly fast at that (though *much* faster than I used to be, now that I've published two songbooks) but I've been trying to do sheet music for two songs a day. (Just melody for now; this will give me a good framework for going back later and adding harmonies and such.) So far I have sheet music for:
The Underwear Song
Honey, Sugar, Cream And Salt
James Madison
The Silver Snail
and
Gift Enough
Note that these links take you to the lyric pages; the sheet music is linked from the top of the pages, just under the song titles.
So I'm glad I did it, and hopefully this isn't the end of my songwriting this year, though things will be slowing down from here as I want to get to work on other projects. I'm not sure if it's warmer weather or more light but I feel like doing more things.