my day with my new book

The Frustrated Songwriter's Handbook

I was too bored to do anything yesterday and haven't been well today but during a session of toilet-magazine reading i noticed in a Sound-on-sound article about The Doves new album they mentioned an intensive songwriting program they got from a book called...

The frustrated songwriters handbook.

Check diz shiz out.

I've ordered it and will be starting it rather soon.

Sunday Night

I'm afraid nothing has occurred today, I wi.l have to be and extra busy bee tomorrow.

Nevermind.

Saturgay?

Apologies for no Friday update, I did little for some reason, probably the 'getting back into it' jitters that I read about in that book 'The War On Art" which was cool until it got to the strange spiritual bit. Anyway worked some more on the mix, secured the melody and even began the... ahem, lyrics. While walking the Doogle Dog I wrote in my head the song Harry Potter would sing when he arrived at Hogwarts for the first time, as if it were a Stephen Schwartz musical, it had key changes and mid sections while Harry got on the train, met the ginger one and Hermione Granger. It got me thinking, if you think of every line of melody as one new thought or one addition to the story then that would be a good way to write cohesive lyrics. Banal lyrics (like those that I write) tend to wool around one sentiment for a whole verse, which has no movement whatsoever and is totally crap. Keeping said Harry Potter rule in mind I will set out to write the lyrics as best I can for this first song.

Since I didn't write one for yesterday or Wednesday and might not do a good one for tomorrow, I will try and get more done and post another blog in a couple hours (which will technically be tomorrow anyway).

Toodles.

Good Thursday

Write the music to 'Tease' today, a soft rock song more in the vein of an American, funky Maroon-5 of Justin Timberlake singer, but I'm sure I could make it sound more rubber soul James Blunt with a little redrumming.

Also put together the lead chord-riff to 'Get Through The Rain', the token sad/love song.

Neither have lyrics yet as I'm trying to write these songs like a big pop producer, laying the tracks rather than worrying about the narrative.

A good day, certainly worth the one I wrote off yesterday in which I got up late, did a half day at the far and went to Norwich for a comedy gig. It was really good, and everyone drank Speckled Hen.

Tuesday does not a good day bring

Got nothing done today I'm afraid, but did install some nice digital arts friendly programs for later in the year.

I did come up with some nifty titles and think up some structural ideas, or scaffolding, but nothing more than that I'm ashamed to say.

I have an evening seeing comedy tomorrow so I will get up extra early and do loads of work to pay for my evening treat, perhaps I will write 'Coca-Cola'.

I watched the BET awards (American R&B awards) today and realized that James Blunt uses R&B instruments. I also realized that my inbuilt internet browser spell-checker is american and Im not sure how to fix it so until then, get used to loads of zeds.

Need To Finish This Quick

Okay, I only have fifteen minutes to send this before its tomorrow and I wont have a clean day-to-day diary.

One of my band/brands it to create a solo male singer in the vein of James Blunt or Will Young.

I wrote a song today called 'My Heart Reaches For You'. After a little distance from it I feel that it probably sounds too much like an existing James Blunt song so it probably wont surface, but it was nevertheless good progress to write a song today.

More tomorrow. Bye.

The Start Of A New Era

And so it begins, the birth of a new stage in the musical development of Daniel Sturman. It begins, or I should say will begin after I have finished this highly significant blog. I intend over the next four or so months to to document daily my progress through my upcoming project as to assist in the documentation later. Also writing a blog means having enough accomplished in a day to fill a blog, so should be as good a reason to up my productivity as document it.

But now onto the actual project.

This project is my third year, first term project. It is called a C.E.P, a cep. A cep is a Critical Enterprise Project or something like that. Basically it is an opportunity to take an extended period of college time and focus it at something that will help you as a creative person understand an environment, grown and learn (or none of those). Since I would like to compose programatic and writer popular music, I have chosen to spend my cep living and investigating the role of a popular songwriter. I will also assume other roles later in the project since there is much more to it than just writing songs. I am doing what is called a hybrid cep, a cep which I bulk up with my digital arts minor. Add to that that I am working with Neil Coppin who's interest are close to mine (he is interested in popular music production) in a joint cep what I am left with is a massive project.

The initial idea was that Neil and I would become a songwriting 'house', churning out songs at a high rate and see if we could sell them to some publishers, satisfying our music lecturers with

our music input and our digital arts lecturers with online profiling and other computer magic. Our digital arts lecturer had another idea. He suggested that rather than just writing and sending off songs, we might create some artists and see if we could create some hype about them via the internet, incorporating all our digital wizardry. This idea seemed far more fun so we went along with it, realising that the songwriting would be shoved to a corner in favour of making music videos, touching up promo photos and creating profile pages.

If we have any hope of doing all this I would need to have the songs, the first part of this long journey, ready as soo

n as possible and that is why I am starting the songwriting part of my cep fairly early.

While my sister is on holiday I am using her room as my songwriting office, as well as using the groaty old family piano for a change of scene now and then.

The digital piano is a Korg SP250 midi'd up to a new iMac with Logic Pro.

More later.