I got abducted for a surprise vacation trip to Finland about a week ago, my family decided we were all going to go visit my grandparents. So off we went. It was quite nice, I hadn’t been there for about four years. They have a little red house right next to a big lake in the middle of a huge forest. It’s far from everything, and it’s a wonderfully quiet and relaxing place to be. I enjoyed it thoroughly! It was a fairly short visit, and we got back home today. Now I’m all rested and relaxed, and eager to get back to recording the remaining songs for my “collection”. 
I set up a little competition on BlogCatalog a while ago, challenging the people there to come up with new and interesting ways of saying “I love you”. There were lots of entries, but at the end of the contest on Friday, I finally picked this one as the winner:
“You are the activated carbon that filters out all my worries.”
In my opinion this is very romantic in a geeky kind of way, and just such an accurate and true description of your loved one. They just make you feel better.
As a prize, I will write a song about the winner, license it through Creative Commons, and send it to her to use in any way she likes. I expect to have it ready in a couple of weeks or so.
Writing music and lyrics is a skill, and like any other skill, you get better at it if you practise. So here are a few exercises that might help you improve your music writing.
1.
Write about anything and everything. Pick an item that’s next to you and write something about it. It might be your coffee cup, or a pen, or anything. Write about:
- what it looks like
- how it makes you feel
- where it came from
- what it means to you
- its smell
- its texture
- its shape
- what it does
- what you think will happen to it
- what it might have seen before reaching you
These are a few examples, feel free to come up with more. Try to cover every point of view on this item. If you can write a full page about a half-eaten sandwich, you can write about pretty much anything.
2.
Pick a topic, and write several short pieces about it, using a different format every time.
- use a specific rhyme scheme
- use a different rhyme scheme
- don’t use rhymes
- write a limerick
- write a sonnet
- write 4 quatrains (groups of text) of 4 lines each, with the rhyme scheme ABAB in each one
- write a full length text with the structure verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus
- write a text with the structure verse-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus
- write a text with any structure of your choice
- write a text with exactly 100 words
- write a text with exactly 200 words
- capture the idea of the topic in a tanka or haiku
- write a text using only (or as many as possible) alliterations
3.
Speedwriting. Pick a topic, and give yourself a max. amount of time, say 10 minutes, to write a song text about it. Forget about quality and format for now, just get it on paper within 10 minutes. Try to write 5 or more songs like this in a day. Too easy? Give yourself 10 minutes to write a song with a consistent rhyme scheme. Still too easy? Do it while using rhymes and a strict meter, like for example iambic hexameter.
That’s a few tips. You can of course use any combination of these to make it more interesting or challenging. For example, you could write a sonnet about a half-eaten sandwich within a time limit of 5 minutes.
Do you have more good tips on how to improve your writing? Leave a comment and let me know!
I have a brand new song online now, called “I think I love you“. As always, you can download the song for free and share it with anyone you like.
I had a lot of fun writing and recording this one, at least after I fixed the shockmount that broke. I wanted to write a love song, but realized it’s quite hard to do that without having it sound like a cliché or incredibly cheezy. Everyone always “shines like a sun” and “flies on the wings of love” in love songs, so I figured I would try to use phrases that you don’t hear in love songs that often to make it a bit more interesting.
There are no drums in this song, only bass, guitars and vocals. The acoustic guitar took a while to record, it’s surprisingly tricky to play a fingerpicking style accompaniment completely evenly and with an even tempo. I re-did it several times before I was happy with it. The electric guitar parts were fun too, I pretty much just hit record and improvised until I got something that sounded cool. All in all, I’m pretty happy with this song.
Now, only two more songs to record for my album!
I removed the Shop page from the site and closed my payloadz account today. It really didn’t work as well as I would have liked it to, and in the end I decided the shop was kinda pointless anyway. The payloadz service was slow, and sometimes the page didn’t load at all if you clicked the “buy” button. I also didn’t sell a single song through them, though if that is because the service didn’t work, or simply because nobody wanted to pay $1.50 for one of my songs, I don’t know. Either way, the shop is gone, and the music on this site will be available completely for free forever.
Now, you might ask: “But what if I have a burning desire to support Rainhat financially and help make sure this musical wonder never goes away?”
Well, I’m glad you asked.
There is now a Paypal “Donate” button on the right. You decide how much you want to donate, and if you want to donate. It’s not an official fund, it’s probably not tax deductible (dunno, I don’t know how those things work), and it won’t get you any advantages in any way that I can think of. Any money you donate will simply make it possible for me to buy food and keep writing music until this Rainhat thing takes off and I can start making enough money to stay alive.
So there. Now, is that one dollar bill burning a hole in your pocket…?
I’m back in business! I remembered that the microphones came with these weird solid metal mounts when I ordered them. I’ve never used them, because they transfer vibrations straight into the microphone even better than the plastic mounts do with dynamic microphones. The large condensor mics are fairly heavy though, so I guess plastic ones wouldn’t work with these. Anyway, the joints on these metal mounts are the same as the ones on the shockmounts I have, so I took one of them apart and just replaced the part on the shockmount with it. As good as new! I hope… I’m going to be really careful with the screws from now on. I’m still kind of flabbergasted over the fact that a 5 mm thick steel screw can just snap when you tighten it with one hand… Let’s all say it together: “Cheap material!”
The next song in line to be recorded is a song called “I think I love you”. I’ve been playing around a bit with the format of the song, trying different things to see what sounds best. I think I have it pretty much nailed now, so I’m pretty much ready to start recording. Maybe even tonight.
I set up my recording gear in the basement today, hoping to be able to record while the others are sleeping. Our house has two floors and a basement, so I figured me playing guitar in the basement shouldn’t disturb anyone sleeping two floors up.
Broken screw
I carried my computer and all the stuff down to the basement, set it all up, and started playing around with microphone placements for recording my acoustic guitar. I move the microphones a bit, play for a while and listen through my headphones, then move the microphone again, maybe adjust the angle a bit, play some more, etc. I lowered one of the microphones and was just tightening the nut that holds the shockmount in place, when suddenly the screw goes *crunch!* and comes off in my hand. What the hell?
The large condensor microphones are quite heavy, you have to tighten the screw fairly hard to keep the whole microphone from slowly bending down, but I wasn’t twisting *that* hard. I was using only one hand to do it! Apparently this cheap piece of @#%& couldn’t take it and just snapped. Great… Now I can’t use both of my large condensor microphones at the same time until I figure out a way to get the broken piece of screw out of the hole and find a screw to replace the broken one. Argh!
If you’re thinking about buying a MXL 57 Shockmount… Don’t. If you do anyway, be careful with the screw!
Uncategorized | Sami August 30, 2009 | 
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