I'm Alive To Those Around Me

at the basis of all my songs is the guitar. it's the instrument i'm most proficient playing. some artists like to write songs by putting melody and words together in their head. others need an accompanying instrument to flesh out the harmonic backdrop. i fall in the second category. i have written a few songs without the guitar ("When I Get Out" from Friendly Fire comes to mind) but these ideas always seem less compelling to me. at the end of the day, the guitar puts me in the "mood" of songwriting and helps spur ideas forward. about songwriting Willie Nelson said something i have taken to be a basic truth, "If you can't play your song from start to finish on the guitar [or piano], you don't have a song." i have added my own corollary to this- "Can you deliver your song ONLY on the guitar?" it seems to me essential for a singer/songwriter to be able to convey--at least in part if not entirety--the meaning of his song wi

it's 12 past midnight on Saturday, April 4 and i'm up twittering on the audio files i recorded about a month ago in LA. chop, chop. that wasn't me urging myself to go faster, btw. in fact i'm just chopping up audio and moving the bits around to compensate for my inability to play with a metronome. studios take time (and money) out of one's hands. they also hide what goes on when making a recorded work. my purpose in creating this blog is to talk about the process that goes into creating a record; to give my processes some transparency and expose them as they come up; to help and learn from others who aspire and do the same. i'm not sure who will want to read this which is to say i don't know my audience. so for that i apologize but on this matter i'll reference Andrew Bird who wrote a series of articles for the New York Times as he recorded/completed his most recent work. i read one or two of these articles...but i'm a musician. his infl