Love/Hate - The music I create

Since Oct 2019 I have written and released live demos for 12 (and a half) songs and have another couple of songs that I haven’t released.

I recently went through and listed out these songs in a spreadsheet (sad I know!) so that I could get an idea of run times, keep track of when I released them, which is pretty much when I wrote them and also if I would be willing to play the song live or not. When the Moon Rises I count as half and song as I didn’t write the lyrics. I may use the music from this at some point and write my own lyrics.

It is interesting to look back at these because in the grand scheme of things this really is quite a short period of time and my perspective on some of the songs has changed significantly. For example, when I wrote Panoply it felt like a leap forward in my song writing, and in a way it was. However, I now hate that song with a passion. I no longer enjoy playing it, I think my voice sounds awful on it and I think the structure is a bit naff. I don’t mind the lyrics and when I first released the song this is what people picked up on.

Verse 1: I'm feeling disconnected. Low and dejected. So much frustration. Pain and malaise.

Verse 2: Going through the motions. Wondering the point. Pointing out the emotions and losing all control.

Chorus: I'm dressed to depress, painting the town grey. My Panoply, my Armour, rusted and fading away.

Verse 3: Struggling through life with a head full of nightmares. Picking up the pieces, searching for my home.

Repeat Chorus x2

Yes, they are quite sparse, and they are bloody depressing but that is just how I was feeling at the time. I had posted the song to my Sound Cloud but decided one day that I hated it and as a knee jerk reaction I deleted the track. Thankfully I didn’t delete the videos from YouTube. I will keep them up even if I never do anything else with the song as it is a learning experience.

Conversely, I really didn’t like my song Dark Green Skies when I first recorded it. It was written for a song writing challenge on Facebook and as much as I liked the lyrics it felt like the song was missing something. I still haven’t figured out what that is, but I have grown to really like the track overall. Not every song needs to be complicated I guess!

I beat myself up over everything I do but i am also very proud of what I have achieved so far and I can definitely tell that my voice and my songwriting are getting better. The process of writing these has taught me so much and has already opened up some interesting experiences, like being played on BBC Essex which is just insane!

I will continue to write while we are locked away and hopefully once we are set free I will be able to get out to play some gigs and potentially get into the studio and record some of my songs properly.

Until then, stay safe.

Much love.

Dan

(It occurs to me that this post is a bit pointless. Oh well!)