Everywhere you go, everyplace your in, music is playing. The music may be in your car, it may be in an elevator, or maybe inside a restaurant bathroom. Music soothes people. Some like to listen to music for entertainment while others use it to study better. In the car, people put on the radio to keep them focused, awake, and to break the awkward silence of driving or being in a car. However, when listening to the music, do you focus on the lyrics the notes, the background singers. What about how the song was created, or how much time it takes to make a song. Most people assume that all musical artists are so talented and create the best music. But in reality, many are only good singers. Other people create the lyrics and the songs, with the recording artist getting the credit. In this studio, we were given the task of learning how to write songs, as well as learning how much time and effort must be put in the process.

Our song features a very realistic topic that everyone in life has problems: wasting time. Everyone in life at some point has regretted or will regret a decision they have made. People can regret leaving a person, doing a bad thing like stealing, or the most common form, waiting too long to make a decision. The lyrics of our song highlight the rapid passage of time when growing up. We need to make decisions promptly and not ponder over the small petty decisions in life.  Also, our song highlights the point that death is inevitable and that although we can't escape it, we can make the most out of our lives before death outruns us. 

Below are our lyrics to our song. It follows a simple A, B, A, B song format with a rapped/spoken verse and a sung chorus. We spent a good deal of time brainstorming the ideas for the song, after which Jack moved to the stairwell to compile the ideas into the final song. Then we worked as a team to lay down the tracks using garage band and finally, Jack sang/recorded the lyrics which we mixed with the music for the final recording.

Ticking away the moments that make up day,                                 

Wasting all my hours in a careless way,

Waiting for someone or something to show me a route,

A hand to lead me and show me a way out,

Tired of watching people come and go,

I think my life is long and there is time to throw,

And then a day later ten years have progressed,

Procrastination has officially made me depressed,

I look up to the sky to find my way,

What the hell I’m supposed to say,

I missed my chance, I missed my shot, 

I’ve lost everything, now hope’s all that I’ve got,

One more tooth under the pillow,

Another pencil mark on the wall,

You don’t realize all the things you had,

Until you lost them all,

And the day you found out, 

That they expected more from you,

That's the day you realized that,

You finally grew,

Wanted to talk about the problems,

Wanted to understand the joke, 

You didn’t take the time to think,

That you were letting something go, 

All humans are mortal no matter what myths say,

We want to live forever every single day,

Don’t want to miss a moment or even a beat,

Cause we know that our present will never repeat,

And when it comes to the end and we take our last breath,

Do we want to fight to the finish even in death,

Do we want to make it better or leave it the same,

Knowing all that we did was done in vain,

All the things in this world that will go left unsaid,

Do we want to keep on going or quit while ahead,

Do we wanna show the people that we truly care,

Or do we wanna leave this Earth brutal and bare,

One more tooth under the pillow,

Another pencil mark on the wall,

You don’t realize all the things you had,

Until you lost them all,

And the day you found out, 

That they expected more from you,

That's the day you realized that,

You finally grew,

Wanted to talk about the problems,

Wanted to understand the joke, 

You didn’t take the time to think,

That you were letting something go.

     For our songwriting project, we started with a general lyrical idea. There were some complications when our group was thinking about the topic of this song, but it was decided that we would make it about a person missing their old life, or their regrets about the past.  There are many songs like this, but we decided that we wanted ours to be focused more on not achieving happiness rather than not achieving a certain job or having money.  After refining this theme a bit, we wrote down a first verse and created a melody and chord progression around it. Our original plan was to keep the same chord progression (F-Em-Dm-C) throughout the song, but this ended up being too monotonous and missing the melodic variation that we needed to sustain a listener’s interest in the song. Our songwriting process mostly consisted of writing lyrics and then creating a melody that fit with the syllabic structure of each line. After the first verse was done, we switched to a process of coming up with lyrics based around the existing melodic structure, as we wanted to keep the melody consistent between corresponding sections.

     When we started writing our first verse, we fell into an AABB rhyming pattern. Since the chord progression in our original first and second sections sounded very similar, we wanted to add more variety to the rhyming style. We switched the chorus to an ABAB rhyme structure, which also helped it stand out from the rest of the song.

     The song’s structure is essentially ABC, with two repetitions of each section, (A,B,C,A,B,C). On the second repetition, the B section is truncated to add variety and maintain interest. The C section, or chorus, remains the same lyrically and musically both times, while the A and B sections, or verses, are lyrically different each time but musically identical.  

     After coming up with lyrics and piano part, we decided to add a rhythm section. Since we were not able to bring in an acoustic drum set, we used one of the midi drum sets that were on GarageBand. We then edited a drum track to be simpler and softer. The simple drum track was used for both the A and B verses. For the chorus, we chose another drum track that was slightly more complex than the drum track for the verse so that there would be different textures in the song. As an added texture, we kept the metronome type track that was used as a metronome while recording the piano part. For the bass part, Ezra played the root notes into GarageBand set to a bass sound since we were not able to plug either a guitar or bass into GarageBand.

We based our song off of the 90s Bristole based genre Trip Hop. Trip Hop is a combonation of Down Tempo electronics, the beat of Hip Hop, and the influence of Jazz. In our song we created we leaned heavily on Ambient and Electronics, with a lot of vocal samples. A lot of our samples were from older movies or speeches, for example the start of the song has Richard Nixon's Speech - "I am not a Crook", and some quotes from the movies, 'Gone with the Wind', 'Blade Runner' and many others. We wanted our song to put you into a deep, relaxed mood, so our precedents are in that dark tone, there is rain and some jazz at the end, with a solid beat under the song. 

During our four day process, naturally, we had some disagreements. There was a whole section of the song that changed the overall vibe from dark to happy. We used an upbeat synth and different, more light vocal samples. We ended up taking this entire large section out because it did not fit with the rest of the song. The coolest thing about trip hop is that each song transports you to a mood or an overall feeling, and that feeling does not change untiD the song is over. 
Another section of the song that changed a lot a guitar part in the middle. We had made that string section in the beginning, but we did not have anything to move the song forward during its course. Even though we wanted to keep the same dark vibe throughout, we needed something to progress the song in order to keep it from being boring. 

While we were designing this song, we had a very clear vision of what we hoped that it would be, and while it took a slightly different form than what we initially intended, It did not stray too far off course.  We wanted to create a slow, sample oriented track with a less clearly defined skeleton than that of traditional songs.  And I'd like to think that we succeeded.

Today we listened to everyone's song choices and then we jumped into writing a song as a group. I do not have much to say about the sharing other than it was lively discussion, really into the music. There was some unexpected aggression at first, but it turned out ok.

The song writing is going well so far, I'm exited. Death was immediately chosen as a theme, that was a bit unexpected. I like it though, we seem to be doing well lyric-wise. Lyrics are new for me, but once we have something going, I feel like I can contribute. The harmony right now is also slightly foreign territory for me. The 6/8 feel that is almost swung is more familiar; I have actually worked with it often in my own compositions. It is a really cool sound to write over. I noticed that it was mostly 3 or 4 people dominating the creative process, some people are left on the side. We should work on fixing that tomorrow.  Speaking of tomorrow, I'll bring my guitar so I can add onto the conversation musically.

P.S. I shared my survey with you Adam, it is in your email.