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[gatsby9]

Tonight Zack and I had dinner at Cowboys and it was karaoke night. Michael Heaton, the Plain Dealer columnist, used to say there are two kinds of people who do karaoke. Drunk people, and people who were in drama club in high school. There were a lot of drunk people at Cowboys =) When I was singing "My Own Worst Enemy," a whole gang of them had

Comments

[gnr_stradlin_84]

Songwriting is a complicated art. I know I've had tons of things I've wanted to write songs about and I never come up with anything.

The best (and really only) songs I ever wrote came in a week-long stretch at the lowest point in my life. And I wasn't even trying to write: it just came. I didn't sit down intending to write, but rather it just kind of came to me. That's the only advice I can offer: don't try to force it, just let it come to you.

I also find that I write something I think is awesome, and then three weeks later I look back and go "What the hell was I thinking? This is terrible!" So I might not be the best person to listen to on this. I once wrote the line "Does she like me, does she not? I don't know, but I think she's hot." So yeah, it's probably for the better to take my advice with a block of salt.

[gatsby9]

I feel ya on going back and looking at our writing, I always think mine is awful too. That's the reason some ministers write their sermons on Saturday-- because they overthink and overedit otherwise. In truth, our writing is probably not awful, we're just our own harshest critics. Even the hot/not line has potential, in the right context.

I think if I were a better guitarist, I'd be a better songwriter. I can look up tab and play, but I don't yet have any spontaneous chord progression ability. I would wish I'd taken some music theory in college, except I know I wouldn't have understood it then.

I wrote my best songs in the 8th grade. People sang them to me at my high school reunion and asked if I'm doing anything with music (sorry for repeating here). It made me realize stuff about potential...too late maybe for me but not for my own child.

How did you get so talented musically?

[gnr_stradlin_84]

It's the genes. My mom, as you may know from SI, plays harp and guitar and sings. My dad took something like 12 years of piano lessons. My mom's dad was a guitarist and singer, while her mom played piano and sang. My dad's sister has a music degree, and her husband was director of bands at Louisville University. Of their children, one is a cellist in the Baltimore Symphony, while the other writes a lot of music (double majored in music and aerospace engineering at MIT), performs in some jazz combos, created a new age piano CD, and wrote his first symphonic piece at age 8. So I'm probably the least advanced one of the whole family. But if you have signs of talent as you do with your writing, it's good to make the most of it

[gatsby9]

I know I would get music theory now, but I would never have gotten it in college. I understood 8th grade physics completely, a year later. That's my brain, I have to have time to consider.

I have a guitar AND a piano! But I discovered that unlike guitar, one cannot learn piano from a book. There's no CD, because of piano tuning differences. Pah! Where are you these days? Teach me about music!

(PS, of course I know ur mom's amazing musicness!!)

[gnr_stradlin_84]

Piano can sort of be picked up from a book, or at least a series of books. I find working with just plain chords as accompaniment a lot easier than trying to play melodies. As long as you know how to make a major chord, a minor chord, a diminished, and an augmented, you're rolling. Know how to play the major scales and you have even more fun stuff to use