So how about a little peek into my lyric book

A couple of pages from my lyric book

Today doesn't seem like a good time to go through all the Tuesday to-dos that I've missed out on over exams - and I'll be merging that and Friday into a new Sunday feature soon (I think) - so I thought now might be nice to do a small blog about something I'm writing, or, more specifically, how I write.

However, first things first, I think we should all sing a quick happy birthday to Vivatramp which celebrates its first birthday today. Ready?

A happy blah blah

blah you

blah blah

blah you

blah blah blah blah blah,

blah 

Anyway, nice one Bee; I think the speed at which Viva's grown goes some way to showing you really quite how good it is.  It's definitely right up there amongst my favourite blogs and it's pretty easily my favourite personal one.   Anyway, onwaaaaaaaard:

You all know I'm in a band, right?  Well, yeah, I am, and being a little English nut who's keen on poetry and things, I always try and write lyrics when I can (If you have our EP, I did 'E9', 'Enlightenment; Maybe' and 'Black|White' (must improve my titles for songs)).  Jonny sent me a new song out of the blue the other day, so I'm jumping on the opportunity before Ed gets his filthy-but-better mitts on it.

Pretentious, badly written and unhelpful-because-its-a-personal-thing guides are ten-a-penny these days, but this is how I write - not a guide, but an insight into my creative process.
This is what happens when you have a song to write, not when you're inspired; whilst you'd assume I'd hate writing as a task, I often find it works - if I 'have' to write something, it stops me cringing and makes me get on with it.

Going hand in hand with this vague sense of duty, I find I need a song ready for me to write anything well.  You can write as much as you want without music, but that method leaves you rather susceptible to getting just too poetic, or alternatively leaving you with something that bit too hard to fit into a melody.  People aren't listening exclusively for your wordcraft, which might well be great and give depth or feel to a song but won't catch someone's immediate attention - how many songs sound brilliant to belt out but mean nothing at all? Often a few LALAs will suffice.

Second, get yourself some refreshments.  These are totally, absolutely necessary: writing is an excellent excuse to have some chai.

Chai tea and Marmite on toast are musts

 Then get a pen and some paper. Don't use a computer; that sucks the life out of any emotion you are trying to get across, which is kind of the point, right? Get physical, and knuckle down - listen to the song a couple of times on repeat and jot down any thoughts you have / do a mindmap of ideas. Draw a picture, write down some quotes, do a bit of word association or freeform writing. Get stuff down. Next, make a collection of all the words or phrases you might have jotted down in notebooks or on scraps of paper in the past few months (I use my phone's memos) and copy them all down in a page together.  Soon you'll find some recurring themes: that's your head, that is. Don't be afraid of talking about your preoccupations - lyrics or poetry can be a great release.  Although you can run the risk of re-lodging stuff in your mind, I wouldn't worry about anything coming back in my head too much - much due to the fact that I don't sing, but hand lyrics over to Ed.  The fact someone else can be singing something personal, or abstract and open to interpretation, feels like the best release.  If nothing else, hearing anything over and over, whilst writing, rehearsing and recording will make the subject lovely and dull - mundanity, much the subject of the song I'm doing now, can be a great comfort, as well as working wonders for ruining your memory.  All hail the death of good thought!

Some of my books full of notes

Giving vague order to any recurrences you have in your notes is a pretty good next step, after which you should try to fit them vaguely in with any of the stuff you wrote whilst listening to the song earlier.  For melody (I'm really bad at this), you can try and transcribe whatever you have already kicking around in your head, direct from the words you've written, or sit and listen to the song on repeat for ages in an attempt to work one out.  A personal favourite.

I use my glock to write melody (which I'm shit at) 

Fit it all together, go through it a few times, then go and do something else for a few hours. Never get rid of your rough work, whether it's throwing away notes or whatever.  Read/listen again for a quick once-over, before giving what you have the 24 hour rule, and if it's not cringeworthy after that you'll be fineeeee

PING

Got bored of writing towards the end so rushed through, really.  That's all, I'm going to get the song slowed down a bit so it fits a bit more nicely with my lyrics and so it sounds a bit more Wild Beasts-y.  I'll be doing a walking blog catch-up tomorrow, I think.  T'ra!

~

when I've finished these I'll put them here. Shouldn't be too long, though the result'll probably go down like a curry fart in a space suit

My hands are completely covering my eyes

So how about that Nicola Roberts, then?

Old man verdict - I can scarcely hear above that electronic racket
Young indie teen - not bad, not bad
Current indie'n'Gaga Jamie - really really good, almost at 'amazing' level. Mildly rubbish video, tho'

These are my views on Nicola Roberts' new single, Beat of My Drum.  They're hardly secret, and I waxed lyrical about it on twitter when I first heard it, but I just wanted an excuse to put up this video of my brother Andrew and myself doing a bit of an owl-ey cover, inspired by And's friend Taylor giving him her drawing of an owl in a suit.  It's lovely and a little bit jubbly.  Excuse my incest joke at the end.

For something completely different, the majority of you will probably like this a lot more.  The band's called Daughter, and the EP sounds quality.

Also Bee did her vlog, which is amazing.  And I got her to talk about Nazis.  My favourite bit is when my stupid question confuses her and she says she would listen to music if it came in the form of 'a cake made of shit'.

That is all; I am meant to be revising now... I'll come back on, probably, Tuesday, but Friday the 24th's my last exam, so I might do a blog party - Zoe's idea, with a post every hour, and guest bloggers - or a vlog the following Saturday.  Something special to get all my thoughts over the past few weeks in without making a really stupidly long attention-losing post, and then I'll readjust the features schedule to get more blogging in in the absence of school commitments so to try and get my follower count up a bit and have a bit more fun with it here.  Might sort out my background and stuff too - let me know your thoughts, I'll be back soon to chat away, this paragraph's grown a bit long so I'm going to cut myself off here


P.S. so Gabriel Duquette who is ace mentioned me on his walking blog, big win

So, how about... Milky

Evening all, further to my current internet silence I'm going to have to go back on myself and say I'm not going to tweet OR blog till after exams, given how hard I'm finding it to concentrate on it.  History on Friday should be alright, if I can stay focussed for two hours, aiming for an A* in that; RS on Monday is a terrifying prospect which not only requires me to learn the entire large syllabus rather than falling asleep or playing FIFA like the past two days but to keep focus for three whole hours.  Those of you that know me will get how hard it can be to get me shut up, let alone properly concentrate.  If I'm successful I'll have dragged my essays from a year's worth of Es to a C.

In hindsight it was pretty bad timing starting a blog just now, and I feel a bit silly in that I've just started to get some followers and comments before I take a couple of week's enforced break.  I just do quite long, time-consuming writing, to my own detriment, and I really really really want to get into uni.  I might not take up my insurance offer if I only get into that, either, which is how much I've been looking forward to it.

I've also lost about five followers on twitter, and to my horror when I looked at who follows me the top of the list are bots, so I must have lost like ten real people to be replaced with rubbish like @strangeinews and @iheartcharlotte (Gainsbourg).  You guys are all so ruthless with your follows! I approve but feel strangely bad about it.  My twitter and blog is all I've got to make me feel I have a voice which is at least vaguely listened to.

So yeah, I figure this is another thing I can cut out of a busy-ish routine and another vice which'll stop making FIFA look so acceptable in my mind's eye.  As you can see what was originally intended to be a quick paragraph has morphed into a full post (must ruthlessly self-edit), so it might well be a sensible decision to stop this.  Not that waffling bodes well in exams for someone with my terribly slow handwriting.

Loads of good, interesting, thoughts occurred to me this week.  But you won't hear them here, so may I present...

So, err, Milky.  WHAT A LAD

That is all, I'll see you all soon; I might do a touch of light blogging next week, post-Monday, but 24th is my last exam so after that this blog is going to be, as my philosophy teacher described ancient Greece, party central (without the free-for-all anal sex to which she was referring (don't blame her, blame OCR)).  I'll be back with a relative-to-this-blog bang, so maybe just a picture of a zebra or something.  That might be cool.  Or a video blog.  Bee, you good for that?

Sorry, in-jokes on public blog.  Bad.  Thanks for a couple of blog plugs to the lovely Zoe - who's particularly ace - and see you on the other side!