Thursday, January 4, 2018

Day 4: Shoot It



It may sound like vaguely disguised innuendo, but it's actually about photography. It has an almost bluesy structure, but I think the rhythm and tone put it more in "indie-folk" territory. It took about 5 hours to write, but unlike yesterday's song, I didn't have to push through a lack of inspiration; it came fairly naturally. As with the other songs, this is just a first draft, so I'm open to comments or critiques (especially if you're an avid photographer).

Boring Details: Started about 4:30 and decided to write while walking again. The problem I'm having is not that I don't have ideas, it's that it's hard to get the previous ideas out of my head. My brain keeps wanting to work on yesterday's song. I tried doing a monotone hum just to clear the other songs out of my system. What finally got me into a different state of mind was the rhythm; once I had a different rhythm from the previous three songs, the rest started to come together.

The first lyric that came to mind was the "sh-sh-sh-shoot it" part. So, obviously, it had to be about guns. But, damn it, I wasn't ready to write a political song in a rushed fashion like this, so I shifted to cameras. I dabbled with the idea of critiquing the use of cameras for social media-- you know: selfies, pictures of your dinner, etc.-- but what I was coming up with was way more critical than I actually feel. I had thrown around some basic camera-related terminology, and suddenly that was what I wanted the song to be about: the language of photography. I walked back home and started looking up photo jargon and slang. There's quite a lot of interesting stuff, but I tried to narrow it down to words that have double meanings.

I really enjoyed the mellow drone of the guitar part-- it ended up being more pleasant than I had imagined during the walk. I have a bit of a cold, so I don't think I sang it quite as sweetly as I would've liked, but a perfect recording is not what this project is about.

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