Am I Cranky Today? NO, And Stop Asking Me That!
What type of feelings would a copyright infringer have?
Last week’s Bonus Round: "Stray Cat Strut" is the third single by American rockabilly band Stray Cats, released April 17, 1981 by Arista Records in the UK, where it peaked at No. 11 on the Singles Chart.[1] It was taken from the band's 1981 debut album, Stray Cats. That same year, as an import, it peaked at No. 78 on the US Disco Top 80 chart.[2]
In the US, the song was released as a single by EMI America on June 11, 1982, and included on the Built for Speed album released that same month. During its initial release, "Stray Cat Strut" failed to crack the Billboard Hot 100 chart, peaking at number 109 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100 Singles chart in August 1982.[3] When the band's next single, "Rock This Town", made the top 10, the record company decided to re-release "Stray Cat Strut", this time with much more success. Debuting at number 43, it was the highest new entry on the Hot 100 chart dated December 25, 1982, eventually peaking at number 3 in March 1983.[4] The music video for the song received extensive airplay on MTV during the channel's early days.[5] The video consisted of band members (and extras) performing in an alley while an irate resident throws things at them. It also featured scenes from the 1949 MGM cartoon Bad Luck Blackie.
In the October 1998 issue of Guitar World magazine, Brian Setzer's solo from "Stray Cat Strut" ranked No. 92 on the "Top 100 Guitar Solos of All Time" list.
Stray Cats are an American rockabilly band formed in 1979 by guitarist and vocalist Brian Setzer, double bassist Lee Rocker, and drummer Slim Jim Phantom in the Long Island town of Massapequa, New York.[1] The group had numerous hit singles in the UK, Australia, Canada, and the U.S. including "Stray Cat Strut", "(She's) Sexy + 17", "Look at That Cadillac", "I Won't Stand in Your Way", "Bring It Back Again", and "Rock This Town", which the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame has listed as one of the songs that shaped rock and roll.[2] Credit all above: Wikipedia
So no cat pictures this week. I do want to expand a bit on last week’s home studio recording theme, and I’ll include a few links to related articles and some other things that caught my eye this week. Last week’s post was pretty specific to a technique I use and the equipment in my home studio. Today, I want to generalize from that a little to some lessons I’ve learned along the way. Not saying I won’t feed some of the addictions I’ve acquired anymore, just that I’m a little more temperate about them now, and you should learn from my mistakes. But you probably won’t, just like I didn’t from all the great people I listen to and all the articles I read that told me the same thing. Have fun, just make sure you can pay your credit card bills and the rent while you’re having that fun. Do I need more guitars, pedals, plugins, cables, studio monitors, software, computer dongles like USB hubs and external storage drives, etc, etc, etc……
Maybe….
I recognize what I really need is more disciplined guitar practice and dedicating more focused time to songwriting and honing the resulting lyrics with more interesting harmonic and melodic accompaniment. I know this because I tell myself that constantly and I read it fairly constantly in some of the publications and individuals whose articles and SubStacks I read (and often link to on here). But then I see a funny cat video on Instagram or something and somehow an hour has gone by. Yeah.
But still…
So let’s talk about before you record and after you record. Before you record, you’re going to write something. Or not. The only song I ever wrote as lyrics to preexisting music came from an online video course I was taking to learn Logic Pro X, the software DAW I use to record. At one point in one of the early videos in the series, after covering some of the basics, the instructor said, “Okay, stop now for 15 or 20 minutes and record something, anything, using what I just showed you.”. So I did. Mostly just a series of chord changes, sort of in the Key of CMaj (easy), but also veering off into some Key of GMaj and DMaj chords or extended chords, suspended chords, Major 7ths, whatever. No chord chart, no organization, more or less just a typical warm up sequence of unplanned, spontaneous chord changes. Then went back to the video series. Later I was about to delete the exercise, but decided to listen first. Not too bad…
But now I had the problem of not knowing what I’d just played, because it was all just random chord changes. So I spent the better part of the rest of the day listening to it and trying to create order out of chaos and ended up with a pretty cool sounding chord chart - mostly in CMaj, but a lot of non-diatonic chords and extended/suspended chords. I especially liked a riff of CMaj-CMaj7-FMaj7-GMaj repeated a few times, then ending in a line of GMaj-Gsus4-GMaj-Cmaj that eventually became part of the chorus. Mostly simple, with a nice varied progression to an authentic resolution (V-I, GMaj- Cmaj in the Key of CMaj - jazz peeps will call it an authentic resolution, authoritarian classic musicians will call it a Perfect Cadence, and you can hear the capitalized letters in their voice when they say it….LOL…musician humor).
Resolutions, Or What "Those People" Call Cadences
Then, lyrics. Yeah - pure agony for me until the Magic Moment! The hook just popped into my head. And then it was like the floodgates opened. I wrote the whole thing, played it and went through the Seven Stages Of Songwriter Grief:
This Sucks
No One Will Ever Listen To This
Maybe If I Just Change This Part Around A Little…
That’s Even Worse
Back To Square One
Wait A Minute, Maybe…
Screw It, Close Enough, Whatever
Yeah. So no more lyrics to music for me. Maybe. At least so far, I just do lyrics and write a chord chart to that and a melody in my head, which leaves me with no way to score the melody easily. So annoying. Another few trips through the stages, then on to:
The Final Stage: Just record the damn thing and see.
Which brings us to after recording. More grief, more second guessing, more self critiquing, knob twisting, etc. Though I do reach the…
Other Final Stage: Let’s See If A Pro Can Do Anything With This Dog’s Breakfast Of A Mix
… a lot sooner, cuz I’m just weary of the song I once loved (hey, that’s kind of a cool lyric - “the [insert thing] I once loved”…..and I’m off to rinse, repeat or whatever).
Here’s a podcast:
This is Marty Dodson from Songtown, and he’s got some chops, so maybe, but note- I really dislike podcasts - not because they’re not full of useful information, they often are, and this one probably is (disclaimer, I haven’t listened to this one yet), but I find it difficult to just sit and listen to them - especially the ones that are with two or more people - one of them always seems to say “uh, like, y’know, um” a lot and that’s where the podcast ends for me. Your mileage may vary.
So, if you can avoid some of this angst and just buckle down and do it…well, I admire you and your work ethic, and bless your heart.
Some more links:
Interesting
So here’s a link to something I fundamentally disagree with:
The author postulates the Circle of Fifths is easy to understand. Nope. Some parts are reasonably easy to use, but only if you have a basic threshold of knowledge about scale structure and the resulting key structure (you can find that here: Michael Acoustic Retrospective #3) and that’s not only NOT going to be learned from looking at a Circle of Fifths diagram, there is a lot more to the math behind the Circle of Fifths than this article acknowledges. With those disclaimers, there are some things to take away from it that may prove somewhat useful.
Arpeggios are the individual notes of a chord, the basic triad but also the various extensions and permutations of a triad or 7th chord. Arpeggios and associated melodic notes can be the basis of the melody of a song that occurs between the harmonic structures (what does harmonic structures mean? Well, chord changes, mostly).
Guide tones, stepwise melody writing, voice leading, that sort of thing. Kinda down in the weeds, but useful and important
A couple of links from the US Copyright Office on copyrighting sheet music and lead sheets (surprisingly readable and uncomplicated for a government resource, mostly).
A "circular" with more on the copyright subject
Finally (in part because I need to post something I’m not just bitching about), a couple of links to articles about two of my favorite, and now sadly departed, lyrical songwriters/musicians
Bonus Round: Lebowski was right, but I like some of the individual artists…..
Cheers and keep playing!!
Michael Acoustic