Day 2 — Brainstorming for tormented brains

October 3, 2019

Little by little, I’m starting to feel like a real musician again. It’s been so long since I’ve been in a studio and it’s one of my favorite places to be. Today, we went analyzing song by song, taking notes on things that need to be moved around, improved, removed, changed, etc, etc, etc… As a composer and arranger, it’s important to understand and accept your weaknesses and let your collaborators help you in order to achieve the ultimate song/piece. There is no point in defending something that deep down you know it’s not that good, and the best way to collaborate with others is to create a work environment where we can share ideas and respectfully turn them down, accept them, or elaborate on them. My most successful collaborations have been when we can brainstorm freely. If you have a small idea, but are not sure of its potential, why not share it with your colleagues so you can decide together? Trust and honesty are key!

I have big trouble writing beats for drums and percussion. Many people in their creative process start off by creating a beat and elaborate the rest of the song over that. In my case, it’s completely the opposite. I think as a singer and pianist, I tend to focus way too much on melody and harmony. I consciously have to remind myself to add some movement to the lines I’m writing, as I am easily charmed by a nice sounding chord with sustained notes. Luckily, Charles (producer) is also a drummer. So I’ve been receiving a lot of feedback on the things I sketched out for drums and I feel everything will come together nicely once he brings up his own ideas and we record an actual drummer playing (instead of me, playing drums poorly on my MIDI controller keyboard).

With the ideas we’ve written down, things look very promising for my songs! I can stop worrying about my crappy beats and finally have some professionals do the real stuff :) That’s all I have for now, but come back tomorrow!

Do you have any nice memories of a collaboration that worked out really well? Let me know in the comments! :)

Cheers!

Monica Lyrae