sadly personal

These are a series of letters I have written to a professor. Albeit they are very personal, I feel it necessary to post them here. Take from them what you may.

-Matt

Dear Keith,

Inspired by a renewed interest in reading, and a strong desire to improve upon myself and my knowledge base, I have sought a more lyrically-centered approach to songwriting. In this approach the lyrics take the most important role, and all of the corresponding sounds in the song are responses and reactions to the emotions and cadence of that vocal melody, and what the vocals say and mean to me. Not to bore you, but I feel this is a necessary preliminary to my questions. So in a search to find out what kind of artist I wanted to be, I felt the one thing that was missing from modern music was really the presence of the vocals. Not in a sense of their dominance in terms of volume, but in their lack luster role in composition, and in most music they are usually outright ignored, just words put to a melody. So I was stuck with the dilemma of lyrics either being too verbose to be considered musical, or lacking in substance. One of my other main claims against music as it is now is the lack of allusion or an overall lack of reference to other artistic works, such as paintings, architecture, or novels.

So... my question. I have started to construct lyrics through which I channel an influence, either a book I have read or a painting I have seen. I take the aspects of the story and form them into a poem. I take my emotion and feeling, and I word it in the vocabulary or story of a book. I want music to become more educated overall. I am tired of hearing the same old "I love you. You don't love me." I want to be educated while listening. I want more than just another human's emotions. Granted I don't desire a research paper for a song, but I desire a song to show someone's knowledge, and a grasp of concepts and a view on life influenced and shaped by the great artist's of the past.

First off, is this plagiarizing? I would also like your ENTIRELY FRANK opinion on their validity as simply a lyric poem. Are they juvenile? What can I do to improve? I would like the lyrics to be able to stand on their own without the music, and from this base, I will make the music in reaction to the lyrical content and feeling. I know the lyrics all have rhyme schemes, and I am half ashamed to admit that I feel that rhyme schemes are necessary in songwriting because of the instrumental role the voice is given within music. It is required to sound like an instrument of its own.

So here are some of the pieces I have so far and I'll state the influences or frameworks I am using via each:

I would be content to walk along the curb in the street
Wish for someone just like you to grab a hold and walk with me
Our life would be a "pilgrim's progress" a journey through the malcontent

This is how you do it
This is how you feel
Here's a painted portrait
In the modern day appeal
This is how you feel
This is how you feel

I need you now to help me
I need you to create
We'll paint in living flesh and blood
A child will be made

*** This poem was inspired by my recent intensive study of Vincent Van Gogh and the words mostly come from a specific letter of his. In the letter is his one and only sermon that he wrote while he aspired to become a priest like his father. He talks of life as a pilgrim's progress through which we can only bow our heads and make way. He also describes God, throughout several of his letters, as being the greatest artist painting in flesh and blood, and he believed that the best life was to simply work for ones living and to love a wife and have a child. All things he did not have. I injected that framework or wording with my own happenings and experiences. Taking the wording out of context and voicing my opinion through it.



Electrical extensions from my eyes and hands
A life sized image, a modern man
I "sit in a sea of hair like wires"

Pulses to her
A pulse for a friend
Pulses make sure it doesn't happen again

I look for my will to gain an effect
Something their near blind eyes can't detect
My life's being drawn onto computer screens

Pulses to her
A pulse for a friend
Pulses make sure it doesn't happen again

You house is full of holes and they're draining
The wires to your soul and the power they've been gaining


*** The main idea for this lyric was spawned from 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest'. There was a very vivid image provided by Kesey where Chief describes the head nurse as sitting in a sea of hair like wires that only he could see, and she would send out pulses along these wires, which were connected to everyone, to control people. I combined this with my current feeling of disgust with the internet, which I had spent way too much time on and wasted away in front of my computer screen. Also, I sight the controlling and persuasive nature of people, especially within their personal relationships.



Will you finally love me a mile underground?
Is this where true love is found?
We could just die on a bed of coal
Weary of life and starvation's toll
Please lift us out of this man eating hole

Past lover's could lay dead at our feet
Skull's busted open and limp with defeat
I'd drink to kill my demons
You'd pray to save your soul
Please lift us out of this man eating hole


*** This is incomplete but I was so excited about it that it finally prompted me to write this letter. It is based on the novel Germinal by Zola, which I just recently finished and highly recommend. Towards the end the main character Etienne and his long unrequited love Catherine are stuck underground after a mining disaster with Catherine's former, and unhappy, love Chaval. Etienne ends up killing Chaval but the mine is flooded so he ends up floating at their feet while they wait for rescue. This framework serves to voice my opinion about the nature of love and the ever present weight of our past relationships. I still need to develop a solid chorus, or simply write 2 or 3 more verses using "Please lift us out of this man eating hole" as a hook. Im not sure.





Anyways, thanks for taking the time to read through these and let me know what you think. I am really trying to become a better artist and I want the lyrics to be the start and the focus of my music. This may all be irrelevant to you or you may be unable to comment in detail, but I seek your honest opinion on these 3 pieces. You may even ask why I would even show you these in the first place, but I need an opinion outside of my own, and the casual "Yea, sounds good" from my friends does little to suffice for me.



Thanks,

Matt

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Keith,

Thank you very much for your advice. I completely understand about what you were saying in terms of not even caring what the vocals are saying. That is exactly where I was at until just recently. I even feel like most times the lyrics are a hindrance to the actual sounds of the voice. For example, Grizzly Bear is an amazing band whom I discovered early this year. Their music is a very vocally driven music in the sense that the vocals are a catalyst for the rest of the music. Most of the time you can't even really make out what they are saying, and in my opinion, the most powerful moments are when they aren't singing at all but merely harmonizing different oohs and aahs.

I like that you mentioned Owen. Many people have told me to get back into him. I started listening to him whenever it was that he had first started making music. I had just followed him from his former band American Football, whom I adore. However his early stuff was so shaky, and sounded to me more of a Conor Oberst impression. Regardless, I have heard great things about his two most recent albums, which I still have yet to check out.

So ever since I started music years ago. I never cared about the vocals. I liked a lot of instrumental music, I was in a hardcore band through high school which definitely did not emphasize what the vocals were saying, and like I just admitted even now my favorite bands, e.g. Grizzly Bear, put little emphasis on the lyrical content because of their mixing and processing of vocals.

The two bands whom I would cite as giving me the most direction in this new pursuit of lyrically-centered song writing would be the aforementioned Grizzly Bear, with their album Yellow House, and Animal Collective, specifically their new album. In both albums, the lyrics make sounds happen. It's indeed hard to explain, but when the vocals raise in pitch, another higher effect or a bit of rolling cymbal comes in to match it or react to it as I would like to think. The way in which I feel I can improve upon this approach, and the way in which I would like to contribute to music, would be to emphasize even more the music as a reaction to the vocals, and to improve the quality of the vocals themselves.

Some songs, or my musical bibliography for this letter. You should be able to stream these at http://elkblood.imeem.com/music/ :

"Cuckoo Cuckoo" - Animal Collective off the album Strawberry Jam

*** Here listen to how the vocals cause other effects to swell especially in the first verse.

"Central and Remote" - Grizzly Bear off the album Yellow House

*** This entire song is an example of what I'm walking about where the vocals seem to cause the other sounds and instruments to react. Specifically at around 1:10ish is a very powerful moment that showcases what I talk about. The vocals rise in volume and power and the drums and harmonies react with a strong reply.

"Daffy Duck" - Animal Collective off the album Feels

*** This song is fairly floating and abstract, but this probably served to first start me off on this idea of action and reaction musically. In this case that one main guitar and not the vocals serves as the catalyst. It is perfect because it isn’t even constrained by percussion. It’s like a sea of sound where the lead line makes splashes and ripples as it falls into the water.



This all may seem kind of vague but that is also to give you an idea of where the lyrics eventually will be. My band, whose name is Elk Blood, used to have a myspace, but we absolutely detest that medium. We recently set up a blog at www.elkblood.blogspot.com


As of yet, there is no music up there or anything. It is actually quite frustrating because we had spent the past year working on this album. We recorded somewhere around 16 songs, and we recently decided that it wasn't representative of the musical direction we wanted to pursue. The past couple of months have been filled with mostly talking like I have in these past letters about what we really want to convey with our art, and what we want it to mean. Those months of talking have now started to form into songs which we have started recording. So, hopefully we'll get some songs up there soon, and maybe we'll finally release an album, or play a show again for the first time in quite a long while.

Thanks,

Matt