Some work in progress

I’ve been doing a lot of recording lately.  Working with Daniel, there’s a collection of songs for a new album All The Time in Heaven.  It’s changed a bit during the year or so we’ve been working on it and some songs that I thought of as highlights just don’t seem to fit with the others so they’ll be coming out soon on their own.

At the same time I’m working through a long list of older, never-recorded songs which I occasionally play in public AND I’m writing a lot of new stuff,  a wave which rather took me by surprise near the end of last year.  Another project is a co-write with Ms Fi which I hope will see the light of day soon.

But there’s another idea I’ve been working on.  When Paul Simon put out his most recent album he said it was the first time he’d started with actual songs that he’d written on his guitar – everything else since Graceland had been a case of making a music track then listening to it for weeks until a melody and lyric that match it come to mind.  I’m the opposite – I start a recording from the end working backwards – I can ‘hear’ the finished song in quite a lot of detail in my head and I try as far as possible to recreate it. Sometimes a happy accident, or the contribution of a friend, suggest a new approach but most often I am trying to build according to the knowledge of a finished song.

So I’m in the process of putting together a few tracks where I’ve no idea currently what the melody or lyric will be.  Some are beginning to suggest themselves but I can barely hear them. I thought it might be interesting  to share them at this early stage and compare the finished songs – if they ever are finished – with these early tracks.