When is a song a good song? Songwriting - the SOAR way. Part 2

The second part of this blog entry is about how SOAR write songs, the mechanics, separate from the inspiration or reasons to write in the first place, and in some way answers the question about whether SOAR writes good songs.
As we explain in our shows we don't usually write songs together. This is primarily because we live too far apart to get together very often. Lyrical collaborations via the internet are easy enough but it is way hard to replicate on the internet the equivalent of sitting around in someone's lounge room jamming away writing songs. Interesting too is that the songs we did write together, like Fishies,  I Called You On The Phone and Mystery Girl, are in the perky singalong category.

Mostly we write individually or in pairs - with Experiment being the common person in them. And well it all seems to work pretty good to me.
When i'm writing songs (Bright) as soon as i think i have something musically interesting happening i send a demo to Experiment, for a couple of reasons. Very quickly in my song writing i begin to lose some perspective of its merits. One of the ways i write the melody/music is by repetition - i just take an initial chord progression and melody fragment and sing it over and over again trying out different chords and melody options until i have a verse and chorus structure i like. Then i will record a rough demo of the song so i can listen to it without playing it at the same time. With some songs by the time all this is done i may already have sung/listened to the song fifty times and my head is numb to its real merits by then. Regardless,  i like to keep working on songs and finish them as quickly as i can - while i am absorbed by each one - this is where Experiment first comes in. I send the demo to EX and he lets me know what he thinks of it. Your basic thumbs up or thumbs down.
At this point regardless of the feedback from EX i may or may not complete songs for any number of reasons and many bits and pieces of songs end up in the SOAR VAULT at this point. Of all the songs that EX gives the thumbs up to that are completed and played in SecondLife, 9 out of 10 of them seem to be well received. Of the songs that got the thumbs down from EX that are nonetheless completed, maybe only 3 out 10 ever see the light of day.
So for me the role Experiment plays in my songwriting is crucial - saves me a lot of time by giving me an idea early on that my initial ideas for a song may not be strong enough or appealing enough to warrant spending any more time on them, and then in a positive way gives me confidence that there is something worth developing and completing in the songs that he gives the thumbs up to.
Whether any of this on its own makes any of the songs a good song, well, probably not, i still say a song is a good song if you like it, but it does help ensure that less songs that should never ever be heard by anyone ever make it into our shows, and for that, you and i should be very grateful because i have listened to some of the songs EX rejected and they are truly bad :)


OK this post is long enough. I hope it explains the role EX has in my songwriting - i play a fairly similar role in EX's songwriting. And perhaps in another entry i will write about why i write songs, the reasons, the inspirations, the different approaches i take, does the music come first or the lyrics, how long does it take etc.


Thanks for reading.
Bright :)