Cowboy Confessional

A hacked out a new song this week — a love ballad about broken people in and around the rodeo circuit. Imagine like Tom Waits banging Conway Twitty.

It is called Eli’s, and there is a very rough sketch demo track online.

There is a minor lesson in song construction here (though this tune is far from complete). While pondering the lyrics I had the melody of a famous country song in my head, and kept stitching to words together with those sounds.

That’s wrong on many levels, possibly illegal, and might well be against church doctrine to boot.

So when it came time to write music, I had to force a chord structure completely different to what was echoing in my skull. It did not matter what chords I started using, because they were throw-aways (and sure enough, I ended up with completely different ones). Same with the meter, melody, etc.

Another songwriting tactic I used in this song was a common one, but I liked the way it worked here. The stanzas are in major chords, and the change-ups are in minors. Since I wanted negative emotions in the change-ups — to drive the feeling that life sucks and doesn’t get better — minor chords created that feeling.

Enough of my rambling (Jack Elliot I ain’t). Enjoy, and if you don’t … keep it to yourself.

Bookmark to: