It's An Original

So, most of you by now will know that we have a mixed bag of original material and covers in our set. One thing that we don't make a big thing of is that we all write for Short Tempus so when you hear our set you'll get original songs from Steve, Gilles, Martin and myself and, in the not too distant future, Nic has one penned that will make it to the set too.

When people you meet find out that you're in a band there's a set list of questions that come immediately to the fore:

What do you play?
Do you sing?
What sort of music do you do?
What's it like to play live?
Do you write your own music?
How do you go about writing a song?

All very good questions that, as a committed and slightly odd muso, are happily answered on a regular basis. I enjoy talking about our band. I enjoy what we do and I'm very proud of what we've achieved in a fairly short space of time but the difficult one to answer is the "how do you write a song?" one.

I can't answer for the rest of the guys but I'm not sure that it's something that I consciously think about. You'll be bimbling about, doing what you do and suddenly a line will pop into your head. The first thing to do is write it down before you forget it! Seriously, I've lost so many great lyrics for the simple want of a pen! The iPhone is great for me; idea = notes on iPhone. Back home and transfer from phone to notebook. Allow to simmer while adding new lines as they come into your head. After a few weeks you'll have material for maybe two or three tracks. From there you start to combine, edit, rearrange and generally add to the ideas. Once you get going the rest of the words tend to flow quite quickly. Sometimes it comes in a flash; a fully formed song just formulates in the old grey matter in a matter of minutes.

Writing is a difficult thing. So much of what gets written is based on personal experience and as a consequence you fret over it as it's very much a part of you. When people hear it they draw conclusions some of which are correct and some of which can be, shall we say, way off the mark! Just to clear up a misconception about Sure Got The Blues; it's about my ex-wife not my current one! The hardest thing to hear though is negative criticism as it can feel like a personal attack being that it's so much a part of you. On the other hand, when someone connects with your music it's a damn good feeling; it's great to get your words and music into someones head and have them 'get it'.

So back to the notepad and notation software. There's new work in the offing from all of us; we just have to find the time to do the arrangements, learn it, rehearse it and then add it to the set so that you can decide whether it's any good.........Please be kind!

Dunc