General Music Chat

Well you said you had reoccurring themes. So chop the worse of the two when you have duplicates of the same message. When making an album in my opinion the first three would be the hook, if something is borderline to include or not, then it’s side two, like song three.

After the first three you might as well knock yourself out, because if they came that far then chances are they’ll go all the way. Like Pink Floyd The Wall, “Vera” and “Bring the boys back home”. Sure it helps tell the whole story, but would they have been regarded as great music out of context? I don’t think so.

I have many songs that follow the same theme. Some songs die after the first verse. Songs depict events of human experience, some straight down the line, some compilations of similar events. They do not share the same melodies.

If songs were worth writing they are worth recording. A poet may say the same thing many different ways. A listener may hear a message set in one format but not another. Literature tells the same story from different viewpoints. What you had to say yesterday with passion may not be passionate today. But it was passionate at the time, and shall be that way at another point in time.

A somebody did somebody wrong song. Heard it before. A protest song. Heard 'em before. An I'm in love song. (puke) Heard them all before. Babbling nonsense songs... far to many of them became hits. We can only write about so many topics. That is the human experience.

Simply use them on different albums.

It’s funny you mentioned producing garbage. Last night I spent hours playing around with a song. I had pictured it as something different, but after getting through with some basic tracks, I just couldn’t convince myself that I liked it. Hours spent wasted fooling myself, that it was something more than it was. I could have spent the same time on stuff I know I like.

These songs represent not only your life work as a body of music but your life experience as a continuum.
If you don't complete this personal re-visitation and catalog of your work you will miss something that is hidden from you in either the volume of work or perhaps in just the doing.
There is an energetic connectivity between you and your work and a reason you began this "quest" initially.
If you allow yourself to second guess, there is no telling what you will miss or lose.

Then again...how much of it is simply too personal for others to relate to? That's a problem for a lot of writers - they write too much from detailed personal experiences, & it means less than nothing if you weren't there to experience it at the time.

I'd tend to stay away from the "life continuum theme" approach, myself. You can go with a collection of moods or emotions, or a collection of stories, or whatever, but once it becomes too personal, it tends to lose an audience, & becomes more of a musical diary, which, frankly, is boring as a written one to most of us.

Which of your tunes will the listener relate to? That is the ultimate question, not "what should I leave in or out to fully represent the real me?" The average listener doesn't really care about the real you. They care about whether the music speaks to them on a personal level. If your tune serves both purposes, great. Otherwise, keep it in your diary.

Phil does make a valid point but let us not forget it's the listeners whom determine whats a hit and whats not. Not the artist.
We could spend all day naming "B" side cuts that went gold.

Lots of stuff in this. I'll reply tomorrow but most of it is the realm of the solo artist which I have an empathy with.

Songs that seem unfinished can really be helped along by an ear that is truly sympathetic.

I've seen a few bands take a bunch of basic crap and mutate it into something worthwhile just by having that other brain working on the tunes at hand. Just take it slowly./././././