I set off for my walk a bit late in the day but once I'd left the pavements behind I began to find my feet. The conditions were not ideal, it's better when you have all the time in the world, nowhere to go and nothing to come back for. But it's January, and that's the whole point, to do it anyway - or at least to set off. The phrase came up about "Old Bones" which has an appealing sound to it, but after working on it and singing for a few minutes the dreaded self-editing part of the brain kicked in and made me feel like it was a really unfortunate topic to choose for a song.
Rather than waste the walk and go home with nothing, I felt in my pocket for the little Canon compact camera that's always there and decided to try and make a video while walking. If it worked I'd have a video to post for Day 6, and if it didn't - well at least I'd have the tune and some lyrics laid down in digital so I wouldn't have to write them down when I got back. The video is good enough I think, to illustrate the technique of going for a walk to make up a tune, I hope. I like the shots of my feet, and the added explanation of using double time and half time beats so you can write both fast and slow tunes to the rhythm of the walking.
When I got back I showed the video to Linda and we came up at least two ways of getting around the dismal attitude of the lyrics. One is to keep the tune and treat the lyrics as an example of "scrambled eggs", writing new lyrics to fit the tune later, and the other is to develop the story from the point of view of an old man who lived to a ripe old age despite his mother having been told he'd never make old bones, which is kind of what I had at the back of my mind before I got demoralised by the repetitious doctor.
Monday, January 10, 2011
Walking Video
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment