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Dec. 15th, 2017 10:33 am
ericcoleman: Cheshire Moon (Cheshire Moon)
Lizzie is going to record song #50 of the year tonight. Only three left to go, the next two weeks and one week that we skipped that we have an idea on now.

I just updated all of the books, and I did a count. Including a handful of parodies, this will be the 100th song that we have written. Add 4 songs written by Susan, one by Piers & Gill Cawley, and one Trad song, and there are 105 songs in the master book.

There are currently 75 songs in our working book, 70 of which we wrote.

Wow that is a lot of material.

Hmmmm

Nov. 6th, 2017 10:53 am
ericcoleman: Cheshire Moon (Cheshire Moon)
I’m going through our song book, getting ready to print out a hard copy, so we have it at home if we need it. There are a lot of songs.

101 songs in our catalog.

Of the songs Lizzie and I have written
67 in our current, can be done live book.

14 from the 52 songs project that we don’t do live.

11 older songs that we either have stopped doing live, or that never made the cut.

4 parodies, only one of which has been done onstage, and it at our first show, first song even.

4 songs by Susan, all of which we pull out sometimes.

1 song by Piers & Gill Cawley, which we also do sometimes.

We have a lot of songs.

Music !!!

Jul. 27th, 2014 08:27 pm
ericcoleman: Cheshire Moon (Cheshire Moon)
Some new music for upcoming songs tonight. We went out to a local little lake just north of Ames and sat and improvised for an hour or so. It was lovely. Met some nice folks, got some compliments. Soon we're off to bed. This has been a lovely, relaxing weekend. We needed that!

On writing

Jul. 14th, 2014 09:56 am
ericcoleman: (Default)
I've been thinking a lot about writing and performing, mostly because I haven't been able to do much of either the last month.

I am a firm believer that the only thing the artist owes the audience is to be completely honest. Write completely for yourself, in as honest a way as possible, and you will find an audience. As soon as you try to write for someone else. for someone else's standards, it will make you crazy.

I've been writing songs of some sort or another for almost 40 years. All the time I get people coming up to me saying "you should write a song about …". Once … once someone has actually come up with an idea that that was usable, and that was a comment a friend made to Lizzie. In almost 40 years.

I have had people to tell me that we need to alter this or that. If it's a technical issue, cool. Although I will say that having someone complain about the sound mix from a show months before annoys me. First of all, we have no control over the sound from the stage, we have no idea what it sounds like out front. Second, why didn't you tell the sound person THEN?

But if someone tells you that you need to change the way you write, that means that they want you to sound like their expectations, they want you to conform to their rules. Maybe what that means is that you are not the artist for them. They are not your audience.

I remember having a discussion about this with my son Jared when he was 9, when he was going to take is first instrument to school, his mandolin. He asked me what he should do if someone didn't like it. I said "then you aren't playing for them, look for the person who does like it, you're playing for that person". He got it, and continues to approach his craft with that attitude.

As soon as you try to please everyone, it becomes a mess. Please yourself first and foremost. Write with integrity and honestly, develop your voice, your style. If you are good at it, you will find an audience, or more to the point, they will find you.

One down

Jul. 10th, 2009 04:54 pm
ericcoleman: (Default)
V1 of one Mahtowa song done ... one more to go. And a Toyboat song to get done as well

Oh, and a very mean cover song(s) that I will probably do at tomorrow's show

edit V1 of my first Toyboat song is done as well
ericcoleman: (Default)
The music is roughed out, and I am singing in a way that I really haven't in a very long time.

I'm still not sure about the lyric, it's looks even meaner today than it did last night.

Songs

Sep. 12th, 2008 10:02 am
ericcoleman: (Default)
There are some things that I can deal with never hearing ever again. Right now I have several Deep Purple albums on shuffle. I have removed Smoke On The Water from the list. I don't need to hear it ever again.

So, what are those songs for you? I have bunches, some more of which I may go into in comments.

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ericcoleman

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