I realize this announcement won’t make the same impact as a recent one by Billie Eilish this week that resulted in millions of listens within the first few hours, but I have a new song!
A couple of weeks ago, I was getting frustrated trying to recreate my existing songs in Logic Pro X so I took a break to start a new song from scratch. I started with a bassline (with my MIDI keyboard instead of a loop this time) and a drumbeat to get a “vibe” and went from there.
I was inspired by a few different things. One thing was a video series by Charles Cleyn that I found on YouTube. In one of his videos, he explained that Logic Pro X comes with a template of Billie Eilish’s song “Ocean Eyes” and he dissected the track. My trial with Logic Pro X recently came to an end, right before I came across the video, so I recently purchased the DAW and had access to the tracks. It was fascinating to see the arrangement of “Ocean Eyes,” which in addition to many other cool things, has a great deal of vocal tracks.
In this week’s song, I experimented with having multiple vocal tracks and, following along with videos from Kris Bradley’s “From Voice Memo to Demo” class, I mixed the tracks and then did a basic mastered version.
Initially I had no idea what the song was going to be about but, as suggested by both master producer and songwriter Ryan Tedder in his Monthly class and production boss Kris Bradley in her class, I did a “vibe” track on vocals to try to figure out the melody (where you just sing whatever comes to mind, including gibberish to get a feel how the melody will go with the rhythm.)
The oooohs in the intro came to me first and then the first couple of lines:
Why are you waiting to knock on that door?
You could be the one they’re waiting for
The next two lines went through many different versions. As the song developed, it seemed to be about self-doubt and trusting your gut feelings about things. I especially liked the way “Trust your intuition” sounded and I liked the way it sang. It took a week or so to fully develop the lyrics and the second verse was especially difficult and went through many changes.
Here are the final lyrics.:
Why are you waiting to knock on that door?
You could be the one they’re waiting for
You pretend you don’t care anymore
But you’re crossing your fingers
You try to understand your mind
Second guessing what’s inside
Don’t overanalyze what you’re feeling
Trust your intuition
When your inner voice speaks, listen
Break through inhibition
Trust your intuition
You keep trying to conquer the day
Then feel your courage slowly slipping away
Always worried what people may say
Insecurity lingers
Then prechorus and chorus again, a musical bridge, the chorus and some vocal track experimenting.
If I was starting again, I’d take singing lessons and redo the vocal tracks because I’m not thrilled with my vocals but they’re the best of all the takes. (They’re usually done late at night when there are chirping birds or helicopters flying overhead – we live near an airport and there are many big trees in the neighborhood).
Anyway, here is my new song, “Trust Your Intuition.” I’m not expecting millions of listens in the next 24 hours but even if a few people enjoy it, that would be wonderful!
My Songwriting Journey 