Polygraph

I got a somewhat uncommon instrument last year; it's called a melodica. Hohner makes it and it's very similar to an accordion without buttons (so it's like the an accordion playing melody only without bass and chords). But you blow into it which gives it some similarity to a harmonica. When playing the melocida I came across a little tune in D minor; that melodica tune is heard here as the guitar intro. It inspired the whole song. I played around with it for a while and decided I would use it as the music for a song about an event from my life: my employer accusing me of theft. The song unfolded quickly, I think it took less than two weeks. It never really happens to me that a song just comes to me all at once. I'm jealous and skeptical of songwriters who claim that.

Usually I will come up with a melody first, then a chord progression or bassline and then lyrics. Lyric writing is usually a drawn out process, with gaps sometimes that last years between one first verse and the next. I think writing melody first is a good way for me because if you have a strong melody then it is a sure bet that you have a song, you just have to work out the rest of the details. A strong enough melody always seems to eventually inspire a lyric and arrangement that is good. To contrast that, I would say that sometimes it's possible to have a good sounding chord progression but it won't guarantee that I will ever come up with a complete song that I'm happy with from it. In this case I lucked out; I had an instrumental part first and then I started looking for that solid melody that would let me know that I had a song and I wasn't just noodling around anymore.

At the end of the song I wrote an intense guitar progression and it just happened that I felt that a spoken type part would end it out well. Maybe I was a little misleading last time stating that it had a "rap". As I listen to it now I think that rap is not the first word that would come to mind to describe it but it's closer to rap than I've ever been in my songs. Overall I think the sonic mood of the song matches the lyric, or in other words, the feel of the notes and rhythms fits the meaning of the lyric. I think that's important. Here's Polygraph:

Polygraph from Only Anything on Vimeo.

Next time: Daily grind bringing you down? Forget the cares of life and go "Where All the Stories Go".