The eighth song of the Plant Songs project is called Know It All. Creating art is so interesting. Last week’s song, Sky Salmon, was kind of a struggle to get out. The melody took a long time to compose. I had to really force it out. There’s a feeling of relief when I publish a song, and I usually relax for a day afterward and not think about the project much. However last Thursday, after I had published Sky Salmon, I went to the piano and what became Know It All came flying out of me. This one just composed itself. I finished flushing it out and made some edits on Friday morning. I’ll take it! Especially because of all the gardening that’s pressing right now - lots of harvests and still some hope to get some fall crops farther along despite a serious lack of rain. So I’ll gladly accept the extra time.
To me, Know It All, is like a Dave Brubeck song (not Take 5, but maybe In Your Own Sweet Way, or The Duke) or maybe a George Shearing performance put in a blender. The chord changes are rather standard, but with odd harmonic rhythm, with many of them being shortened compared to how they might normally be structured. And within this short form we are in C major, then to B major, then back to C, then Db, then back to C again. It may be a little disorienting, but I think with enough listens it will settle for you. I think the form is really entertaining to play over; quite fun, although it would’ve been really nice to have a rhythm section helping me out on this one.
After the piece was done, I found its goofy chord progression and melodic phrasing to reflect a feeling that I’d been having lately. It has to do with all of the information that’s available to us so easily now. For a curious person who loves learning, it is both exciting and overwhelming. I’m a pretty avid consumer of YouTube, podcasts, records, audio books, and physical books. I have a feeling often that there’s so much I want to learn and that I must be consuming media 24-7. And that’s without social media, which I happily avoid these days. I’m happy that my weekly routine has plenty of media gaps, such as when I do my mountain hikes three times a week.
I’m not thrilled with the title Know It All because it’s kind of loaded - people think of a person who explains everything to everyone. In this case it describes my experience of learning and wanting to learn in the modern age, as I wrote about above. I couldn’t really find a title that described that better than Know It All. If you think of one, let me know.
I’ll close with some thoughts on the titling of songs. I’ve written a lot about the titles during the Plant Songs project thus far. They’re fun to think about and write about, and they help me connect personal feelings to my songs. But as far as (you) listeners are concerned, I think they’re really unimportant. They may even get in the way of you connecting your own emotions to the songs. It’s personal. Feel free to feel any feelings that come up when listening to these songs. Take the titles with a grain of salt. One wonderful thing about art, especially instrument music, is that the feelings are often “in the cracks”, often not clearly defined, and evolving. I enjoy that.