Hello Peaceful People,
The 21st song of the Plant Songs project is called Slow Down.
So I’ve kept a little secret from you. Song number 19, Shine (For Roswell Rudd) has lyrics. They’re personal and mantra-like and I wrote them to help me in a certain situation in my life. I’m still going to keep those lyrics to myself. I like to share a lot, but I also want to keep some things a little mysterious too - to keep you wondering. It turns out through, that those lyrics and that song have been a tremendous help in that particualar situation, and I think I may have discovered a new therapeutic use for my music. Creating and consuming music has always been therapeutic for me, but this might be next level. This could become a habit.
With that success, I thought it would be fun to do another song with lyrics, to help with another issue. This time, the lyrics are less mantra-like and more like an ordinary song. But they’re a message to myself to slow down, not rush, and notice things. Of course, there’s no avoiding being in a rush from time to time. But I often find myself rushing from activity to activity for no good reason. So here’s a song for me to sing to myself when I catch myself in a hurry.
Before you get too excited, no, I didn’t sing for my recording. I’m not too confident in my singing, although someday I’d like to be. I need more voice lessons. However you can click on PDF SCORE below to view the sheet music which has the lyrics on it. I don’t have a lot of practice writing lyrics, and they’re probably not great. But that’s okay. They’re really just to help me slow down in my life.
Interestingly, the lyrics did have a pretty profound effect on the composition process. First, I wrote about half of the lyrics before I wrote any music. I’ve never done that before and it was interesting. I found myself composing variations in the theme to accommodate the lyrics. I think it actually has a nice effect on the phrasing, just listening instrumentally. I heard an interview with Bruce Hornsby in which he said he always starts with lyrics, and composes the music afterward. Interesting! I’m sure others do that too, but as a lyrics-last kind of person, it seemed pretty strange to me. It’s nice to try something new.
After I had some lyrics, I heard them constructed into a melody. Then I got a little stuck figuring out what harmony I wanted to go with that melody. Finally I found something I liked, what you hear during the first four measures. Then the next four measures came pretty quickly. Then I was really stuck on where to go next. I didn’t really know what key I was in. I still don’t know what key this song is in. I know where it ends up, but it ends up in many places along the way. So there’s some nice mystery there. We don’t always need to know everything.
Thanks for listening. Maybe we’ll get lucky and this song can also help you slow down when you need to.