I Pretend
I Pretend (to know what I am doing.)
Usually I am presented a clear vision with a song when it makes itself known to me. There is always room for creative improvement and variation. I also try to write those songs so that they will transfer easily from one genre to another but they come as a specific vibe when they appear from the great beyond and most ideas come to me completed stylistically. Lyrics, on the other hand, almost never come so complete. This does not make writing, performing, recording any easier. It's more like having a map and a destination. You may know exactly where you are going but you still have to get there.
I Pretend was born of a synth part and a drum beat while I was toying with sounds and samples. I was honestly just trying to learn the sounds that came with the DAW (digital audio workstation) I use. I pieced together two chord progressions I was toying around with and started singing along. Words began to fall out of my mouth like flooding rains down a storm drain so I grabbed a mic, plugged it in, and I recorded the words that came out. Five minutes later the melody and lyrics were done. Just like that I had a song without any clue as to what style song it was.
Songwriters, we like to pretend we had everything planned out and that odd musical twists and turns were always intended. In some cases this is true. In this case I would be flat out lying if I said I meant to write a key change at the end of the choruses. That thing just happened when I was singing the song. Maybe its because I sang the note wrong. Perhaps I just got lost and randomly sang a run. I do not know but I do know that is how I sang it and how I heard it harmonically as it came out. The words and story just came to me as well. It might be a past experience manifest into song. I could be I got lucky that it all made sense together. I don’t know. All I know it that it came out.
The style finally recorded and presented to you is the forth or fifth version of the song. I tried New Age Pop, Synth Pop, Pop Punk, and 90’s country versions. The song ended up being a sum off all of its various parts. The Synth Baseline was replaced by a live electric bass but the baseline part remained. The pop punk guitars are there just not played with heavy distortion. The drums are programmed for the New Age part but changed into a Drum Kit from a Drum Machine. I added some more 90’s Country sounds to the drums and changed the fills to fit the Pop Punk style which also worked for country. The guitar solo was a synth solo then changed to a synth/guitar solo, then a piano/organ solo, then finally two guitars solo. The melody of the solo stayed the same the entire time.
The point is this: this song damn near wrote itself but took me months or trial and error to get shaped into what it wanted to be. I’m not even 100% certain I got it right. Sometimes a song is just a song that is wanting to get out and be heard. I pretend to know what I am doing as a songwriter but I really just let the songs do thier thang.