How does a song come about? Every song has a different way of arriving. The most important thing is that a song begins with inspiration and that we let the inspiration ride as far as it can go.
Today, Becca came over to my house with the purpose of polishing up a couple songs for the new album. It was majorly cold outside. Everyone says we are expecting a blizzard, but so far just a few flakes of snow have shown up. This is good songwriting weather.
We gathered in my little home office. Okay, not much inspiration here besides the Compassion International calendar I have hanging and my iTunes folder. I have demos of all the songs in progress and we listened through a couple times. Becca suggested we write a bridge for this song which is currently called “In You Alone”. With the theme of the song in mind, the bridge needed to communicate something that the rest of the song wasn’t already saying... Something that maybe we haven’t said yet in any of the other songs for this upcoming album... Or even the album before! Here is where a lot of songwriters hit a wall. It has to be something new! Well, thankfully, something new came. It was new for me. I can’t tell you what it was exactly in this blog, but I wanted to sing it over and over again. This is a good sign.
Becca was jamming on the guitar, changing the chords around a few times. I was interjecting thoughts. How about... No, what about... Thankfully, we are the kind of sisters who can handle each other interrupting and tossing thoughts right and left. This is a creative process we have down! I sang the melody and Becca brought a sweet harmony that engaged the lyrics.
What fun we are having! Becca and I haven’t always written together. I used to be a solo songwriter, but now I’m much happier writing with someone so I can bounce ideas back and forth.
More songwriting will happen on Wednesday or Thursday I imagine. That is, if we don’t get that blizzard everyone is talking about.
-Elissa
(the pic above is from our time with our Producer, Don K., songwriting for the new album a few weeks ago!)
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