How to turn big emotion in melody
SC75: On using outside perspectives to channel feeling
Hi friends,
Did you catch it? The cadence of Song Club has shifted. At least for now, as I continue to experiment, we’ll be shifting these emails so they come out on the first Saturday of every month. I know: WOW.
One reason for this has to do with the fact that I want to find a manageable cadence for folks to ingest the prompt, soak in it, work on a song, rework it and ultimately feel more confident sharing. It also means you’ll write 12 songs if you follow along.
There’s something really satisfying about ending the year with an album’s worth of songs.
Another reason for this has to do with wanting to make more space in this effort for gathering, both virtual and in person, here in NYC. Slowing the Song Club publishing cycle will make room to be more deliberate about this.
So, for now, what you can expect a Song Club email on the first Saturday of each month. These will include:
A new song prompt
An artifact to augment your writing
My song from the previous month
I’ll also be posting weekly reflecting and other threads in the Substack app, using the Chat feature. It will be cringe and stilted at first, but if we all be a bit brave and share soon it will gather steam and feel non-cringe and un-stilted. I can almost promise.
Sounds good and fun right?
Let’s go!
Lucy
i. Prompt
Think of someone who evokes big emotion in you: someone who makes you feel misunderstood, or angry, or insane with lust. Just needs to be big, meaty feeling.
Grab a pen and paper and start writing to yourself as though you are them. Try to get inside their head and heart and express what you think they think of you. Spend at least five minutes writing.
With an instrument, or without, start singing through what you’ve written down. Just try to find the melody in each of the phrases or sentences, and see what unfurls.
ii. Artifact
I hadn’t seen the video for this song until this week. It’s wild.
iii. Song
The upsetting and true story about this song is that I wrote the first two verses and chorus, and then the first verse happened. Feel free to respond directly in the comments or to the email and lmk what you think!