One Down....

New Song: Help Me Off This Shelf

Only one song to go until I have successfully written, recorded and released a whole albums worth of songs, although some are really a lot like rough ideas. Especially "Get Up And Go" which was just me and the acoustic guitar and was really supposed to serve as a reminder so that I wouldn't forget the song idea but I ended up adding harmonies and a little bit of extra guitar work and I figured I hadn't put anything out in a while so, why not.

So, about this song then. I've had the concept for this one in my head for a while. Originally it was totally different, There was a pre-verse bit that was a bit more complex than is usual when it comes to my guitar work. The verse was pretty much lifted from the pre-chorus of the Foo Fighters "I Should Have Known" and the chorus was simpler than it is in the finished song but contains the same essential chords.

So what happened to that version? Well I found that I just couldn't pull off the fiddly little pre-verse bit I had written for myself. I tired and tried and tried but I just couldn't get it to sound right.I tired approaching it in a variety of different ways but it just wasn't working. I do have a really rough recording of what it would sound like and I might post that at some point so people can get an idea of what it was going to sound like.

As you can imagine I was pretty down about the fact I couldn't perform what I had written for myself and I sulked for a couple of days. I went back and tried to see if I could re-work the song in some way. So I started messing around with the chorus bit and found a riff that was much simpler but really sounded good. This is the riff you can hear in the chorus which is reminiscent of "Enough Space" by the Foo Fighters.......well damn one band in particular seems to have had a lot of influence on me this time around.

As for the rest, it's essentially just the chorus chords but in a different order but it gets the job done and sounds pretty good. The little sort of orchestral bit at the end I thought up at around the same time as the rest of the song. I thought it would be a good way to end the song and because it sounds like it does I have placed it in between "Five Long Years" because that's very rock based and "Where It Starts And Where We Are" because that's more light and floaty like the end of this one.

Of course the important part of any song is the lyrics. And. Well. It's a love song. Not in a conventional sense though. It's not a ballad or an acoustic song, I described it to my friend as "a love song hiding underneath a rock song" which is pretty much exactly what it is and the ending pretty much backs that one up. And this kind of love song has been done before. "Always" by Sum 41 was quite close to what I was aiming for.

Was it difficult to write? Um, yes. I have been agonizing for close to over a year about this song. I always knew I was going to write a love song I just had no idea how I would go about it. Eventually I just stuck to the old writers adage "write what you know" so I decided to write how I felt. Then I realized I felt a bunch of different ways. One moment I could feel really strongly, the next I could sort of just feel contented and happy. And I kind of just worked those two together. This reflects more of the high energy feelings and then kind of just settles down which honestly is pretty much spot on.

When I wrote "This Doesn't Concern You" I thought about a lot of things from the past that either hurt or made me angry. When I wrote the line "you put me on a shelf" I was thinking mostly about my last relationship. Not that she just up and left without a word it was a mutual thing but she definitely left a big hole. So I thought "what better way to describe how I feel than to explain that all the past wrongs had been undone" And that is where "Help Me Off This Shelf" comes from.

Yes it's all soppy emotional stuff this time around and I do apologize for it but hey, this stuff happens and I really wanted to get this one done because it was an idea that has been bothering me for quite a while now so it's great to have that finished.

Only one song left now until all my bigger song ideas are done. Even though I have to go back through them I'm quite keen to hear how the more polished versions will sound.

Until then

- Dex01