I listen to a lot of music… especially house music. I probably listen to a lot more house music then I listen to my own, and I do listen to mine… A lot and you know what ? I always find a critique, especially after the song has been put out. Even though I had heard it a million times before it was released. I had listened to it from the first concept to the story form. Through the process of deciding which of your experiences you will finally decide to build around. The journey through the mountains of melodies that you have to experience to see if it really fits the mood of the story…

What is the first note ? How can I say baby so that it sounds like I'm starting a conversation with someone that I love as opposed to a stranger ? How do you say that and start the building of the house you are about to build ? How many times do you sing it before you think that you have found the right feel ? You have to live it, you have to go inside the song and become the person that you are trying to express. Or maybe you just have to go inside yourself to find out more about yourself than you really knew. To reach inside yourself and tell a story about an experience that changed your life. Maybe you never allowed yourself to even think about what it felt like until now.

The pain, the joy, the estacy, the anger, the hurt, the love, the depression, the truth… Note by note, you pull the notes from God's notebook. He gives it freely but you have to be able to read.

You have to be able to go into the many experiences that God allows you to have just so that you can learn how to love and try to find a level of honesty in yourself. Can you tell the truth about it ? Can you expose what you have been holding inside  your heart, afraid to express it or let it be known ? Afraid of what someone will think about you or how you will be betrayed ? More widely, do you want someone to know that much about you ?

That's what writers go through on a daily basis. In the song is the writer's life experiences. Even if it was a story told to them from someone else's life experience, it becomes the writer's after having the experience to hear it. And you can allow yourself to become empathetic. When you feel what they feel. Even if that person was totally and completely wrong in what they may have done, can you feel what it's like to be wrong and not be able to be humble enough to admit it ? How do you write about that ? Then maybe if they were right, totally and completely right, do you know what that really feels like ? To be absolutely positive that you were right ?

You woke up this morning and it was the most beautiful sky that you have ever seen, maybe just the right amount of soft pillowy clouds in the sky, just enough to make it feel completely comfortable, warm and embracing. Did you ever have that feeling that you could just float right into the clouds and lay there and think about the next verse's melody ?

Where does the energy come from in a lyric or a track for that matter ? How do you find the chord changes for the pad ? You play a lot of chords, you do a lot of listening. Because when it's right, it will sing to you if you listen.

Most of time when creating a song or expressing a song, you do a million time more listening than you do talking. You listen inside yourself. Because that story is being reopened in your mind and you are listening for the emotion, for the bell to ring, for that little voice to say ok "that's it". The funny thing is even after we have decided, we still continue to listen, maybe there was a better way, a different chord that may have worked better, a different harmony that the vocals could have sang just a little bit differently. The way the lead vocal could have attacked that word just a little harder or with another twist, jazz maybe or just a bit more of a gospel turn… maybe it doesn't sound electronic enough or maybe it sounds to much electronic. Do you really like that bass line, even if everyone else seems to be in love with it ? Should you have used the bassline that you initially felt was the perfect match ? Do a remix ?

They call it an art, the art of songwriting or writing period.

Every writer is different, but the process is the same.

Labels want a record in a week, producers want to sit down with a ready made track and merge experiences. Even if you have no joint experiences, you have to listen, listen to their experience in creating the track. Sometimes you may find that there is nothing for you to say to that track, to that music, to that arrangement. Maybe someone else can relate to this musical experience more than you. You put it down or turn it off sure that there is nothing for you to say but then again, maybe you can listen to find those places where something needs to be said and not just played… right there where the guitar melody falls off and the chord pad is just laying there like a lover waiting to be held.  Maybe there is a place right here that needs to be touched , carressed, blessed with just the right word or the right lyric. Or maybe one day you experienced the miracle called waking up, and your contiousness was made to awake and you knew at that moment that for you there was a God. And God loved you no matter what. What joy to know that you are not alone and that you are loved unconditionally.

How do you tell someone about this and bless them with the experience even if they can't speak your language ?  Sometimes writing a song is like being in a difficult relationship, you keep looking for what brought you together in the first place because you seem so different in nature and temperment. Are you here just trying to please or can you really make a difference or is the difference already made and you just stayed to long ? And maybe it would be better to just let it go and start over. Then one day as you're going through  your lyric book, here she is again like a day in a diary that snatches you by the soul and pulls you back to that night, that touch, that first climax. And you forget that you didn't get along the first time but the passion has always been there,  so you try to make it work again. Because you can't forget the ecstacy, you can't get her touch out of your mind or out of the memory of your  skin. And then, maybe it was like the first time that you saw her , you knew that she would know exactly what you were trying to say even if you didn't finish the line. And maybe like soulmates your touch felt the same to her as hers felt to you. And she trusted you right from the first touch and you trusted her completely. And it just fit so perfectly ! Like she was made for you and she says that she was and you for her. When making love feels so good that you don't want to take it out, and she holds you tightly so you won't.

They say songwriting is an art and I have to agree : the art of life !

Living it, experiencing it, telling it… Take your time ! Where are you going so fast ? Only to the next story.

Michael Procter