Filling me up with your rule...

For the past couple of years I've been focusing, in my own songwriting, on praise and worship music. I'd like to see P&W music be more... exciting as an art form. Exiting in a Radiohead way... not a snake handling way. :-) Along the way I've gathered lots of rules (from others and from my own personal convictions). Rules like:

• Avoid overused cliche's


• Try not to make Jesus your girlfriend


• Make the melodies singable (2-3 notes)


• Needs to be something people want to sing (to God)


• Needs to convey some manner of truth


• ...but not to much (we don't want hymns, after all)


• No wierd chords or wierd meters


• Try to stay away from G-C-D-Em
  

I'm finding that under the weight of all these rules... I'm really not enjoying songwriting. I'm finding myself following perfectionist tendencies. I'm not producing as many new songs as I should be. Ideas that I'm excited about become neutered under the weight of all these rules that I have to navigate.

So, I GIVE UP!

I'm just going to write songs that please me. If it happens to be a worship song... cool. If not, still cool. I'll let you know how it goes.

So... what are the rules that you need to break? What's got you in writer's block? (Whether it's songwriting or prose or poetry or what...)

Guitars: How to change your strings

D'Addario and Planet Waves have an excellent video on how to Restring a Guitar. It's great for both beginners and experienced players.

After changing your strings, it's common to have to retune it constantly. This only happens if something "gives." Often, it's the extra slack that is found in the 3 to 6 wraps that the string made around the tuning peg. As you play, the slack gives... and you're out of tune.

In the video, they do a lock wrap. (Put the string through the peg, wrap it back around and then under itself. When you turn the peg, the string will wrap over itself.) This is a lot like a clove hitch, one of the strongest basic knots. Because it holds the string so well, you can have fewer wraps. (I often don't even have a complete wrap on my bottom strings.) With fewer wraps, you have less slack. Your strings can be "broken in" in minutes rather than hours.

I've been stringing all my guitars this way (except the nylon-string guitar) for about 3 years now. I've even changed strings just before performing (usually not done because of constant retuning). It works great and I recommend it without reservation.

Notes:
(a) I did try to embed the video... but I couldn't keep it from playing automatically.
(b) This didn't really work as well with nylon string (classical) guitars, for me. I think it's because the pegs have a larger diameter, the strings are a lot slicker, and the strings stretch so much. So, I haven't found any advantage to using this method with classical guitars.

Synth: Involuntary Grinning

I just picked up a Korg MS2000R rack-mount synth for $250. Lots of good, clean phun. :-) Lots of knobs, too. It's an analog style synth. It's got the same noise-makers as the MicroKorg... including the vocoder. My kids all got to be Iron Man this morning. (A vocoder is a cool device that makes you sound like a Cylon or a Transformer or Iron Man.)

Here's a great YouTube video of someone playing around with the sounds playing around with the sounds on the keyboard version.

Here's a decent YouTube video of someone playing with the two step sequencers. It's a little long and slow, but you get to watch him as he morphs the sounds... and the sequences are pretty cool (IMHO).

Here's a YouTube video of the Demo Songs.