Thoughts on my songwriting process.

How an afternoon drive home from the beach turned into a single.

One of my favorite podcasts is Song Exploder. I love hearing artists talk about their process and charting the journey of a song from initial inception to finished product. Today is my version of Song Exploder for my band’s latest single, “Full Stop.”

If I’ve learned anything about songwriting, it’s that no two songs are created in exactly the same way.

My solo songs tend to be more lyric-focused and story-based. The songs I write for New Enemies (my band) are different. I’m thinking of the whole arrangement and what will fit best with our sound and overall instrumentation (guitar-based indie rock).

The initial idea

We booked studio time for the band this past summer, and I knew that I wanted to record something brand new, a fresh idea that we hadn’t worked on yet.

I’d been listening to a lot of bass-driven girl bands (think “Wet Leg” And “Beaches”) and wanted to create a hooky bassline that could play with a repetitive vocal melody.

On the way home from a beach day with the kids, a melody popped into my head, and I could already hear the bassline underneath. I recorded this janky demo of me singing while driving on I-95. You can hear all of the nonsense words and pauses as I’m thinking about what might come next.

This is how many of my songs start. They’re a spark of something, but fully unbaked and rambling. I also love how, in this recording, you can fully hear my children doing their thing in the back of the car.

Brandon will be shaking his head. Once again, when I have a song idea, I get so deep in my own brain (and don’t realize other humans exist 😂). Before I found this demo, my memory of recording it involved children quietly sleeping in the back of the car. HA! It could not be further from the truth.

Something else happens when I start with a melodic idea (and not lyrics or chords). I begin forming nonsense words that emerge into something concrete. “I need another” kept coming up again and again as a phrase that drew me in.

Working it out

Once I got home from the beach (and took care of the children, I promise!), I went to the music room to try to work out the bassline I heard in my head. It’s usually at this point that I figure out what key I’m in and what the overall harmonic structure (chords) are in the song.

I roughed out a basic structure on the whiteboard in our rehearsal room and tried to decide what a chorus or “B section” could sound like. Overall, the verse felt pretty solid, but I wasn’t sure where the song could go after that.

Bringing it to the Boyz

Brandon (drums), Jeff (guitar), and I worked on putting the song together. We made some harmonic changes to make the chords a little brighter in the chorus and settled on a pretty solid verse structure.

At the end of our rehearsal, we took a demo video to send to Elliott (bass).

You’ll notice in this version of the song that I’ve worked out a set of lyrics I like for the beginning of the verse. Since I didn’t have all of the lyrics, I just recycled the ones I liked over and over again with some nonsense words as placeholders. This is a pretty typical process for me, but sounds so silly!!

You’ll also notice that I’m playing the bass line on the keyboard although my real vision of the song had very minimal keyboard.

Moving toward the studio

Before we went into the studio, a few things happened:

• We solidified the overall song structure and added an extended post-chorus with some chord changes

• I nailed down the lyrics! The song took on a theme of needing to disconnect from tech—a reflection on my past year free from social media and what it’s taught me about rumination and the need to have brain space to engage in deep thought. I had also just finished reading Radium Girls, and verse three of the song took on a metaphor connecting physical destruction from radium consumption (I know, dark) to how some of us might be wasting away from the things that we consume regularly.

• We had general parts for each of our instruments.

Recording time!

Whenever we work in the studio, we always want to leave space for “studio magic”—ideas that emerge in the moment.

We added some new keyboard and guitar parts, and at the last minute, Elliott jumped into the vocal booth and added some harmonies in the post-chorus. I looovveee how his vocal parts turned out!

After some back and forth with the mixing engineer (David Downham at Gradwell House in NJ), we tweaked a few versions and ended up with the mastered version below:

Voila! We have a song! I’m pasting the lead sheet below so you can read the lyrics and see the final structure. Let me know what you think and if you’d like more “behind the scenes” type posts like these.

FULL STOP (125 BPM)

Intro (Am rolling bass part)

I need another distraction, a welcome rhythm of ease

I wanna hijack connection, so let’s play make believe

I’ve got a hundred thousand eyes on my every curated move

I’m tryna find a way to not ruminate

Am Interlude (CUT)

So give my fingers a mission, cause idle hands can’t agree

If rest is earned on permission, or lost in youth warranty

I’ve got a hundred thousand ears on my every curated move

I’m tryna find a way to not ruminate

CHORUS

We’ve gotta full stop, full stop

And I don’t know it, don’t know it

We’ve gotta full stop, full stop

And I don’t know it, don’t know it

We’ve gotta full stop, full stop where’d we go wrong

Am Interlude

I’m sick of swallowing bright light, my bones can feel the disease

But shapes are dark in the gaslight, and flashing pans aren’t free

I’ve got a hundred thousand times to, make the choice I need

I’m tryna find a way to not ruminate

Ruminate… (cut out)

We’ve gotta full stop, full stop, and I don’t know, don’t know it (just guit/bass)

Don’t know it I don’t know it…

We’ve gotta break down before we’re gonna take down

Am Outro (8 measures)

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Inspiration

🎧 I just showed this video to my students. Still one of my favorite live music experienced ever.

🎧 I’ve been enjoying Amy Poehler’s podcast and this episode had me laughing out loud multiple times.

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Creative

🌟 This is the last newsletter where I share that our single release show is happening. In one DAY, I’ll be playing Full Stop along with a host of other songs with New Enemies. Grab your tickets here.

🌟 So much of my creative brain is dedicated to lesson planning these days. This past week, I used Kate Bright’s improvisation playground with my college students and they loved it!

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Thanks for subscribing and reading. I hope you can show someone your work-in-progress.

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Connect with my work elsewhere:

🎧 listen to my podcast with Kimberly McGlonn

💻 order my children’s book, Rosie Rocks!

📚 visit my fair-pay publishing company, F-flat Books.

🎤 get songwriting support through Songwriting for M.E.