How We Find Our Sound

Our band is constantly evolving our song writing process. At the moment, a lot of the music we have written has been written by pairs of us and not quite as a cohesive unit. Two people will come up with the meat of a song, and then the others just kind of fill things in. I have to say that it can be easier this way, but it’s definitely less diplomatic. It kind of works for us though, and we love the sharing that goes on, because there will be two of us coming to the group saying: “Check out what we made! How can you guys make it not suck…” That’s usually how things are prefaced. We have a very high standard that we think that our work should measure up to, and we never think that we have attained it. It’s probably good that we think that way though, because it pushes us to constantly improve our songs (although at a certain point I guess we’ll have to leave things alone or we’ll never finish a song). Now that we finally have a regular practice space again, we know that our joint song writing will evolve into something wonderful!

On a more personal note, a lot of what I write (which I then take to the boys so they can make it not suck), comes from long improvisational sessions at the piano. I mess around for a great deal of time, then I try to remember the cooler parts of what I played and start forming them into songs, adding lyrics, and splicing things together. I don’t know quite enough theory to pound out a song on paper (actually, there is no possible way for me to write our songs out in musical notation, I leave things like that up to Bergman and Doerksen, and Yuri, he’s learning too.), so I just rely on memory. But lately I have been recording pieces of my little improv times at the ivories, so that I don’t forget things.

Here are a couple of those sessions. (I apologize for their length, they are eight and ten minutes long). I recorded them without any breaks or cuts. Enjoy!

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Don’t forget to come to our November 21 show with Living With Lions, Brighter Brightest, Common Lives and Take Me to the Pilot!

- Kieran