Writing "Into the Sun" part 1

So, since I haven’t been exactly prolific lately, as a songwriter that is, I decided that today I would begin writing a song and post it’s progress to the blog.  I think maybe I’ll just post everything I write to the blog as I write it.   This one is written specifically to post here however. Each time I add to the song I will post that part and discuss where it came from and how I wrote it.  Maybe it won’t be interesting at all.  The experiment could completely suck.  But maybe not.  Maybe to another songwriter it might be interesting. 

Anyway, here’s the first section of the song and how I wrote it.  So I go down to the basement, pick up my guitar and start playing random chords to see if anything jumps out at me.  The first two chords I play catch my attention.  I don’t know what the chords are and don’t care.  They just sound good and lead me somewhere.  Even later I won’t care what the chords are.  I’m pretty musically illiterate that way and therefore unable to navigate myself to another part of a song based on theory.  In this case the guitar gives me a foundation to develop lyrics.  Another time I may, without the guitar devise a melody and lyric at the same time while driving down the road and then have to figure out the guitar parts to support it.  But I like this method.  Get lost in a guitar part for a while and then once it’s in my head carry it with me and ask my mind to build a lyric.  No muse comes visiting and makes a lyric delivery.  I ask my mind to work.  Editing comes later and can range from the brutal to subtle tense changes or the like.  Here we go.

Okay, so the music, pretty basic I admit, was there immediately.  The first set of words came later the same afternoon as I sat on my deck.  I realized from the start that music sounded summery and poppy, so I decided on a song about the beginning of summer having just switched over to daylight savings time and put away the fireplace tools for the summer.  Now, I have the rest of the first verse to come up with.  Since I already know where I want the chorus to go musically, maybe if I’m lucky I can go right into the chorus.  We’ll find out.