Blog
11
Jun
2010
Ed’s Challenge: The Third Album
Written by Ed Stone
2 Albums Done. And now a challenge for the third, working title: If I Were A Little Birdie.
Well, there we are – in the space of 12 short months Abubilla has created two seriously great albums (recording for number two – ‘Misery Marmalade and Other Spanish Jams‘ – is finished and it’s now moving into the mixing and mastering phase). I know people will have their favourite album and favourite songs (maybe even a few people around the world are already creating their own ‘Abubilla – Greatest Hits’ playlists), but I think it’s safe to say that, for 12 random people who somehow find themselves thrown together in Jimmy’s living room every Saturday, we have created some absolutely fantastic music.
Now, naturally, thoughts will be turning to album number three – what crazy title are we going to come up with this time, will we be able to find any more cool instruments to go on it (I know Jimmy still hankers after his hang, and I’ve always wanted to play around with a glass harmonica), what accidents are going to befall Sophie whilst we record this one? etc. But I think the biggest thing we need to think about is how we keep the level of song writing at or above where it has been for the last two discs.
To that end, I thought it might be quite cool introduce a spot of challenge and competition to the third album, something to keep us driving for ever greater songs, ones that will equal, and hopefully even surpass, the tunes on SMoS and MMaOSJ.
So, what’s the challenge?
We should aim to write songs better than any songs that have been written before, to write the greatest songs in the world. Simple.
Now, I know some people are going to tell me this is completely wrong – surely music is all about inspiration and creativity, not competition – but I always find that having a little something to challenge me, something to give me a little shove from behind and stop me trotting ‘just out another nice tune; (which I very easily do, if I’m not careful!) is what has made me write some of my best pieces. If the proof really is in the pudding, then one need look no further than how Brian Wilson created Pet Sounds after intentionally setting out to better Rubber Soul, and how Sgt. Pepper subsequently came out of Paul McCartney wanting to beat Pet Sounds. Competition drives us to better things (well, that and large amounts of LSD…but that’s another story)
How do I think we should enable this challenge? Well, I reckon it would work best this way:
- Each member of Abubilla should think about what their absolute all-time-favourite songs are.
- Then (and this is the critical bit), they spend an hour or so listening carefully to the tunes, and figuring out WHY they are such fantastic songs.
By doing both of the above, we should derive two big benefits. Firstly, whenever we’re writing songs we will be able to constantly hold ourselves to the quality control of ‘is this song we’re writing as good as Song X?’. Secondly, on the occasions when we feel it’s not quite up there yet, we’ll be able to look back through all our favourite songs, see what makes them so great, and then try and apply some of those tricks into our new tunes.
So, to kick us off, here are my current all time top songs (note current – I have have a list of probably about 30 all-time-favourite songs that are constantly shuffling up and down), and my attempts to dissect why they are so great (If I could tell you definitively why these are so fabulous, I’d be a very rich man, but these are my best guestimates).
So, Abubilla: pick your all time absolute favourite songs; figure out what you think makes them great, stick it all down on a blog and then let’s try and beat them!
Peace, love and Minor 6ths
Ed
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Ed’s Fave tunes
- I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times – Pet Sounds – Beach Boys
- Time – Dark Side of the Moon – Pink Floyd
- Still Crazy After All These Years – Still Crazy After All These Years– Paul Simon
- I Don’t Need No Doctor (Live) – Where the Light Is – John Mayer
- Cigarettes and Alcohol – Definitely Maybe – Oasis
- Gee, Baby, Ain’t I Good to You – Best of Ella and Louis – Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong
What makes them so great (in no particular order)
- They are all absolutely filled with hooks – the riff in I Don’t Need No Doctor, the start of the melody of the Paul Simon cut, the ‘They say I got brains’ bit of ‘I just wasn’t made for these times’, the rhythm guitar of ‘Time’, every part in ‘Gee, Baby, Ain’t I good to you’…every thing that hits your ear drums is going to firmly embed itself in your brain.
- They all have seriously impassioned vocal takes – Liam is screaming it out by the end of his take, Gilmour gives it some the whole way through, Brian Wilson really means it when he sings ‘they say I go brains, but they ain’t doing me no good’, the raw soul of Ella and Louis – Shivers up my spine every time!
- They all have absolutely killer melodies. Please refer to ‘the old grey whistle test‘ 🙂
- They all scan – helps the tune and words stick together, and then stick in the head. Go check out the Beatles tunes and find me a song where the lyrics don’t scan!
- They all say something important, but in quite a simple and/or interesting way – this is something I think we’re already very good at doing at Abubilla!
- They all develop from start to finish.They all take you on a 3 minute journey – moving through verse and choruses and solos etc. so that they all sound like different parts of the song, but still like they belong together, just like a good story, film, sporting event, in fact any form of entertainment!
- Every instrumental part is significant. Basses are constantly moving, drums are always throwing in little fills here and there, lead guitars are tiny little licks between verses and choruses, rhythm guitars, pianos and keyboards are stabbing away at chords and notes all over the place – your ears never get a chance to not notice something going on. The Ella and Louis track is the best example of this I think, but then with only 5 instruments and a single take, they are going to have to keep doing cool stuff to keep it interesting!
- They all have something a bit unusual about them – the chords and soaring melody of the Pet Sounds cut, the roto-tom intro to Time (not to mention the clocks and Leslie speaker-ed gospel choir), the hiss of Cigarettes and Alcohol. Definitely not stuff that would have been churned out by your average five and dime song writer.