Three heads are better than one
Hi there,
Songwriters often find it easy enough to write Verse 1 of a new song. But Verse 2 often feels like a bigger challenge. In this new Podcast and Video series, singer The Rayne, musician Andrea Patron and lyricist Joe Armstrong show how good lyrics can be arrived at through fun and a respectful and enjoyable collaboration.
My songwriting collaborators
The Rayne, Andrea Patron and I have been working on a new song for a little while now. The Rayne aka Bryan Matthews is based in the UK, Andrea is an Italian based in Estonia and I’m Irish and living in Ireland.
Together, we wrote Every Moment. You can listen to it here.
In this new Podcast and Video mini-series, we show how we worked together in arriving at pretty decent lyrics for Verse 2 of ‘So Glad I Married You’, which has been in gestation now for several years.
Start with a draft - get words on a page
It’s always good to start with a draft, rather than with the tyranny of a blank page. So I brought a draft I’d done to our songwriting session via zoom last Saturday morning. By the end of the morning, the draft was utterly transformed.
Collaborative rewriting
Writing is all about rewriting. So get something, anything, on the page, and work from there!
By the end of this, the first of three podcasts and videos, (the first of three short zoom calls on Saturday), we were happy with our progress. But we couldn’t even begin before discussing how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness!
Creating Verse 2
Audio file of first session:
Video of first session:
Podcast 2 and Video 2 coming soon!
I’ll upload the other two zoom sessions in the next week or two. Together, you will see how a couple of hours’ collaboration can succeed in writing the often tricky Verse 2 of any song.
Happy days,
Joe