Lately I’m into songwriting. I know I should have started earlier if I want to be rich and famous but I was busy. Better late than never, right? Yesterday I was fiddling around on the guitar as usual, waiting for an idea or the beginning of an idea, while putting together various chords. This is how it seems to work for me, messing with chord progressions and imagining a tune to go with them. Sometimes I get ideas for lyrics first and work with that, but this was just some chords. I wrote 16 bars, a common verse length and then waited for further instruction from the subconscious. Somehow this reminded me of a sea song, you know them, lyrical and all about waves and sailors and puking etc. Then it struck me that Charles Darwin spent 5 years at sea on the Beagle, and the poor guy suffered from sea sickness!
So, out came The Ballad of Charles Darwin from nowhere, or so it seemed. With all the ballads about heroes and villains and sad cases, I had never heard of a song about Charles Darwin, so it seemed to be a reasonable idea. After all, the man started a revolution with a book! The odd coincidence happened today, when I found out that today is “Evolution Day”, in recognition of the date of publication of Darwin’s earth shaking book, On The Origin of Species, on November 24, 1859 (On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection).
As of this minute, I’m still working on the song, getting the melody down and messing with various chord substitutions, trying to make it good and also original. But as Mies van der Rohe was said to say: it is better to be good than original. So I try to not be so original that the tune sucks. This applies to architecture and music alike, in my opinion. Of course, to be original and be good is to have the best of everything, a challenging task. I wish I had started writing songs when I was 11, as by now I might have some really good ones. However, I now have the advantage of 60 years of practice on the guitar, as well as a lifetime of experiences to draw on, which is helpful when you want to tell a story.
nathanguitars 