[ATC]

Exercise 3: Mood

We've all got experiences that we'd love to put into song. Remember that really creepy guitar riff that made you think of the time you were locked in after school and you were afraid the boogeymen came to get you or your step dad tried to rape you or whatever. Or that one melodic line that made you think about how beautiful your girlfriend's face is when she's all flustered and bedraggled after having walked in out of the rain? You want to capture that but you dont think you can do it justice. Right?

Here's what you ought to do. Remember every little thing about that scene in your head. Everything is significant. Don't skip over the little pebble in your shoe. It's an important plotpoint for your creative vines to tangle around. Before you try to capture mood, its useful to put yourself back in that frame of mind and try to remember each tiny detail and note it down. Obviously you won't use most of them, sometimes none of them. But if you dwell on it, they should help you perform some creative leaps. Now, that pebble, write a short 4 line poem about it separately while keeping in context of your scene. Now repeat that for the chair you were sitting in at the library that the film crew for 88 minutes turned into The Health Sciences Building. (I saw Al Pacino yesterday at the shoot). Repeat for about 10 objects that were around you when the scene occured.

Now go ahead and write your song. You'll have, if you've gotten around to making 10 little specific verses, a little store of images, feelings and metaphors that relate to the general mood at hand so you can use em when you like in the song. This way, you never run out of what to say when you want to describe that feeling of intense sorrow or loneliness or joy etc.

As a friend who's majoring in film told me, "The purpose of technique is to free the unconscious. If you follow the rules ploddingly, they will allow your unconscious to be free. If not, you will be fettered by the conscious mind [which] always wants to be liked and wants to be interesting. [It will] suggest the obvious, the cliche [...] Only the mind that has been taken off itself and put on a task is allowed true creativity". That quote is by David Mamet.

That completes my little guide. Feel free to think up other techniques to help you. Hope this helps make you a better songwriter than you used to be. Any questions, comments or suggestions welcome. Guide may be used for your purposes long as credit is given. Peace.