Writing my first song, part 2

Click here to read part 1!

Once I had written my first song, On my own, I kept playing it with good response for two years on different occasions. I thought I was done with it and wrote a couple of more songs during those years. I started writing the song in Denmark and after this my travelling lifestyle continued.

I wrote my second song while in Malawi, Africa. It's called "Vinterkanslor" which means "winter feelings" and is in Swedish. This song is mainly about all the hardships we face in life and how we are forced to keep those within ourselves, because most people just want to hear happy stories. I think the reason I wrote the song in Swedish was because then no one would understand it where I was. Somehow it gave me the freedom to freely express myself in the song without having to face any judgement on what I wrote, at least not until I got back to Sweden.

The reason I became inspired to write more on my first song was because in the fall of 2009 I went to Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. This is a university where they see consciousness as the basis of knowledge and I met many inspiring people here. The whole atmosphere of the campus was very conducive to my creativity and I realized that musically it made sense for my first song to not just be verse, chorus, verse, chorus.

To really give it a more powerful ending, I added a bridge followed by another chorus one full step higher. I was sitting in my dorm room on campus and I felt a strong energy inside me, like I had unlocked some source previously blocked and I just had to put this energy to creative use. The bridge started with F, then G, followed by Em (a chord I hadn't used in the song previously) and then Am, continuing with F and G.

This kinda leaves the song hanging, musically speaking, and makes it smooth to continue with a chorus that goes in D instead of C. This transition brings a more hopeful sound to the last chorus, even though the lyrics still were pretty sad. It made me feel like I had ended the song in a more full way, with a greater musical variety. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge, final chorus felt like a good song structure.

Once again I expected this to be the final version of the song, and for another two years it was. When I went home to Sweden for winter break in 2011, I had written another four songs (It't not a Fairytale, Natten "The Night", Find your Grace, Praise the Good) and I had kind of put "On my own" behind me at this point.

At the airport, my good friend Malin met me along with my parents and since we hadn't seen each other for almost a year, I felt really happy about it. Later that day, she said that she had a belated birthday present for me (my birthday is November 26th and this was December 23rd) and she showed me lyrics of two verses and two chords, that would come at the end of On my own. She called her part "I'm always here" and brought light, hope and support into my otherwise melancholic music.

Now the song is titled "On my own, I'm always here" because of her part and I did a recording together with her that same day, just with my computer's microphone and somewhat primitive recording program (it has only two buttons: record and stop). After the recording I did a few adjustments to the lyrics and now I've uploaded the song with chords and lyrics right here on the blog!

I think this song is as long as it's going to be, but who knows? Lately I've been starting to add small guitar solos to my music so that's always a possibility... or I might try to practice this song with someone else and develop some harmonies, or come up with some interesting picking patterns for the guitar. Life is always growing, and when music is truly alive, it keeps growing as well :)

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Writing my first song, part 1

Songwriting is an organic process to me. I take in experiences and observe the world around me, and then I express myself and act in the world. Some experiences are a lot easier to express in music than any other way for me, especially highly emotional experiences. Click here for chords and lyrics to On my own, I'm always here.

My first song, called "On my own", I started writing in the fall of 2007, at the age of 20. I was in Denmark doing a volunteer work/study in preparation of going to Malawi, Africa. Before this, I had lived my whole life in Sweden with my parents and spent a few weeks here and there on vacation, so this was the first time I really took off on my own. After I had been in Denmark for a few months, going home every now and then, I started to realize how much having my family around meant to me and how much I was missing their every day support.

There was no one there who I felt that I could talk to. Sure, I told people that I missed my family, but everyone was busy with their own lives so no one gave that deeper care and support to me. I had gotten my acoustic guitar two years earlier and learned all basic chords along with a number of songs, but none of the songs that I knew could express the feeling I had inside me. It wasn't a choice on my side, it was just a matter of putting to paper the difficulties I was going through, as a way of being heard and seen.

With my songs, it always starts the same way. I have a feeling inside that I need to express but telling someone just isn't enough. So I connect with my heart and listen to what's inside, with the guitar in my arms. I start playing around with different chords until I find a progression that resonates with the feeling inside me. In this case those chords were Am, G, Dm, Am. That simple.

I started playing those chords to myself a couple of times, listening again to my heart and finding a tune that fits the chords. I start singing and put words to the tune that are the concrete expression of that feeling inside my heart, just one line at first and then a verse. I always keep the flow going and never judge what comes out. Sometimes I don't think the rhyme is the best, sometimes I wish the words could be more profound, but the song is already inside me and I am simply writing it down. If I start judging the the whole process just stops and I get stuck.

So once I finished writing the first verse with four lines and repeating those four chords, I felt that it was time for a chorus. Now I try to find a new set of chords that can take my emotional expression to the next level where a climax is reached. I play around a little bit again and decide to extend the last part of the verse with an extra measure of the chord G to then move into the chorus with the chords C, G, Dm, Am (notice that I never used C in the song before this).

Music theory states that G is the dominant to C, and thus a good chord to lead into the C. That's one reason it felt good to end the verse on a G rather than Am. I studied music theory in Uppsala, Sweden, the year before I went to Denmark and it was very useful to my songwriting. The most crucial theory in knowing how to put chords together is called "the Circle of Fifths". If you learn this, then you have a good foundation.

So, once again I started looking for a tune once I had the chords for the chorus, and then started singing the lyrics to myself and writing them down as they were vocalized. After two lines of C, G, Dm, Am I felt that the chorus needed something more, something with suspension, in order to represent what I was feeling. I felt stuck inside, with so many worries circling my mind so I decided to just play the G chord for a whole line and the lyrics that go with list all the things I was wishing I had in my life. This repetition of one chord was followed by an F and then ended on a C, which gives a certain suspension since F is the sub-dominant to C (notice that I never used F in the song before this). Once again, I refer to "the Circle of Fifths" for greater understanding about this.

So now I had my first verse and my first chorus and it felt natural to write a second verse and a second chorus, which ended on F, G, C rather than just F, C. In music theory it's called an "authentic cadence" to end of G, C (which is the fifth followed by the tonic). This was the complete song for two years until I came to study in the US at Maharishi University of Management in Fairfield, Iowa. Since I've already written a hefty portion, I will continue the story of this song in my next entry where you can read about the later additions that came around. I heard someone say that you never finish a song, you just put it on the shelf.

Read "Writing my first song, part 2"!

On my own 

By Patrik Siljestam

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