Lyrics: Part 2 - Leave It All Behind

Today's lyric sheet involves "Ch ch ch changes" that were made for the song Leave It All Behind. If you take a look at these pictures you can see all of the things that change from the original idea to the finished product. You can listen to the actual finished song by clicking here.

One thing that you might notice is that I wrote in 3 or 4 different types of ink, so my Dexteresque detective reasoning tells me that this song was not written all at once. Probably over many days. So many times songwriting for me is not getting struck by lightening and BAM out comes a full fledged idea. It takes work and time. But for me, often times that process is pretty magical.

Another thing that happened is the guitar tuning of the song changed. It eventually ended up being in DADFBE but on this sheet it was DADFAE.

Also, the lyrics have changed quite a bit from what they were. A verse was chopped of when I started recording the song. Oh yea, in "Todd Talk" underlining words means to put emphasis on them and "Bam Bam Bam" means to syncopate the words just in case you were wondering lol.

Lyrics - Your Every Move

Writing songs is a funny thing. In the next few blogs I'll give some examples of how shit goes down when it comes to lyrics.

Firstly, for me at least, music almost always comes first. That's a whole other blog's worth of trial and error, tape recordings of me mumbling, lost recordings, crushing self esteem blows.... with 1 out of every 20 attempts turning into a song......More of that at a later date!

This first example is from the song Your Every Move
from my album The Great Unknown.

This is a cool example of the lyrics coming together really fast. If you click on this image you can see the lyrics more closely. Most of these are what I actually used in the final version of the song (this is pretty rare).
The "Oh, oh oh" at the top of the page I didn't end up using at all. I totally forgot and that's why this song isn't on Top 40 Radio. Blast!!

I've come up with many shorthand ways to get my ideas down on paper. The X31000 in the middle of the page is a guitar chord. It lets me know which strings not to play and which to hold down.

I do enjoy the fact that some of the lyrics that got scribbled out were complete shit. "Caviar"??? Really? This is why I'm thankful for editing. I think writing is all about letting everything come out without judgment at first.....then going back later and judging the crap out of it. Writing lyrics is like being a little kid who gets to dress himself for school. Editing is the parent who makes sure you don't leave the house looking like a damned idiot.

Next up...Leave it All Behind