People ask me quite frequently “how I come up with this stuff”, referring to my writing – be it music or fiction or otherwise. And the simple answer is, “I just don’t know.” But that’s sort of a copout too. Creative energy is like a good beer. The more you have, the more you want, and the more it keeps flowing. Right through you. At least if you have a small bladder like I do.

I wanted to journal some of the ways I’ve written music though, partly for those who wonder how it happens, and partly so that when they’re nickelbacking it on the radio, I’ll remember how it all came to be.

You see, I have twenty or thirty text files saved on my hard drive that have complete songs in them. Not the music tab, just the lyrics. But they are complete, and ready for music. I also have ten to fifteen musical arrangements and chord progressions mulling around in my head at any given time. It’s actually quite rare that I delve into these resources for a new song. A new song usually just sort of leaps up out of nowhere and writes itself. I just have to get on the keyboard (the computer keyboard, that is) and keep up. But one of our closers, called “Unbroken” has a sort of odd story behind it. I’ve been playing with this chord progression for about three years, not knowing where I wanted to go with it. I actually even used part of it in one of the Something Shiny songs. But all that’s history.

So Blake and I were sitting on the couches, just playing through some stuff when we suddenly hit an add-on progression that sounded right. It seemed to go with the verse we’d been playing with for so long. So I scooted up closer to the edge of the couch, taking several inches of distance out from in between us. I sat up straight, I watched his hands as I strummed and I started thinking, “Yeah, this is going somewhere. I like the sound of this. Uh huh.” And snap – the lights went out – we kept playing. Complete blackout, no power in the house. But we didn’t miss a beat. Both of us instantly realized the importance of the flow we were bringing. To stop it is to risk losing it forever. Trumby. Three keys to remembering a good progression: 1) have someone play through it a few times with you, 2) write it down, and 3) record that shit! Trumby. When failing the ability to write it (like no lights) or record it (like no power), you just keep playing it. Then I started singing.

At first it was just the main part of the chorus “Will I ever be unbroken?” I think the blackout sort of spawned that thought in me, but I immediately turned the idea to a love gone bad. “Will I huh huh huh unspoken…” Keep going, keep playing. That’s all I had. But I had something! After three or so years, I finally had something that went with my beloved little progression. Simple as it sounds, it’s been whipping my ass for seasons. So we’d laid down the foundation for the song, and I had something really good to work with. On my way home I sang it, and came up with a couple more lines. Now I had:

Will I ever be unbroken?
Will I ever be outspoken?
Should I even keep on hoping?
Does that mean you were joking?

Obviously I’d have to do something more with that, because it doesn’t make much sense on its own. But when I got home and opened notepad dot exe, it all came spilling out.

Will I ever again be unbroken?
I lie in bed alone each night and pray
Could I ever be so outspoken?
To say to you the things I need to say
Should I even keep on hoping?
You’d come back to me one sunny day
Would I ever be found coping?
While you stroll certainly away

The rest of it – the verses and turnaround – well, they just came without much thought at all. So I had a complete musical arrangement, and a complete set of lyrics for it. So I plugged into my home studio and recorded the full song. This is what the acoustic workup sounds like. Click here.

The words in that aren’t quite the newest ones, but you can tell what I changed. I polished them up and we put down the final product when we hit the big studio. Click here for that version! (Be sure to catch Trumby on backup vocals there.)

Next week I’ll tell you how I came up with the set closer for our November 12 gig.