Entry 3A: There’s No ‘I’ in “Let’s Make an Awesome Album”
So entry 2 was written by Schuyler, but now we’re back to Bryan (YorkeDaddy) for this next entry.
We have our concept developed, but relatively loosely. Handcuffing yourself when trying to create art is one of the worst things you can do. From here the only place to go is to the actual writing process itself! While most musical acts formally or informally declare one band member or outside source as the designated writer, we like to take a different approach.
The best way to describe our methodology is as a Lennon and McCartney relationship without the occasional George or Ringo. Now, I’m not comparing us to Lennon and McCartney, I’m saying that we tackle writing an album at about a 50/50 split, and both of us have different writing styles that contribute to the sound that comes out of those speakers when you listen to our music.
Let’s go into further detail and into some of my deeper philosophies that encompass songwriting. I believe that there are two ways of writing songs, and neither way is fundamentally better than the other, nor is one of the methods more “difficult” or “impressive” than the other. I believe you either write music from the heart or from the mind.
That’s not to say that music from the ‘mind’ isn’t heartfelt or that music from the ‘heart’ isn’t intelligently thought-out. I just believe that in songwriting, the music will either flow naturally and sporadically (writing from the ‘heart’), or the music will be more intellectual or technically sound (writing from the ‘mind’). If I were to classify existing artists to provide examples of what I’m trying to describe, I would say that acts such as The Antlers or Neutral Milk Hotel write from the ‘heart’, while acts such as Radiohead or The Beatles write/wrote from the ‘mind’. All four of those acts are remarkable bands that have released brilliant material, but the writing and subsequently the emotions I feel when listening to them differ tremendously.
I’ve gone into all this detail about my philosophies because I believe Schuyler and I happen to deploy these songwriting strategies. I know for a fact that I write from the ‘heart,’ while Schuyler writes from the ‘mind’. These differing songwriting styles create some noticeable contrast in the songs that we craft (generally the people that listen to our music closely can tell who the primary writer for each song was).
This translates into a “best of both worlds” type of deal. Instead of getting one or the other, you get the thoughtful, brilliant musings of an intellectual who understands quite deeply the intricacies of music theory from Schuyler (an example being "Love and War" [see below]), while also getting the raw, unfiltered stream-of-consciousness from a psychologically-driven man that frankly does not deeply understand many concepts in the realm of music theory (an example being "White Flowers" [see the first post of this journal]). There have been plenty of instances where Schuyler has played me something that he wrote and I would think to myself, “wow. There is simply no way I could’ve written this!” I’m positive Schuyler has thought the same thing at points.
All of this culminates into a songwriting stew that encompasses our entire body of work, providing looks into both ends of the spectrum and delivering the listener an experience that few acts can ever really provide. Now, does that mean our music is actually great? I’m not sure. That’s for the listeners to decide.
Click here to listen to "Love and War" on Soundcloud, a track by Schuyler that helps demonstrate his style of songwriting.