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Daniel Ward-Murphy <danielwardmurphy>

	The Learning, The Writing and The Inexplicable Sound	381 jours il y a
	I am now officially off the leash! Now I won’t just be updating you and bending your ear about all things musical, but also forcing general ramblings and thoughts on the general world upon you. I probably won’t even structure my thoughts that well as some kind of mini-rebellion against the organised world, but hey, I’ll try to at least make them semi-entertaining for you in return. Ok, let’s give you the update... The long wait is nearly over. I started writing songs when I was 13 and in a few days time I will finally have a collection of my songs on a professionally produced CD. At the moment that is only really a big deal for me and a few people around me, but hopefully in a couple of weeks time it will be a big deal for some of you as well! You Gotta Walk Before You Can Run In some ways I am patient, in others I am not. I would like to tour across many countries playing gigs with my fantastic band and have a bass player, a guitarist, a mandolin player and piano/keyboard player guest throughout the shows. Well that is something that could happen, but at the moment I have face up to the fact that it has to be a slow, feasible transition that deals with the reality of my day job, my musicians day jobs and the fact there are no gig fees for the band (or me) at the moment. Someone these days has decided that you don’t make money from selling CDs, which means you have to get to the next phase of either having your music appearing in films/adverts/TV shows or selling out lots of shows – so that you can get some money and perhaps make this transition a reality. For me, playing big shows, small shows, working hard, promoting, interviewing etc – none of that is scary, but the transition is. I hope I have done the first part in creating a good album but the rest will require a couple of breaks and great fans showing me great support. ‘Fan’ is a strange word. Some artists tend to collect them like scalps, but for me it is simply people who like your music enough to do something about it – whether that is tell lots of people about it, buy a t-shirt, or buy your next album. These people are special and make such a difference. I think sometimes people under-estimate the power of people power.... You Gotta Keep Something for Yourself Everyone who makes music tends to be a bit different. Some are in-your-face and self-confident, some are shy, retiring types and some are very sensitive and a bit fragile. I don’t think any of those really apply to me but I would say I don’t feel the cathartic need to lyrically express myself. This means I don’t need to ‘let it all out’ (visions of someone patting a sobbing DWM on the back) and that after I have written a song I don’t need to walk up to a friend and say ‘hey, that line was about you’. My songs tend to: - be about the past, the present and the future - talk about things that have happened to me and as well as things that haven’t - use loads of metaphors - be about several things in one song Throw all that together and it is a wonder people ever say ‘I know exactly what you mean there..’. If I was trying to describe something in the simplest terms, I would be disappointed if I couldn’t get my meanings across – but I am not trying to do that. As a singer/songwriter growing up in late 90s/00s London, you don’t get a great deal really. You work hard, you rehearse hard, you don’t get paid for your musical endeavours and you can generally get treated like a disposable rag doll – so for me, this is the one thing I keep some of just for myself. It has no cash value, but I suppose it is worth something to me. Don’t get me wrong, I am not a closed shop, when asked in interviews about particular songs I will give an answer that reveals half the truth, but I will just keep the other half for myself. Learning Things and Writing More Songs Making Until The Morning Light was a great experience. Contrary to popular belief it doesn’t take too long to actually record, mix and master the album, but ignoring for now the years it took to write the songs, it does take a lot of work and planning to make it all come together and get the results you wanted. I feel I have learned a lot throughout the process and to be honest I can’t wait to do it again. Tony Platt filled in some of these gaps for me this time around but I think I have learned a lot about how I like to schedule recordings and creatively, what input gets what results. I wasn’t new to recording studios, not at all, but I was new to recording a lot of songs in one go. Anyway, let’s hope I get the opportunity to use these experiences again sometime! My album isn’t quite out yet but already, instead of just playing and promoting these songs, I am writing new songs! I have almost completed a brand new song called The Liberation of the Female Kind. It’s simple, country/folky and hopefully a real foot-tapper! Just needs a little refining before I perform it for the first time! Ghost? Does not compute... In other news, I was staying in an old, grand hotel by the coast. It had a snooker room so I ventured down by myself to grace the green baize, but as I approached I heard the unmistakeable sound of a snooker ball hitting another snooker ball at pace. Cursing my luck that someone was in there and hoping there might be a second table, I walked into an empty room 3 seconds later to find no one in there and two tables completely motionless. I was standing by the only entrance/exit. Weird. Obama or McCain? Well in one word, Obama – but I find it a bit weird that while the half of the world that was sitting fairly pretty is in the middle of a financial crisis (and the other half still struggles to survive) that these two are spanking the kind of money that could actually fix things, on getting elected. On top of that, the big oil/petrol companies are posting amazingly big profits. Something went wrong somewhere methinks... Miscellaneous I respect the nation of China, but the Chinese leaf lettuce was a big error. It tastes bad. DWM SongPoint Man to Man – Lily Fraser Weak – Lily Fraser Someday Soon – The Matthew Bennett Band Night of the Living Dead – Julia Marcell Sophia – Nerina Pallot Some of you have been enjoying listening to the stuff I am inserting into my brain. The songs above are all by bands who have are not really seeing commercial success at the moment. These are five fantastic songs which for me typifies the talent that is out there but not getting play-listed. Lily’s album is worth a purchase (make sure you tell ‘em I sent you!) and Sophia is stunningly beautiful. ‘Someday Soon’ is a favourite of mine from this great (as far as I know) unsigned band. Anyway, I hope you enjoy! It has just hit midnight and I want to get some zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzs! Cheers DWM
	posté par Daniel Ward-Murphy