Up all night

I suggested to a friend that I jam with that we turn one of our jams into a song. He's a much more gifted music theorist than am I, he is also immensely talented and uses his knowledge quite well. I am more of a "feel" player that knows next to nothing about theory. Our styles complement each other very nicely, I think. I really enjoy listening to him while we play, and I think he enjoys listening to my noodling as well. I haven't co-written a song in over a decade so I'm not sure how this process will work out. I digress. So we've agreed to work on arranging our jam into a song. The first step is to write bridge and chorus parts as well as an intro and an outro. I think that this process will be the most difficult. Then there's the lyics, which kept me awake for a bit of last night. I think I've got a grasp on the tone and feel of those. For some reason though, I woke up last night and could not get back to sleep. I was playing the riff again and again in my head, trying to figure out harmonies and melodies, bass lines and leads. Yep, I'm an obsessive one. I think it will all work out though. I have ideas for everything but the intro. Well I have an idea for how it should sound, but I'm not sure of the progression, whether the intro should be clean or rough, when the bass should enter, how the bass should enter, or pretty much any of the details that make a good intro to a song.

I don't know why I get on these kicks, but I haven't written anything (musically that is) in a long while and I get excited just thinking about getting my creative streak running again. I just hope I can hold on to this excitement long enough and make it through this one song. I tend to ramble in music like I ramble in life and it is difficult for me to concentrate long enough on one thing without a million other things popping into my head.

There are a multitude, one might even say a plethora of questions in my mind surrounding the this piece; should the original riff be the intro/chorus part? what kind of a structure do we want the song to have? Who plays what where? Do we need a chorus? What will the song's "hook" be? How will my friend and I write together, will it be strained? I can think of a dozen more questions but I'm sure that you get the general idea.

Now if my friend reads this he might get concerned, but there's nothing to be concerned about. I'm sure that everything will work out, I just need to put some of my feelings out there. I'm sure that this song will turn out quite nicely, paving the way towards other collaborations in the future. If it doesn't turn out well, and we discover that we cannot work together then we've learned something in the process and we should continue to jam.