My Recent Transformation: Becoming A Co-songwriter

If you’ve noticed I’ve been babbling about my recent endeavors in music, allow me to babble some more. This time, it’s about the process I enjoy a lot these days – songwriting.

The initial plan was to come up with a “sciencey” Youtube channel.

Though my pal Gifter and I are working extremely hard to finish our upcoming album, I have to say that it’s a far cry from our original plan. Worrying about how my parents would react if I commit myself to be in a band, Gifter decided we should make a vlog first, then focus on music later.

We had that plan ever since we met in person, and it was what Gifter was strategizing so religiously that it gave him plenty of sleepless nights. But as 2021 came to a close, he finally decided that we should focus on that thing that we love so dearly – music.

We’re both passionate musicians, though I’d consider him to be in a near-professional level while me? Well, let’s just say I’m only fit as a benchwarmer or a “water girl” of some excellent team, him being the ace player of that well-honed team.

Having fully embraced what our hearts truly desired, we decided to ditch the Youtube channel idea… and decided to form a music duo instead.

Covers or originals?: The first real struggle

During Gifter’s first few days here in Bukidnon, his first course of action was for us to practice some cover songs so we can be paid for our gigs in the bars and music venues here. Nearly every night during his earliest days here, he would walk city streets to look for places where we could perform and get paid.

To his disappointment, he found nothing. Maybe because the COVID pandemic hasn’t waned down yet at that time, or maybe Malaybalay is just very different from Davao where there are lots of bars and gigging places that he once played before – we really couldn’t tell at that time.

Realizing that we couldn’t get any gigs at bars yet, Gifter decided we should jump into that thing we are so excited about: writing our own songs, recording them, and making videos out of them.

“You’re the perfect ‘wingwoman’ and co-songwriter”

That’s what Gifter told me even in our first few days of writing songs together. To be honest, I really don’t believe him whenever he says that. I know he’s been playing with lots of professional musicians already in the past, and that he has recorded some songs in music studios before. He’s got to be kidding me around when he tells me I’m a perfect co-songwriter for him, right?

Regardless if he’s telling the truth or if he’s just trying to lift my spirits up so I won’t quit with this endeavor of ours, I have to say that becoming his “alleged co-songwriter” is one of the greatest achievements I ever had – if that were true. According to him, it is. (lol)

What I really did as Gifter’s co-songwriter.

Let me be honest, what I did as his wingwoman in crafting our songs are just some little touches here in there: additional chord progressions, harmonic vocal blending, and some little instrumentation enhancements that Gifter likes to call “licks.”

Though all of our songs were all written by him, he didn’t acknowledge it that way. I can’t count anymore how many times he said: “the songs we wrote” instead of “the songs I wrote.” He really admired the way I gave improvements to the melodies and harmonies of the songs he wrote, some of which were already finished even before we met.

Every time we wrap things up during a music session, he would repeatedly ask me what I think and how our newly written songs could be further improved if I were in charge of it. Being a newbie to everything about music, I’ve always been hesitant to partake in the whole songwriting process.

But he was always open to my suggestions and there were even some huge melodic structures that he totally abandoned just to accommodate my suggestive styles. There are times when I think that maybe, he just doesn’t want to make me belittle myself.

“Could it be that he’s just being nice? Or were my melodic suggestions brilliant enough that he accepted them? How I wish I’d get to know.”

Such were the questions that trouble me a lot lately. But time and time again though, Gifter reassured me that I’m actually a fast learner and that I could be a natural-born prodigy since I’ve just hopped into music in my mid-20s but am actually far better than his former bandmates! Can you believe that?

In the next few days, there will be more of those vocal-recording sessions that we did 4 days ago. If he reverts to his original melodies and ditch my suggestions, then that’s how I’d know that he was just fooling me all along. Okay, maybe I’m just overthinking… let’s wait and see.

In my next article, we will talk about the very painstaking recording process in a professional studio, as well as in that crappy area that we call our “poor musician’s studio.”

In case you’ve missed the other parts of this article series, here they are:

https://read.cash/@Jeaneth/dealing-with-gifter-the-most-brutal-music-nazi-ive-ever-met-b3c0670b

https://read.cash/@Jeaneth/gifters-sacrifices-how-it-intensified-my-burden-cb0d1698

Thanks for reading!

Keep safe everyone.