The only way is up

I've finally taken the plunge. After almost a year of research, advice seeking and general thinking I've given my notice at work to drop to a 3 day week. My company have been fantastic and they've allowed me to reduce my hours so that I work 3 days for them and then 3 days for myself each week. This means that from the beginning of August I'm going to be at WPC from Mon-Weds and then slogging it out at home Thu-Sat.

The general response I've been getting back from the songwriting idea has been really positive and I reached the point where I realised that I had to make a decision. I'm looking forward to the challenge, but I am a little nervous. The biggest challenge might be getting out of bed on a Thursday morning, but I'm sure I can work around that. Perhaps I just won't go to bed on Wednesday evening?!

No domes but one big arch

Laura and I spent the weekend in London culminating in a trip to the new Wembley to see Muse. I may be biased, but Muse surely must be one of the best live bands ever. Perhaps for crowd pleasing stadium anthems, Queen might win the crown, but for sheer musical awesomeness and the ability to sound forever tight and CD-like, Muse win hands down. I've heard that Matt Bellamy is supposed to be a bit arrogant, but maybe he's just heard himself play a few times.

Wembley was everything that it's cracked up to be - very big, difficult to get lost in, and full of people serving everything you could ever need for a Muse gig. Laura and I went to get some food to discover that the burger, chips and drink combo was £7:50 each. The surprise at the price was eclipsed, though, by the quality of the food. It was a gourmet burger! I didn't have to queue at all - not for the food, the bar or even the loo! After having seen Wembley I've got high hopes for Liverpool's new Stanley Park Stadium - don't let me down guys...

It all could have got nasty at the end as most of the 90,000 odd fans all tried to catch the same tube, but the police were great, letting the crowd through gradually to keep us safe. Unfortunately, though, it still took us 2 hours to get from the stadium to Dan's car which was parked 5 stops along the tube, and there was a lot of love on the tube with everyone pressed against windows and doors. When the doors opened, people kind of popped out onto the platform!

All in all, it was fantastic. Laura got the tickets back in December for my Christmas present - I love her more every day. (Particularly the days when she's brandishing tickets...)

What's that coming over the hill? Is it a concept?

So here's the concept. Ever tried writing a song? It can be quite a painful experience. You're walking down the street humming when suddenly an idea drops into your head. You rush home, grab your guitar, strum some rough chords and write down a couple of lines. You can kinda hear what it should sound like, but you can't think of a good rhyme for life (wife, knife, strife...) and as the song slowly progresses, you forget the rhythm for the first bit. Soon the best bit of the song (your original idea) is forgotten amidst a see of scribbles and all you can think of is the annoying bit that you don't like.

The concept is a piece of software to ease the pain of writing songs. It'll allow you to stick down chords and words really easily as they come to you and play the whole thing back. I'm hoping to put a rhyming dictionary in for those difficult lines, and you'll be able to generate some great sounding accompaniments. In the space of half an hour, you'll have a completed song that you can print out (in lots of different forms (music score, guitar tab, just words etc...,) and burn to CD. That means that when you turn up at the band rehearsal, you won't spend an hour trying to explain how you imagined it would sound - you can show them. You could even email them an mp3 of the music before the rehearsal!

It all sounds great in theory but there are a few products on the market which do similar things. Market research here I come!

Songbird

After a lot of thinking and research I've come up with a brand new software concept that I like even more than my previous idea! After thinking through the legal implications of the other product, I decided to go back to the drawing board and see if I could come up with anything better, and I started thinking about Songwriting Software. I've done a quick bit of research into the market and it all looks positive so far...

I'm going to run the idea past a few songwriters that I know in the next few weeks (if you're one of them and you're reading this then watch out!) and then I guess I'll have to make a final decision.

I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere with this which is very exciting. Any thoughts and comments are very appreciated. More tomorrow...