Song 7- Complete

An interesting aspect to this project has been assigning lyrics to words that are already destined to be the title of the song I'm writing. I have a 52 word poem all written out, and each song for this project is a word within it.
On one hand, it sparks some creativity in the challenge to write within the framework of what imagery the word conjures.
On the other hand, it can be restricting, because once the words start coming together, they may or may not fit under the overall banner of what the title is.
This one for example, "complete" would be easy to immediately think of how my family makes me complete. It almost seemed like it would be too easy. But sometimes too easy works. It was tough writing this one because I essentially let the lyrics take where the theme of the song was going to go.
Meaning, I just started writing, and then tweaked and sounded out certain lines to make sure they "worked". But it needed a lot of tweaking.
The other great part about this project is that all of the songs are still works in progress because they are so raw.
Anyway, one technique that I have been using is to actually play through the song instrumentally, and while I'm trying to sound out the melody, I record myself. I usually mumble and hum and occasionally a few words come out in a string that sound good to me. I then listen back to the recording and write down what the mumbled words sound like. Most of the time it's just nonsense, but there are times when that one key line becomes the foundation for the rest of the lyrics.
Again, that key line may or may not have anything to do with the title of the song, but the challenge (fun) part is to try and blend it all together in a way that sounds half-decent and flows moderately well.
Laurie helped me out with "complete" because I have a tendency to be vague, which I sometimes mistake for "poetic". She steered me right- the first line of the song started out as "Is that your alma mater too?", depicting a room full of thick-jowled fat cats shooting the breeze as if there were no imminent disaster surrounding them. But again, it was too vague. Laurie suggested I focus instead on the center of the theme wi the opening line, and I think it helps the song out quite a bit.
At some point I'll blog about the meaning of these songs- some of which are obvious.
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