Letter No. 37 [writing “weatherman”]

Dear Friend,

My first single, “Weatherman,” is officially released in about two weeks, and I feel so hopeful. I don’t feel hopeful about suddenly getting thousands of streams or anything like that, but hopeful because I’m finally putting music out there and starting things. And I almost have a set-up here at home that enables me to record consistently (so I’ll start recording my next single really soon!).

I shared the story behind the lyrics on my Instagram and bandcamp pages, but I wanted to share my creation process as well.

I started a composing challenge during quarantine—100 compositions in 100 days. I’ve been taking it a little slower, but it was through this challenge that I came to the idea of “Weatherman.”

When I’m writing music, I almost always start with the melody first—sometimes on the piano, sometimes on the guitar—but for “Weatherman,” I had the phrase, “Weatherman says rain is coming with the dawn,” stuck in my head, and knew I wanted to do something with it.

I started playing around with chords, and progressions, and different strumming and finger picking patterns on the guitar, and started forming something. The melodies for the verse and chorus came to me in twenty minutes or so.

That’s always the easier part for me—the harder part is finding the right words. I love writing, but I don’t think I’m great at writing lyrics yet or writing poetry. I had only finished the melody for the song and the words for the chorus when Joel Schwartz, my producer, and I met through Instagram.

After a free consultation, I decided I wanted to record something with him, and he had me send along recordings of five songs I was thinking of.

“Weatherman” still wasn’t complete yet, but I was loving the tune and story of it, so I included it in the five and said I really wanted to work on it.

Joel agreed, and I had about a week or so to finish up the lyrics. I worked in spurts on them—only sitting down and thinking about them for short amounts of time, while spending most of my time going about my day with lyric ideas bumbling around in my head. Words would work themselves out at random times and I would frantically search for pen and paper, scribbling lines on any piece of paper that was at hand.

The lyrics came together, and I recorded everything again and sent it back to Joel. Joel and I then tweaked things melodically, and he also helped me work on an interlude. The lyrics remained the same except for a few lines I had planned for the outro, which I ended up changing last minute while I was recording the guitar and vocal tracks.

The process seems a little chaotic written down, but it’s what works for me, and I honestly write a lot of my music this way (have an initial idea for a lyric or melody, find the melody, and then finish the lyrics). If you’re looking for a new way to spice it all up, give it a try (if you want). :)

Cheers,

Tara

p.s. is “cheers” too…cheery? Too UK (nothing wrong with the UK of course, I’m just not from the UK)? This has been a bit of a struggle for me—how to sign off—so, suggestions are welcome. ha.