Blog: A New Song!

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Now that I'm at home pretty much every day I'm trying to do a lot of WRITING. Some of this is for my course, some is for stuff like Newsjack, and some is working stuff up for competitions - I'm giving myself until September to See What I Can Do before I start thinking about having to get another proper job, so I'm determined to do as much of this as possible so that if nothing else, I get myself a nice big pile of STUFF done that I can use in future.

I finished one BIG thing yesterday - the first draft of a spec script for "New Girl" that may very well never ever be seen by anybody. I entered a competition at Nickleodeon a couple of month ago, where you had to send in a script for one of a short list of American TV shows. I chose "The Big Bang Theory" because i LIKE it, and had a very jolly couple of months working on an episode, doing a script I was quite pleased with in the end. The final prize is to go and work (paid!) for them for six months, and the next stage of the process is around August when, if you've got through to the next round, they ring up and ask you to send in ANOTHER script for ANOTHER show. I'd really like to do this, and as you only get a day or so from the phone call to sending in the new script I thought it might be wise to get a head start. As it turned out I was right - it's taken me MUCH longer to get to that stage this time, and what I've come up with is in a MUCH ropier state than the first one!

Still, the first draft is DONE so I'm going to leave it for a few weeks ago and do some other things. This is SUCH a relief after WEEKS of slogging away at it, and this relief ERUPTED this morning when I sat down and done wrote a whole new song. It's been on the boil for a while - i woke up with the RIFF for the verse going round my head at the weekend, thought of chorus a day or so later, and then realised I'd made some notes for the subject in one of my old ideas books, which I went and dug out.

So, it was all in the air, but I'd forgotten how EASY it can be to sit down with a guitar and get a song WRITTEN. I sat down and thought up a first verse, found myself going STRAIGHT into a BRIDGE, and then for the next couple of hours paced around the flat with a GUITAR round my neck saying "Hmm - but what rhymes with Balti?" It was a) fun b) PEASY, especially when I remembered that you don't necessarily have to make EVERY line rhyme.

Just before lunch it was finished, so I got the four track out, recorded a quick demo, and sent it out to the Validators. Within 20 minutes Mr F A Machine had replied suggesting we START with the chorus, and there we go - SONG DONE! It's called "That Guy" and joins the short but exciting list of Songs To Learn For The Next Album. Songs: they are a LOT quicker to write than speculative sitcoms!

posted 1/5/2014 by MJ Hibbett

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