mmd

After years of experiences that have mostly ranged from bad to worse, I have a personal rule of “no song/music competitions”. It doesn’t seem like my rule is firm enough, as every once in a while I get roped into something. This time Mick Rippon convinced me to do a collaborative effort for an entry to Round 25 of the Soundevotion Competition. Mick and I had already been swapping ideas in a non-serious way, but the prospect of a deadline seemed like welcome pressure to ‘finish’ some pop quickly, which usually takes me years.

We swapped the song idea about 10 times, all along the way negotiating a common vision of what the song should be, and letting the musical idea dictate the course of the construction. For about 2 weeks of on and off work we came up with a song called Freedom. It’s a cruisey driving pop song housed in swirling ambient tension, with vocals of positive encouragement and just enough melodic cheese to keep it fun.

Given the technical restrictions of the competition and the struggling performance I gave for the vocals, I am not altogether happy with the result. Given time, I’d like to re-do the vocals and perhaps iron out a few song-issues with Mick. The song has potential to be great pop, but I have much regular/daily vocal training to do before I can give an unconstrained performance. On the other hand I’ve learned from the pressure of the competition, and it’s kicked me in the arse to do better with nurturing my potentials.

In the end we came third. You can see the results here: http://www.sdcompo.com/results.php?r=25

I enjoyed working with Mick, and we got a good construction dialog happening under pressure. I’m keen to try more pop ideas with him later on – but not now as I’ve got a truck load on my plate for the next few months. For now please go check his wonderful tunes out!

We also got a fair amount of feedback, which you can read here: http://www.sdcompo.com/entry.php?e=329

Stay tuned for the ‘final version’.