Then we just had to come up with a chord progression – I wanted an 8 bar chord progression but I had to compromise due to time constraints and we ended up with two 4 bar chord progressions, one for a verse and one for a chorus. It took us a few attempts with choosing random chords based on the idea that relative chords (chords found directly next to one another in the cycle of fifths) sound best when put next to each other, but we came up with two we were content with. We had a go at playing it through a few times and got it sounding quite good!
With our chord progressions down, next came the lyrics. A particularly difficult thing to tackle when none of the band really knew where to start or what to even write about. So Nic had the idea of finding an object and hoping we would find inspiration from it, he took a black and white die and we just said things relating to the die, be that physical characteristics, what it represents, or what it’s used for. The part which I wrote seems best for a chorus, which is written in red in the image above. I also mentioned the phrase “snake eyes”, which seems to be the impromptu title of our little dice song. This object-based method of songwriting is one of many used by artists, another method I find interesting has the songwriter take a bunch of newspaper/magazine cuttings, mixes up all the words, and places them in random orders, waiting for inspiration to strike. This method has been used by David Bowie, to name one example.
Putting all of our previous sessions together culminates in the song we have now, with the introduction of a bridge section too. Above is us performing the song “Snake Eyes” – albeit a bit rusty as it had been a while since we all performed the song together.