{"id":8481,"date":"2014-06-26T05:05:51","date_gmt":"2014-06-26T05:05:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=8481"},"modified":"2014-06-26T05:05:51","modified_gmt":"2014-06-26T05:05:51","slug":"songwriting-how-much-do-our-influences-infiltrate-or-songs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/?p=8481","title":{"rendered":"Songwriting &#8211; How Much Do Our Influences Infiltrate Or Songs????"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Songwriting%20-%20How%20Much%20Do%20Our%20Influences%20Infiltrate%20Or%20Songs%3F%3F%3F%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>For songwriters, there is always the internal pressure to come up with something &#8220;new&#8221; and &#8220;original&#8221;. There is almost always that voice in your head while writing that will say &#8220;Oh, that sounds too much like that other song&#8221;. And in the cases when you think you&#8217;re in the clear because you can&#8217;t think if anything that resembles what you wrote.<\/p>\n<p>I know I have a lot of influences that shape the &#8220;Mike Alexander&#8221; sound. When I was a younger songwriter, I was very conscious of that, and if I realized there were similarities to another song, I would change things so that the similarities got squeezed out of a song if possible. <\/p>\n<p>But I think I&#8217;m at a place where I&#8217;ve come to embrace those influences.<\/p>\n<p>As a young teen, before AC\/DC whacked the sense out of me and turned me onto harder edged rock, I was a HUGE ELO fan. I played &#8220;A New World Record&#8221; and Out Of The Blue&#8221; to death! For the longest time, from my middle teens to probably my middle thirties,  I kind of hid my extreme affection for ELO because it kind of wasn&#8217;t the cool thing for a while. I got over that thank God!!!!  It helped that  Supertramp was also a favorite, and never got the same treatment \/ scorn of being syrupy pop, and I was able to bundle to two up into one compartment of music to admire. My love for Supertramp was always open for the world to see, but I kept my love for ELO private. By the time I turned 40, &#8220;Mr. Blue Sky&#8221; was in half the commercials on TV, so it was safe to come out of the ELO closet!<\/p>\n<p>You can try and put away some ancient influence from your youth, but they have a way of sneaking out. Now that I&#8217;m arranging a lot of my songs to prep for the solo project, I&#8217;m seeing Jeff Lynne&#8217;s influence on my writing all over the place. It&#8217;s not surprising though. The very first song I ever wrote, a thing called &#8220;Insanity&#8221; is now in my set list. I know I was listening to OOTB when I wrote it, and there are some smidgens of &#8220;Big Wheels&#8221; in the song. I didn&#8217;t  realized they had seeped into the structure of the song at the time because I couldn&#8217;t play it, but now that I can, I can definitely hear the echo there. For a while I never thought that much of the thing. I thought it was too simple. It was my first song and I didn&#8217;t have a clue how to write a song.  Now that I&#8217;m performing it though&#8230;. I&#8217;m really digging the simple yet primal drive that the song evokes. <\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve fallen in love with my own song!<\/p>\n<p>I guess I&#8217;ll have to vid it and put it on YouTube tomorrow.<\/p>\n<p>PS. It will probably be the first song on my debut solo album that comes out early next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<div style=\"padding-bottom:20px; padding-top:10px;\" class=\"hupso-share-buttons\"><!-- Hupso Share Buttons - https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/ --><a class=\"hupso_toolbar\" href=\"https:\/\/www.hupso.com\/share\/\"><img src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/buttons\/share-medium.png\" style=\"border:0px; padding-top: 5px; float:left;\" alt=\"Share Button\"\/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\">var hupso_services_t=new Array(\"Twitter\",\"Facebook\",\"Google Plus\",\"Pinterest\",\"Linkedin\",\"StumbleUpon\",\"Digg\",\"Reddit\",\"Bebo\",\"Delicious\");var hupso_background_t=\"#EAF4FF\";var hupso_border_t=\"#66CCFF\";var hupso_toolbar_size_t=\"medium\";var hupso_image_folder_url = \"\";var hupso_url_t=\"\";var hupso_title_t=\"Songwriting%20-%20How%20Much%20Do%20Our%20Influences%20Infiltrate%20Or%20Songs%3F%3F%3F%3F\";<\/script><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"https:\/\/static.hupso.com\/share\/js\/share_toolbar.js\"><\/script><!-- Hupso Share Buttons --><\/div><p>For songwriters, there is always the internal pressure to come up with something &#8220;new&#8221; and &#8220;original&#8221;. There is almost always that voice in your head while writing that will say &#8220;Oh, that sounds too much like that other song&#8221;. And in the cases when you think you&#8217;re in the clear because you can&#8217;t think if [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[65,70,15,71],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8481"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8481"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8481\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8482,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8481\/revisions\/8482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonicfrog.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}