"I’ve been a songwriter for quite a while now, and when I write songs they usually just come
to the surface and they’re there. But they usually came once in a while, and that
wasn’t very often. Last April I went to the European Songwriter Workshop in
Innsbruck, Austria, where I met many great songwriters, who became good friends
and a great source of inspiration. I met the wonderful miss Heta Salkolati
there, who I’ve been making lots of music with. She told me she once did a
challenge with a friend, to write one song every day for a short period of
time. I thought that was a wonderful idea, to just push your creativity and
inspiration a bit. It didn’t have to be a great song, a long song or even a
complete song. Just whatever idea comes to mind; record it, and put in online.
And so I did, for about 10 days. The results were (for me) surprisingly nice
and very diverse. The styles vary from acoustic folk, fucked up blues, ambient
electronic to some genuine singer/songwriter songs. Some of them just ideas,
some of them whole songs that I still play with my band".

A short summary of the songs:

Day 1: Alps

This is a pretty emotional and punky folk song. A goodbye song really to all of the
people I met in Austria. But very optimistic, because some of the friends I
made there, I would definitely see again. And I did, of course.

Day 2: Whisper Pencil Drawings

I just bought a Ukulele, and tried some melodic stuff on it, combining it with some
electronic beats and sounds. The lyrics are about what everything you observe,
listen to and all the interaction that you have, influences your opinion
subconsciously.

Day 3: Coffee Mornings

A pretty depressive song about being alienated from your own life. I tried out lots of
electronic sounds and effects on the verses, to make it sound like it comes
from another world. The choruses had to sound like realizing that everything is
real and not some kind of dream.

Day 4: Bucket of Coal

Raw blues song about the death of miners. I saw the article on the news, just before I started
writing a song. I like the sound of this, because it’s really raw and not
correcty sung or played in any way.

Day 5: Dead Souls (Mother Russia)

Another bluesy song that I adapted now a lot of times (will record it later) about the
book Dead Souls by Gogol. It’s not literally about the book, but more about the
whole bleak and depressing atmosphere of Russia in the early 1900’s.

Day 6: Stacked

Loud rock song about escaping your life (I wasn’t feeling really in the right place at
the time, as you can see). I liked the dissonant chords in 7/8 measure, that’s
how I started the song.

Day 7: Loaded

After all the violence a real Singer-Songwriter song. I’m a big fan of Ed Harcourt, which
you can hear very well in this song. The song’s about a wedding, where everyone
knows that the wife-to-be likes to fuck around.

Day 8: Preachers

A Ukulele Punk Lovesong.

Day 9: When the world dies

Pretty dark ambient electronic song. An experiment in climax, maybe.

Day 10: Time for holiday

When I planned to travel around all summer, I wrote this song, as a goodbye to my
friends and girlfriend. It starts pretty depressive, but ends (and I don’t
think I really like the ending…) very happy and jumpy. I tried to experiment a
bit with different voices and choirs.

Well, have a listen, and tell me what you think. Maybe we could start a new challenge
soon, or a one song per week challenge or something like that. I’d be happy to
join again.

Cheers, Harmen