Dynamic Duos

Lennon and McCartney; Elton and Bernie; Jagger and Richards... Jordan and Amanda? As I mentioned previously, I participated in February Album Writing Month this year (after filing it under "that'll never happen" after firsting hearing about it a few years ago), and while I didn't hit the requisite 14 songs, I did manage to be involved with 6, which represents a 600% increase for me over the past 13 years or so. My favorite ones to come out of that were collaborations.

In my previous post, I talked about my friend John (who has been a musical partner of mine since high school), but this time I'd like to give a shout-out to my latest collaborator, Mrs. Creative DC herself. One of the tunes I'm happiest with came out of a collaboration session we had a few nights ago - I had some chords I'd been playing with, she had an idea for a theme. She banged out some lyrics in record time and I expanded and changed my chord structure to better fit the snippet of melody she had in her head. After some back and forth, we ended up with My Name In Lights, which represents the last FAWM song I'll be able to work on this month due to a hectic travel schedule.

Take a listen, and let me know what you think! Oh, and if you're putting off that creatively fulfilling thing - please do yourself a favor and just try it. I had to write 4 or 5 songs before I hit on one I really liked - but you never get to that one if you never start.

UPDATE [2/2010]: FAWM doesn't keep your songs up after each round, so the "listen" link above was broken. You can hear the song using the player below.

[Editor's note: this was intended to be a longer post about songwriting collaborations, but I'm exhausted and have to get up early to get out of town. Sorry.]