So show me something else. All right. I just wanted to show you this thing because this is a song called Carefull which is on the most recent record that just came out. This, I did something that I didn't realize I did musically until after I wrote it, which is really cool. So I'll show you. I love when that happens. This happens a lot to me. Yeah. Where I'll be like, oh, look at that, look how cool I am. So it has this. So that's the intro, right? Then I go to the first and I'll only do the first verse so can hear this with a refrain. None of this really makes sense. So just go ahead and close the door, let's leave it to something else, to show us what it is we are in for. Sitting all the way across this room, I just gave myself to you, and every love I've ever had, I couldn't thank for, getting me to you. Every love I've ever had, I want to thank for, getting me to you. I want to be careful, careful, careful. This is called Careful, and so I know you picked it up, but I'll just tell the people who are watching. So I hit this top note in the intro. But then when I sing the verse, I don't play this, I don't do that until the refrain. It's basically a secondary hook. So it teaches the brain from the beginning of the song. You're going to hear this. Then you take it away from them. I describe this to students as when you meet someone for the first time and they're walking on the street, and you fall in love when you see them and you're like, I love you, I love you so much, and then you leave and they don't call you and you're like, oh my God, they don't love me, and then you see them again, and they like, I love you so much. It. like that one day in between where you're like, I don't think that they like me, they haven't texted me back. You take it away and then you give it again, and it's just as big. Well it's even bigger because something about losing or thinking that you might be losing something, both in life and in music, makes you so much happier when you find that that's not the case. It makes you like it more, it makes you think you like more. Well, it makes you feel that satisfaction. Yeah, totally. You didn't even know you wanted it. Yeah. I didn't realize that it was, I think I was playing a show one night and at the end of the song, I said to the audience, do you mind if I talk about something, and they were like, go on, talk about anything. What I really like about this is how you sing a line and then you'd play, there's like a little answer. Yeah. I do that a lot I think. So this is this thing that we're talking about in the class about creating a musical conversation. Yeah. Where we have a conversation with the vocal. Yeah. So having that movement that's taking place while in the space in between the lines. I do this all the time. Yeah. Just instinct. I mean there's a song, [inaudible] on this last record, that we called Stars Outnumber Our Hearts, and I think that this is just a thing that I have somehow done. I think it might be the jazz thing where I play and then talk. I barely play over myself when I'm singing, I won't pause. None of this really makes sense, so just come in and close the door. So I would never go, come in and close the door. It's not as good. Well, it's not as interesting because it's all happening at the same time and then there is space in between. So it points out a whole other part of this, which is having a main rhythm part that has a conversation with a lead vocal, and so there's all these subtleties to the this. I don't even know if you really think about that per se, but I do think that when we're trying to write something, we want to have as much give and take between the vocal, and the main rhythm part as possible. I noticed that a lot of your songs. Yeah. I think it's something that I probably thought about as a younger writer, and now it's so ingrained in me. I find it interesting to think about and talk about with you because I think as we mature as writers, we don't think as much about maybe what we're doing, it's like water. It's called mastery. Yeah. Sometimes, I will say though, now, especially with teaching and stuff, if I think about what I'm doing while I'm doing it, it can really interrupt my process. So I really work hard on that aspect of when I'm recording a guitar part and I hear, I can tell in an instant if something is in the way of something else. Whether it be guitar or my vocal, those are the first two things, but even other important or beautiful instrumental parts that are coming through, even a kick or something, when there's just that one moment for that one instrument, everything else has got to somehow stay out of the way. So all the parts have to click together like that. It has to feel like everything's essential, and nothing's obscuring anything else. Yeah. It's like woven rug. That's basically the philosophy of this class. Yeah. It's a woven rug. You have all the threads in the same place. Yeah. The colors, like when you look at one of those really fancy rugs, it's unbelievable. Those are works of art too. So that's actually a great example, or a painting. I talk about that too, and when you prepare a canvas for a painting you cover it with Gesso first, and then you have to let it dry, and then you add color on top of it. We talk about that a lot with the process, and maybe your gesso is. If you're a guitar player and you're just hanging out doing that for hours and hours and hours and days and days and days and days, just like a lot of students do, and then instead of maybe going. Everything's at the same time. Try, you're going to leave me, maybe going to stay, maybe going take me, out of the way because you got it on my mind [inaudible] like stop playing. For your main rhythm part. Stop playing. I mean this is cool the beginning when you're just getting your thing down. But it's a lot, and you can do that as a take on a record in the background. But this is how writing and arranging relate to each other, is that it does have to fit together, and I think the most essential thing is how does the vocal relate to that main part? Yeah. I love what you just demonstrated that fast, doing it with it isn't necessarily what you want. Yeah. Maybe that's the first instinct, and so for writers, if they can pull back from that and think to themselves, okay, yes, this is my first instinct. My first instinct is to always do this and that is why all of my song sound the same, which is what we hear a lot too, and for me too. So if all of my songs sound the same, and I keep doing this same thing, what am I doing that is the same? Then first we have to identify that, right? So we have to go in and really look at our songs and be like, well, check it out. The five elements of structure that we teach is one of my favorite things, and I really use it in going through and just figuring out, wow. In these three songs, I'm not employing any of these, or three of these five things. Maybe I should just try one of them. Right. On one song, you don't have to change everything. Bringing a little awareness to to your natural process. Just try something. Yeah. I think that there's that feeling too that you might have to change everything in your everything you've ever done. It's like, no, you can just chill out with one new song, try something different on one song. It's like everything I've done was wrong, and it's like no. I think all artists default to that. Yes. So that's a whole other conversation. Well, Melissa. Yeah, that was fun. It's always so great to talk to you about songwriting and arranging and thank you so much. Anytime. Of course. Yeah.
