This week, I’m featuring a brand new song just recorded called “Little Bird,” which will be on my new album coming out this October.
This song was influenced by a San Francisco band called The Dodos. In particular, I like the fast picking patterns and the driving percussion they typically use so I tried to incorporate some of those sounds into my song. Here’s the Dodo’s tune, “Black Night.”
So with that influence in mind, let me break apart my song for you. It starts with the acoustic guitar playing a syncopated picking style, which basically means the accents are played on the off beats.
To ground the song, I played a real simple kick drum beat with a cajon. It’s just quarter notes – or as they would say in dance music “4 to the floor.” Here’s the bass guitar along with played the same rhythm. Basically, I’m trying to stay out of the way of the busy guitar part.
Next I used the cajon again to play something like a tom fill every couple of bars, just to add a little extra excitement to the beat.
So now with these basic parts down, we needed a little extra texture. So, I added a soft organ to go in the background. I also added two electric guitar parts. One of them copies doubles what the acoustic guitar is doing and the other is sort of an ebow drone sound.
For the last minute of the song, the acoustic guitar switches from picking to strumming and the energy picks up. To go along with that an add a little punch, there’s another electric guitar part with distortion. I also picked up the energy with the percussion. Instead of having a tom fill every couple bars, I turned it into a quick roll almost surf style like the song “Wipe Out.”
The lyrics tell the story of someone having some heavy social anxieties and trying to work through those issues about whether they are good enough and what other people think of them. They are able to persevere with the thought that there’s someone out there looking out for them. I wouldn’t really call it autobiographical but it certainly pulls from feelings I’ve had from time to time.
Lyrics:
I wouldn’t want anyone to see
The little bird sitting next to me
Telling me what I’m doing
Even though I keep losing
I wouldn’t want anyone to know
I’ve really got nowhere else to go
I’m out on a Friday night
Nothing is feeling right
But I got a feeling that someone’s coming back for me
I wouldn’t want anyone to leave
They’ve really got no reason to agree
I’m standing here on my own
Thinking I should go home
I wouldn’t want anyone to hear
It’s really been quite a rocky year
I don’t know what went wrong
That’s making me sing this song
But I got a feeling that someone’s coming back for me
I wouldn’t want anyone to say
I’m mixed up in my head and lost my way
I don’t know what I’m doing
But something is keeping me moving
But I got a feeling that someone’s coming back for me