6 months go by and this Dummy is in a far away land, far away from Mr Peet. And so the song lies dormant… Breathing faintly, deeply in the stale night air. It is not time…

Our song needs a concept. Jim Peterik and Kenny Loggins tell me that. (Haha, Loggins. Kenny, I promise that my mocking of your glorious name will never leave these brackets, you have my word).

The problem is, by definition, our stated mission is “successful songwriting” by essentially following the scriptures of our prophets Jim and Kenny. It’s songwriting for songwriting’s sake. As of yet, we have no burning artistic cause. All we have are two chords, an array of instruments and an almost worryingly single-minded focus on writing this song.

So one of two things will happen, (1) this process will focus our minds and we will latch onto a hidden artistic stream of conscience and out will come beautiful music from our souls; or (2) we will churn out music by numbers which not even a deaf dogs ugly half-brother would want to listen to.

I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the key deciding factors will be the concept. Will we write about something close to our hearts, or will we just fashion a meaningless song out of cheese? If left to his own devices, Pete probably would be quite happy writing a song about cheese. Maybe thats the big break that we’re looking for… but i doubt it.

I suppose I could write a song about love. But thats been done to death. Maybe I could write about:

Yearning? Happiness? Squirrels? Presidents? Welsh People? Back to the Future? 1-12? Posters? Liberace? Beer? Fish? Beer? Beer?

My stream of conscience is so far not providing much inspiration… Hmm I think I may have to come back to this at a later date.

After a beer perhaps

And its all go on Songs By Dummies! Our second big update since we started. Two main sections added; (1)“the song” - which is essentially a page to record all of our ideas that will be included in the final version of our song; and (2) “Coming up with that solid-gold idea” - this page is to document or search for that elusive beast of songwriting, inspiration.

Using the book as our trusted guide we have completed our first piece of inspiration searching - the “Creative Noodle”. You will see on the “Coming up with that solid-gold idea” page that our noodle has even yielded some limited results. We hope to do more of this sort of songwriting as time progresses, and any videos recorded will be added to our new Youtube profile as well as within this site.

After reading all that, you’ll see that we have a lot of work to do! Pete is working as we speak to try and come up with an appropriate song structure, while both of us will really get down the dirty business of trying to form some melodies, lyrics and, particularly, a concept for our track.

I am also pleased to anounce the introduction of a regular audio podcast to accompany this site! Over the next few days we will outline a rough schedule of podcast submissions. The aim is to demonstrate how the track is progressing by playing samples, dicussing ideas, introducing you to the Pepe and planning what we’ll do with our money when we become the richest people in the entire world.

Andy

Well, I’m now back after spending a week in the mountains trying to get inspired and I am ready to hit this songwriting thing. Hard.

Last night, Andy and I visited a local pub which had live folk music. To be honest, although it sounded alright the complexity of the songs was much more basic than I expected and that gave me some hope. Plus Andy managed to knock his pint over in sheer joy that there was someone in the band playing the spoons.

As far as the site goes, more stuff is going up as we speak and we’ve booked studio time next week to go and start recording the podcasts. I’ve just heard our theme song for the firsts time and I’m quite amused by it. Prepare yourself as it’ll be coming your way soon on the podcasts.

Yowsers!

Surely not…

but yes. The good people at last.fm have clearly done an excellent piece of legal wrangling, because now they provide the ability to create your own playlists and share them over the interweb. Unbelievable yes… but brilliant!

So now everyone can find out all about my musical tastes! Plus you can see what I’m listening to and praise me/mock me as you see fit. Nice

What is Last.fm you ask? Well without trying to sound like I’m plugging it too much its a dynamic internet radio cum social networking site. It generates personalised radio stations based on your listening habits and links you to people who have similar musical tastes to you. Best of all the radio stations are high quality, as varied as you like and are great for introducing you to artists you’ve never heard before.

All in all, good schizzle.

So, you can find my playlist on the ‘about Andy’ page - go listen

Indeed - a hard week. Not much in the way of dummy-related songwriting, but lots done nevertheless.

Pete & I have decided that we’re going to do a trailer. Really get this place off the ground - advertise it on prime-time TV. (By prime time tv read YouTube and you get the picture.) We might then actually write a song, you never know.

Oh and watch out for our creative noodling! One of Jim Peterik’s marvelous creations. Coming soon…

Well my first post anyway. Chuffed to get this page off the ground. The planning and the procrastination has stopped and we can finally get involved in the business of writing a song. Excellent.

The next chapter in the book, the part i’m reviewing at the moment, is loosely based around the concept of inspiration. It seems to suggest that inspiration might not always be something that just strikes you down when you least expect it, but something that is more likely to occur if you take some time to nurture it into existence, create the ideal conditions and be ready to capture it when it arrives.

I have to admit that this took me somewhat by surprise. I always imagined inspiration to be more of the running naked down the street shouting Eureka variety. I always thought that people like Dyson (inventor of the vortex vacuum cleaner and the apocalyptic Skynet war computer) and Bill Gates were just lucky. Maybe not. Maybe they farmed and harvested their inspiration too.

Interesting…

I also learned today that the British Army are using a system called ‘Skynet’ to communicate on the battlefield… This worries me

Skynet is coming…
The future

Of course, you know the site is up - you’re reading it now. However, it’s a great feeling to see all the hard work we’ve put in so far can be seen by everyone.

Well, without further delay I present to you all the first page. Hooorah!

Welcome indeed.

For you have stumbled upon the internet home of Pete and Andy, two self-confessed Dummies with only one thing on our minds… to write a song.

Of course many dummies have writtens songs in the past - and many of those have tried to make a success in the music industry with it. Most have failed and some have even succeded

So what makes Songs By Dummies different then?

Because we’re going do document everything we do, when we do it. The cost, the reward, the suffering, the regret… the beer. Also we’re going to follow a very specific formula. We’re going to follow The Book.

Just to clear things up, Pete will be writing in this colour throughout the website and Andy will be writing in this colour.

So once again, Welcome to Songs by Dummies. Make yourself at home. Read on…