Kyla's Blog

February Song Prompt February 21, 2020

February’s prompt was to write a song about a first date. This was definitely outside my sphere as it’s been a very long time since I’ve been on a first date with someone. I’ve also never been on a blind date, but that is what this song turned into.

The series of events that lead to this one were that I posted January’s song a couple days late, so when I was uploading it, I saw the February prompt online, right before heading up to my studio. On the walk to the studio the prompt wiggled around in my brain. My first thoughts were that I could do a historical first date. Maybe something about Peter Abelard and Heloise. Then I thought about writing about some sort of tryst in a monastery or convent. By the time I got to the jam space, I had the melody, first verse, chorus, and ending for a modern day blind date, which I had sang over and over to myself on the second half of the walk so I wouldn’t forget it. I do have a voice recorder on my phone and do stop and use it to capture ideas when I’m walking, but since I was walking to the jam space, I decided it would be safe and remarkably, it was.

At the jam space, I jotted down the melody and came up with the chords for the verse, then left it as I had other things to do that day.

I in fact left the song completely for a couple weeks. When I came back to it on a Monday, I made a couple more lyric notes, sang what I had and left it till the next day. The next day I went in to finish it. I had very clear ideas for the melody of the verse and chorus, but was having trouble finding the chord progression for the chorus, and finding a comfortable key to sing and play in. I ended up coming up with the progression for the chorus, but it was in a different key from my verse. I had a moment of fear that I would have to change keys every cycle of the verse and chorus, so I wrote out the progressions in scale degrees which sorted that out immediately. I tried a few different keys, and settled on F, which was the original key I had. It’s a little low, but I think that’s fine. I like singing low.

The lyrics for this one came really easily, and there was very little tweaking. I don’t see this one changing much over time. The length and number of verses seems about right to me.

You can check it out HERE