Don't Go Away
Oceana C.
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First, I began playing my ukulele. I started with some simple chords (C, E7, Amin, Fmaj) with my favorite strumming pattern which is the Hawaiian Strum with an added beat or what I like to call “chuck.” I started humming over my playing, mumbling words as I went along. When I found something that stuck, I played that part over and over until I was able to formulate words to go with the small tune. Once I was able to formulate some lyrics in the beginning verse I began the chorus. I found a catchy little phrase “Don’t Go Away” that I felt would be relatable and emotional. As I wrote the lyrics I kept the lyrics broad and not specific so that the listener would be able to have their own interpretation of the song, yet the lyrics would be specific enough to where I could tell a story. A story that starts happy and began to get deeper and more emotional as the song went along. For example, the first line is “Remember that good ol’ time” then the mood changes during the transition from verse to chorus with a single strum of a F minor chord with the words “Why did it have to go away?” That leads us into the chorus. I remember being stuck halfway through the chorus and saying to myself “it will be okay.” Then I came to the realization okay rhymes with away and thought “I should put that in my song!” so I did. Originally my song did not have much dynamics, it wasn’t until about four days later after I wrote the song to make the bridge more dramatic with only one strum instead of a consistent strumming. Through this process I learned that writing a song is about being in tune with your emotions and being able to describe them through poetry. It doesn’t matter where you are when you write the song he was just about understanding what you wanted to say. For example, I wrote this song in many different places such as my living room, my family room, the piano practice rooms in my school, and my bedroom. I even found myself writing lyrics during open class time. But in the end it all comes together in one piece. A story. A song. I believe songs are a way of expressing things that you didn’t even know you felt. Writing this song really helped me discover a part of myself that I didn’t know I had, a creative singer-songwriter, musician, lyricist, poet.
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I’ve always loved music and my family has always been a musical family. This is the first official song that I’ve written and I found that writing music is a way to express what you’re going through at the moment and to escape from the real world. I believe that songs express what you cannot say.
