I usually take a book on holiday with me. This time I had the privilege of having an advance manuscript of a book from one of my Berklee tutors. I got three quarters of the way through and had to email her to congratulate her. One thing I love about this craft is that there’s always another way to view our space and in this book she’s lifted another rock and underneath there’s yet more gold.

It’s another ‘10-steps’ book but it builds on the Berklee methods and introduces a number of new techniques like Destination Writing, Toggling, ways to connect with the listener, and a bunch more. The thing I really love about it is that while a lot of books talk about writing tools, there are few that talk about how to organise content. Sure, a number talk about the functions of each song section and what they should look like. But this is the first book I’ve read that sets out a system for writing each section. Very cool.

When she emailed me back she told me Hal Leonard is publishing the book and she’s going to be running a new online course with it. How cool is that. The working title for the book is ‘10 Steps To Writing Songs You’ll Love’. The moment I know what the final title is I’ll let you know. It’s a must read.

Yours glad to be back blogging again,

S.

Summer holidays for us are normally about going somewhere hot, putting the children in kids club and taking in some sunshine. Last year it was Greece. The year before it was Portugal. The year before we had three summer holidays. But this year we wanted to jump outside the box. With two small children, changing faster than we can keep up with, the aims were somehow different: we wanted to create as many ‘together’ moments with a minimum amount of stress. France would have been cool if it was ready. But it wasn’t. And the idea of being turned away at an airport didn’t appeal.

So we went for the high risk option: we stayed at home. But there was one condition: everything we did had to be different. So we started with holiday haircuts for everyone then we changed around the house in just about every way we could (decluttering sure helped). We all slept in new ‘holiday’ bedrooms, we ate most of our meals outside on the terrace, we had day trips to places we’ve never been, we bought different food from stores we’ve never been to and we watched tv in rooms we never normally spend much time in. No news, a little internet and a box set of CSI. It was real fun. A lot more than any of us thought it would be. We did throw in a trip to Paris (Disney) in the middle but most of the time we were at home.

The ultimate measure of success was how Sandra felt at the end, and when I asked her last night she said she’d had a fantastic holiday. So did I.

My top-10 moments (no order):

• Seeing Poppy and Moo’s faces light up in the ‘Small World’ attraction at Euro Disney
• Breakfast to the sound of the sea every day
• Getting to know how Moo talks (‘Meat Mulsch’ = Mickey Mouse, ‘da da da knee’ = I want to sit on your lap, ‘bobby’ = Poppy, ‘tak da da da down’ = thank you for my lovely meal please may I get down,  ‘ollie’ = ice cream + lorry etc.)
• Hearing Poppy playing with her imaginary friends first thing in the morning (current obsessions are guitars, Polly Pockets, Mickey Mouse and spotting the makes of cars!)
• Seeing the giraffes at Marwell Zoo (really odd in the English countryside)
• Getting back to Sandra’s cooking at the end of the holiday
• Dinner out at the Arundel House restaurant
• Building a car (a Peugeot 305!) out of sand at East Wittering beach
• Evenings on the balcony with Sa and supper
• Lunch at Standen House, a National Trust property that does great English food

So it’s back to work today. I say work. It’s difficult to describe it as work. The task for my Autumn term is how to move things up a level. I’ve got some ideas but the journey continues.

Yours grateful for the time out and grateful to be back,

S.

We’re on holiday for a couple of weeks so I’m leaving you in the capable hands of Poppy, who I’m sure will tell you more detail than I would ever think about sharing…

CLICK HERE FOR POPPY'S HOLIDAY BLOG

Yours wondering if this is really such a good idea,

S.

OK, so they wanted to blow up 9 planes flying us from the UK to the US using fizzy drink bottles. “Committing mass murder on an unimaginable scale” sounds pretty horrid to me.

I cuddled my family a little more than normal this morning. All this stuff just makes me value the time I spend with them and my American friends even more.

But I’m cool. I’ve got iSight. I can do most things from my little cottage in Felpham now.

Yours thinking they’d better not try a stupid stunt like that in October,

S.

Three in the morning. And what a beautiful morning it is. I’m just finishing up mastering a track I really wanted to get done before we go on hols. I’m always ‘slammed’ before I go on hols.

After popping back home for supper I fell asleep by mistake. I woke up a couple of hours ago and cycled down the beach to a full moon, a clear sky, a fresh breeze and a quiet night. There were even rabbits on the beach. They live under the beach huts by the Lobster Pot café and come out at night to play when no one is around.

Sometimes I feel like one of those rabbits, doing this stuff from Felpham, with no one else around. I’ve had two full days of working with some wonderful lyrics. Such a privilege. I’ve had more goose bumps this last couple of days than I can remember. It’s like every line is a knock out.

Yesterday’s track I finished and emailed off to my cowriter who, by the time I’d shut down my studio, had replied and is going to turn the song in to Holly while they’re in Nashville. This technology thing still amazes me. Even now I’m chatting to Barry in the BBMP studio.

And Bo and I caught up this afternoon to work some more on another song. It’s turning out great. I missed our timeslot to hook back up again (I was asleep!) but I see he’s whizzed over another lyric. This is so cool.

OK the track’s done now. Better see if I can get a few more hours…

Yours hoping it’s not getting light by the time I creep into bed,

S.

Been learning a database program on-and-off over the last week or so. I’m about a quarter way through a 30 day software trial of Filemaker Pro 8.5. It’s going well so far. I think.

The idea is to move SongTools onto a new platform for a bunch of reasons – to handle more data more efficiently (I’m getting to the end of the 60,000 lines Excel can carry in one sheet!), to make it work on a Mac better (it works but creaks at the moment), to maybe make it available on the web one day and (possibly) offer it up as a commercial product some day. The virtual cowriter thing is pretty unique and powerful. There’s nothing else out there like it.

But it’s not like learning software a few years ago. It’s mind-blowingly hard and incredibly simple all at the same time. A lot of things are very intuitive but the program is so smart that the really cool stuff is easy to miss. So things that I think I’ve mastered floor me at the next turning. But it’s a fun journey.

What’s really cool is that after a couple of hours learning (and I’ve a two inch thick book I’m steadily working my way through) my whole being is shouting at me to do something creative. That usually means jumping on the piano and just letting go for a while. That means ideas start to flow. That means firing up garageband. It’s almost worth kidding myself that I’m going to be learning a database all day just to get some cool musical ideas.

Yours wondering if I’ve finally figured out a way of using NLP in my writing,

S.

Sa and I have both suddenly both got into de-cluttering. I realised I was taking far too long packing for Nashville a couple of trips ago and the main reason was the mountain of clothes I had to wade through to find what I needed.

When I got back, I did what I’ve seen on so many of these TV reality programs and applied the “if I haven’t used it in the last year then get rid of it” rule. Except for an odd hat (which I only kept because it reminded me of a great holiday), it worked really well. Everything now has a home.

So if you’re feeling bogged down in the past – I’d totally recommend clearing a little space for the future.

Yours thinking I’m sounding so middle aged,

S.

9.30 on a clear evening and I’m sitting out on the balcony with a hot chocolate looking at the moon painting a big golden brush stroke across the sea to the horizon. Sandra's out at our church home group "cell" so I'm doing homework.

Just finished a bunch of emails, talked to my bank in Nashville on Skype, looked up the WAJ discussion board (congrats to Kristie and Bo for getting through to the Estes finals!!). I had to round it off with a blog.

Isn’t wireless wonderful? I’d try to video except it’s tricky to see me in the dark!

Yours so wishing my WAJonian chums success over the next day or two,

S.

Sandra told me a story she heard at work today about an ordinary happily married guy, who’s sister was made to have a routine DNA test by police after a bad road traffic accident. They were all mystified at the results because when they came back her DNA was a partial match to an unknown but very dangerous serial killer never caught some 20 years ago.

The investigators put their thinking caps on and eventually went to visit her brother at his business premises and found a room with 100 pairs of 20 year old shoes from his victims. He got put away for a very long time.

I was thinking - that's pretty rubbish for his poor wife and family.

I don’t want to be alarmist but if that’s what ordinary happily married men get up to - then what do men who are just a little bit weird get up to? At least if someone is a genuine weirdo you know to give them a wide birth. It's a probabilities thing you know. And there are quite a few of them here in Felpham.

Yours thinking this is just another reason why I really should be in the Rocky Mountains right now,

S.