Now that the dust has started to settle a bit following my album release earlier this month, it’s been wonderful to be able to concentrate again on other things musical.  One of those things has been the song-writing collaboration with members of my facebook group – Laini’s Beach Shack.

This has been an absolute blast!  I have never, ever tried to co-ordinate a group song-writing collaboration over such a distance and I definitely had to  ‘wing’ the process as we went along.  I knew that most group members had never written a song in their lives, so working out the steps to guide total beginners also needed a bit of thought.

Anyway, first we needed an idea about what we would write the song about, so that had to be step one.

Quite a few members suggested possible titles or other more formed ideas we could write about, so we put it to the vote and the title “Butterfly Girl” was chosen.  So intriguing!!

None of us at that stage had any idea who Butterfly Girl was, but several brave members put their hands up to do a 10 minute individual free-write of who Butterfly Girl was to them.

Using elements from everyone’s free writing I produced a first lyrical draft of the song – 2 verses and a chorus – and then the group discussed possible lyrical changes.  In total the lyrics went through 3 re-writes . Here are the final lyrics:

BUTTERFLY GIRL

She sits beside a woodland stream
Clothed in silk and lace
She wanders slowly through our dreams
Like a tryst on a summer’s day
She’s the warmth of an early spring
She’s the hope on a gentle breeze
She’s the rainbow in a shaft of light
That spears between the trees

Oh, share in your secrets, share your joy
Dance as your wings unfurl
Heal our hearts and lead us home
Play in our shadows
Butterfly Girl

We try to cage her in our minds
Catch her happiness
We try to hang on to her smile
Touch her shimmering dress
But she laughs and off she flies
To light someone else’s life
And we’re left all alone in the dark
On a cold and moonless night

Oh, share in your secrets, share your joy
Dance as your wings unfurl
Heal our hearts and lead us home
Play in our shadows
Butterfly Girl

The lyrics immediately lent themselves to a folk style melody and production but we needed to work out exactly what these would be.

One brave member put their hand up to have a go, and sent me through a recording in which she sang a beautiful chorus melody.  I added a verse melody to suit and voila, we had our song!!

All that we needed now was our production and this is where Mike Raine’s skills once again came in as he worked his magic with our song.

So, just before I play you the song, a huge congratulations to all those in the Beach Shack who took part – about 12 people in total from the initial concept – but particularly to those who were brave enough to have a go at the actual lyric and melody writing – Vince Nicoll, Mike Richard Gould, Gerry Haugh Silcock, Luna Keller and Mike Raine.

I hope you enjoy the song!

 

And, don’t forget, if you still haven’t had chance to listen to my latest album you can stream it either on Spotify or on my website: