Making of an Album Episode 2: Traditional Writing Techniques (Cosmic Bos Improv Music Podcast Season 4)

 Well hello dear friends,

Welcome to episode 2 of our Making of an Album series, this time (as you already know from having read the title of this blog) we tackle song writing, in particular, traditional song writing techniques.

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Album artwork by Dayne Howcroft

Nick and Andy (Cosmic Bos) collectively have several hundred songs to their names, and here they breakdown the fundamentals of songwriting, examining structure and form, before writing a song in front of your very ears.

Visited several times throughout the episode, Nick and Andy sat over two sessions and wrote a song from start to finish. Here we try to show you the creative process in its raw state.

Nick and Andy also talk about the history of songwriting, as well as their own personal histories of songwriting, including several examples from their songbooks.

The first proper song you hear in this episode is Astral Underwear, a song that Cosmic Bos created using their new musical construction method, Improv Squared (More on this in the next episode).

In the middle of the episode you are treated to two songs from Andy and Nicks songbooks.

Love Defined is by Andy Jackson and is about his wife

Spontaneous Plan is by Nick Jackson and is about his wife

Both songs are available on Cosmic Bos From the Songbook (2020), and right here in youtube form too

Email cosmicbos@gmail.com with your favourite wife

The episode concludes with our other double A side single 'Forever Bruised', which is acoustically written music by Andy and Nick over a haunting poem by Dayne Howcroft.

This was a rollercoaster ride to make, and we loved it, hopefully there is something useful and insightful about our ramblings about writing songs, and we also hope that we have demystified the process a bit, and shown how really anyone could write songs if it was what they wanted to do. 

If you want to get involved in our musical shenanigans drop us an email at cosmicbos@gmail.com 

We also really appreciate feedback, and would love to hear your own songwriting stories, comment on this post or better yet, comment on the youtube video version of this episode so we can all share the musical love. 

Peace and infinite love

Cosmic Bos

Cosmic Bos Improv Music Podcast - Season 4 (2022) Coming Soon!

 Hello dear friends,

2022 is here, and, well, it's something alright. 

I (Andy) like to take the first week of the year to reflect on the highs and lows of the previous, and ponder the things I wish to achieve in the upcoming. I find it very therapeutic and mindful, allowing the inputs that truly matter to me (my family and friends) to guide my thoughts towards realistic achievable goals.

For 2022 I want to do something a bit different. Cosmic Bos have completed 3 full seasons of improv music podcasting, so following the route of the farmers, we shall let the improvisation field have a year off, and instead we shall be focusing on making an album, a normal, what other bands do, album.

We have been planning this for a while, and the album already has a title 'The O Door'.

Last year, Nick and I made an EP, 'Virtual Normality', as a test to see if we could take on the task of an album on our own. It went pretty well, with several of our best songs of '21 being on it, including the sublime 'Ride Another Wave' (the closing track) which is about the night Theo was born.

Ride Another Wave is our Prologue to 'The O Door', which we will be working on across the whole of 2022, with our proposed release date being 1st January 2023. 

What does this mean for Cosmic Bos Improv Music Podcast Season 4? 

Well, it's going to be like a documentary kind of year, with us launching 'Making of an Album', an 8 part Podcast Documentary about how we make an album, charting the whole process from Writing to Recording, Production to Release. It should be a fun ride, with the Introduction episode coming February.

Still from Bos Live #1 (2021)

However, our first release for Season 4 will be Cosmic Bos Live 2021, an 8 track live recording that we did back in December '21.

Then we will launch into our Season long presentation Cosmic Bos: Making of an Album

Which will also nicely dovetail into the other thing we will be doing in 2022. We've opened up the side fields in my farmer metaphor, and started planting a new crop, which we are lovingly calling 'Improv²'

The first tracks from this new improv crop will be along with the first episode of our Making of an Album series, with a full special Improv² episode coming in April.

So as you can see, a big year planned for us at Cosmic Bos.

Thanks for being awesome, we love you

Peace and infinite love

Cosmic Bos (Andy)