I Can Play but I Can Sing

Written in 1985 and 1988 / Recorded in 1988 and 2013

Before I got familiarised with basic knowledge on how to name or call a chord, composing was more about products made of coincidences. A subtle mistake in holding a guitar chord occasionally gave me an idea to base a tune on and that was how this tune originally developed from. In those days, I didn’t know how to call some chords I used in the intro part nor did I know what was going on theoretically there. To prevent losing the idea, all I could do was to play it again and again to memorise each chord by its finger form.

Initially, the tune didn’t have lyrics but I had a clear intention to write utterly meaningless lyrics on it. I wanted to fill the lines with paradoxical phrases and I Can Play but I Can Sing soon became the opening line. Complicated bridging section in the middle was later added and the structure of the entire work was settled by the early 1988, when the song was rehearsed by my band called Flowers.

For making this video, I carefully removed my singing parts because the lyrics were meaningless as intended. For filling the gaps, I re-recorded the whole tune again and pieced together with original demo recording in 1988 and the said rehearsal take from the same year. Revisiting a song I wrote nearly three decades ago gave me somewhat strange and awkward feelings, though it was also a fun.