Writing My First Dutch Single

Writing My First Dutch Single

Just yesterday, I got the final mix of my Dutch single and I’m really loving how it sounds. When I started learning Dutch, I knew I eventually wanted to write a song in Dutch. But writing a song in a second language was definitely a big challenge. The process for how this song was written was also very unique.

I think it was around February when I started writing the song titled “Mijn Vertrek” (which translated to “my departure”), I knew I would be going to the Netherlands in the summer and wanted to record a music video for the song while I was there. At first, I figured I just wouldn’t play the guitar in the music video since there was no way I was going to lug my guitar all the way to Europe. I started coming up with ideas for the song and had written a few short Dutch phrases when I suddenly had a better idea. I decided to write the song about some sort of journey and do part of the music video here in the US, and the rest in The Netherlands. The verses would be reminiscing about how I wanted to get going or move on, while the chorus would be going out and experiencing the journey. It felt like a really unique way to write a song. But now that I had an idea for the music video, it was time to write the lyrics to fit.

I wanted to get the general idea down, so I wrote a version that was half in English and half in Dutch. Then I got together with my co-writer and Dutch teacher, Arne who helped me translate everything and fix my Dutch. It took us about an hour, but eventually we had our first version of the song. It wasn’t perfect, but it was a start.

After about a week of mulling the version of the song around, I realized it would need a lot more work. In its state, it felt much more like a song that was written mostly in English and translated into Dutch. However, it did give me a great concept of some of the vocabulary I would eventually end up using in the final version.

In it’s current state, I knew I would need to rewrite the song completely in Dutch. Translating from English was a good start, but it definitely wouldn’t work for the final song. It was about a week before I finally came up with an idea for some original Dutch lyrics. Naturally, it was late at night and I was trying to go to bed; but I needed to get the idea down on paper. I woke up and wrote it all out on my phone so I wouldn’t forget it. The next week, I took it back to Arne and we edited the second version of the song.

The second version of the lyrics were much stronger, but we both liked a few of the concepts we had come up with in the earlier version that didn’t make it to this version. So a week or so later we were back at it, writing a new version that incorporated both of the versions of the song. We ended up editing that version quite a bit too, but it was much closer to being done. It was around that time that I ended up writing the music to go with the Dutch lyrics. I had a few ideas in mind for that too, but in the end I was really happy with what I came up with.

At the end of April, I went into the studio with what we had. The Dutch lyrics still weren’t in their final form, but the song was written and all mapped out. I recorded the acoustic guitar first and went back to Arne to do one final edit of the lyrics before heading back to the studio to record the vocals.

Fortunately, we got everything ready just in time for my trip to The Netherlands, where I would be recording the music video. The recording wasn’t edited yet, but everything was recorded so I could make the music video. The video was recorded in Amersfoort, Netherlands as well as a few other random locations around the country. In the next few weeks, I will be releasing the song and the music video and I am really excited to share it. While I released the song “Armor” several years ago, this song will really be the first official launch of My Eclectic Self. So the title, “My Departure” definitely seems fitting.