Michael Dyer

The day before I wrote this new song I had been playing around with diminished chords on the guitar. Diminished chords are unique because there are only 4 possible ones (unlike other chords, for which there are twelve possibilities. For example, there are 12 major chords and 12 minor chords). As a result of there being only four, the diminished chords make great transitional chords – one can move from one chord to practically any other chord just by inserting a diminished chord. They also almost always sound bluesy (or jazzy), so playing them made me think of writing a blues song. But I had no musical instrument nearby, so I decided to write the lyrics for a to-be-composed-later blues song. I thought of how "blues" could also refer to a color and that gave me the idea of having a blues song that would mention many other colors (and so this song has the colors: red, green, sapphire, orange, black, white, magenta, tan, gray, brown, gold and silver). But if the person is "blue" then they are depressed, probably because they no longer get to see those other colors. Loss of access to colors could happen in prison. Once I had this core idea, the lyrics kind of wrote themselves within just a few hours. I then came up with a bluesy melody and only later found chords to match that melody.