Advice on first song: I wanna go to move on

[Aero1441]

Hi everyone!

 

I am new to this forum, so I'll introduce myself. I'm 25 years old and have been into music my entire life, starting with piano lessons at the age of 9 and the past year also with guitar and drums.

 

A while ago I started out with writing my own songs, which I am very inexperienced in, but something I love to do! I figured it would help if I can find a forum with a bunch of people who help eachother out in this area. I think it's great to be able to give and receive feedback about music, especially from people who can be objective (since they don't know you and won't be afraid to hurt your feelings or whatever).

 

I've recently bought Cubase 5 and have been experimenting with it. This is my first full song that I have written about a month ago and I have recorded it in Cubase and added accompaniment (such as piano, guitar, drums, bass).

 

Hopefully you guys could give me an opinion and point out stuff that I can improve. I realize that the mix itself needs a lot of work and I'll be uploading a newer version in a week or so when I have time to rework it. I'm mainly interested in comments about composition, piano accompaniment and lyrics (and not so much the mixing of it all, since I haven't focussed on that yet). I specifically find it VERY hard to write lyrics to songs and melodies, so I'm sure there's a lot that can be improved in that area. I'd be interested in hearing ANY feedback on that

 

Thanks in advance! The song is called: "I wanna go to move on", but I haven't quite set on a title either yet. Would love to hear suggestions on it

 

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_songInfo.cfm?bandID=1025941&songID=8572458

 

Lyrics

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[grace_slick]

It's a really sweet song. I really like the piano bit all the way through the verse...

 

The vocals...well...I can hear either a sweet but more powerful and adept voice than the one you've got right now (have you had any lessons?)...it actually reminds me (the whole song, not the voice, sorry I'm still listening to it and writing as comments come to me) of a Bruce Springsteen type song somehow...not sure how, but meh. *shrug* Anyway, the vocals...yes, OR I can hear a powerhouse 80s type Journey-sound of vocals...or a woman's vocal...

 

I think somewhere in the song...it'd be cool to have some kind of unexpected chord change...but I can't advise further there as I don't know what the chords are.

 

But overall, I really like it. It could be excellent I think for the kind of sweet song it is with some polishing! GOOD WORK!

[Aero1441]

Hi Grace,

 

Thanks so much for the quick reply! Here are the chords for the song. I agree on the chord change, but I figured that the chorus and bridge kind of filled that gap in. Do you think I should add more variation, maybe somewhere in the verse as well?

 

Intro, verse and outro (that plays all the way through)

Fsus2 - F - Bbsus2 - C

 

Chorus and bridge (obviously at a different tempo to make them sound different)

Bb - C - F - C/E - Dm

 

I haven't had singing lessons at all, but have been singing and playing music for recreation all my life. I've been considering starting to take singing lessons though to work on it and I definately need to re-record the vocals, since I think they can be a lot better but I've just settled for a first draft and focussed on getting all the tracks recorded etc. Not sure if that will produce the result you're talking about though since I'm not a professional or anything

 

Also I'm not at all experienced in mastering the recorded audio vocal track. My music teacher told me that he quite liked the vocals that were recorded, but he noticed that the "effect" that was over it really dampened the voice or something. I told him that I used some Ozone4 preset (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/ozone/) that was called "4-band vocal compressor" or something, but I have no clue really what I'm doing there haha Would love to learn more about how to mix and master audio tracks... or maybe there are some articles that I could read?

[grace_slick]

I myself have NO idea about chords or what they are. With my own music, I just play around and it's pretty odd and unfinished because I don't know what I'm doing! lol

 

In terms of mastering and technical recording and stuff, again, I got nothin! I know nothing but just make stuff up as I go.

 

If I were you I'd get some singing lessons cause your voice is sweet now and in tune and stuff, but some more confidence, big personality (I need this too with my own voice) and a bit more skill will really make it great!!

 

I really do like the song though...I think some sort of interesting chord change towards the end of the verse and then the bridge (the whole bridge) could somehow be based on that different chord sound...that'd be cool.

[easilyspooked]

not too shabby, it could use some quality time editing the lyrics, they're a little loose for my taste, it's a universal theme but you don't attack it universally, you toss out ideas without a cohesive theme beyond the pain of loss and humanity.

 

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[Aero1441]

Hi easilyspooked!

 

Thanks for your comments. Could you help me out a bit? I agree that the lyrics need work, but it's something that I always have had trouble with. Could you elaborate a bit more about what you mean by a cohesive theme? And ways I can expand on that?

[easilyspooked]

let's take this stanza by stanza and hopefully we can work out what i meant...

 

Lyrics

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