Coming to Fruition

I'm getting a little antsy just practicing, so I decided to lay down a demo of one of the "Germ of Something" songs. But I really want to go through a demo cycle with these songs, so I was wondering what information do you need to evaluate a song's potential without actually, you know, hearing the whole song?

Lead Sheet. Benefits - you are not dealing with any issues of performance, arrangement, production or engineering.

Solo Acoustic/Live Demo. Benefits - take away as much of that other stuff as you can while still accommodating people who don't read music.

[video=youtube;IQb0v9txr-U]

Band In A Box. Benefits - gives you a somewhat realistic arrangement without performance, production or engineering issues.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10331923

FL Studio. Benefits - gives a concrete example of the production and performance ideas.

http://soundclick.com/share.cfm?id=10331924

So I am interested in what you think of the song, but I am also interested in what style of demo presentation is the most effective for you.

I like to actually hear the song.......I need to really. I can't read music.

With someone who's music I'm familiar with a lyric sheet will sometimes do if they give me an idea as to the mood of the melody. With your stuff, Ram, since you have posted a few musical things I'm getting an idea about how you like to play so now I can go back and look at your 'Germs' and hear them a little better.

I like your style, as showcased by this little number. Your tunes tend to saunter on down the road with a fresh and bouncy gait. Easy to listen to. I'm looking forward to hearing a bit of a production where you set yourself up to get your voice out there.

That's a beautiful Epiphone, btw. Emperor regent with the cool floating pickup, right?

I'm sitting in a java house with Irish music playing. So I can't hear my mind while reading your chart and I can't play your vid! But I will. So help me here, I forget my jazz chord symbols. A circle is a diminished triad... right? The 3rd and 5th flatted.

So the first chord is A diminished/B bass?

And that first B chord is a Bm7? The little squiggle is minor? yeah?

BTW, I love the old style marker font. Just like the charts I read in college jazz band.

There's just something about a lullaby that begs it to be loaded with ideas baby won't understand until long after he's grown...

It's honest and direct but that doesn't get in the way of the songcraft, but rather enhances and informs it. Like so many songs directed to another, it's more a character piece about the protagonist, drawing in delicate but detailed lines his awe of the act of passing along the thread of life as well as his reticence, his seeming reluctance to allow himself to pass along easy or pat answers...

A very good effort so far.

I'm sitting in a java house with Irish music playing. So I can't hear my mind while reading your chart and I can't play your vid! But I will. So help me here, I forget my jazz chord symbols. A circle is a diminished triad... right? The 3rd and 5th flatted. So the first chord is A diminished/B bass? And that first B chord is a Bm7? The little squiggle is minor? yeah? BTW, I love the old style marker font. Just like the charts I read in college jazz band.

Just sing it in the melody and style of "The Wild Rover."

What you have shown is enough to get where your headed...your individual adornments will flavor it differently than say someone else might, but that is the cool part...everyone hears it just a little different...you have the lyrics laid out and the bones lining up...you could add all the musical parts or leave as is...its your call.

I've spoken ill of your singing voice many times in the past, but I've had a revelation--my problem with your voice (MY problem, as apparently it doesn't get anyone else) is a matter of projection. You're hitting all the notes, they just don't have the air support I look for in a vocalist. Not really relevant to your question, but part of my ongoing fandom.

I don't read music fluidly enough to be able to evaluate music by looking at a lead sheet, and there have been times when I've learned a song, unheard, from sheet music and been WAY off as far as groove and feel. So that's not a great way to present music here. The YouTube video is the most accessible, however, there are a lot of songs (many of yours, especially), that live on production. Despite the premise of the longest thread in HCSWF history, a song can be great on the basis of the recording, even if it can't be reduced to a simple presentation. On the downside, I've got to read the lyrics to relate to a song on the first listen, and that's sometimes hard to work out in a user-friendly way on YouTube.

The song: You're rhyming "rage" with "rage"? I don't know about that, but the progression, melody, and general thrust of the lyric are all good. Good enough to rewrite a few times :poke:. Good enough to move forward with for sure.

This particular song

I've been reading "Finishing The Hat" by Stephen Sondheim, and he would be horrified as well . I'm usually pretty lazy about rhyme - rough priorities are sense first, then meter, then internal rhythm, and then rhyme. Sondheim makes a compelling argument that you can't write a funny song without strict rhyme because timing is everything in comedy, and a true rhyme in the expected rhythmic spot is an overwhelmingly powerful timekeeper.

Is a mystery, wrapped in an enigma?

WTF? How did that happen? I've got a really touchy mousepad, I must have accidentally dragged, selected, and deleted . I'll have to relisten to recomment--it was nice stuff about your song, pretty much.

I watched the youtube and I listened to FL studio. I wasn't expecting such an expansive musical arrangement after hearing the soft, sparse guitar. I like the direction you are taking with it, can't wait to see how you handle the vocals.

the BIAB version felt like a bosanova? I like the FL Studios version. Still a little bosanova feel to it. It feels a little "dis contiguous?" Like the drums don't really fit? There's one faster piano part that I would say needs to be slower, it just kind of felt to me like at least 2, or maybe 3 different songs trying to get out at the same time. But then again, it's not really my genera, so I'm coming at you from a Pop/Ballad perspective.

I really wish I could use chords like Ao/8. Nice chord progression and nice sheet music.

I really prefer your voice/guitar version that is sweet and moving. It's also the best way to enjoy these nice chords.

I had to make an effort to listen to the singing though and that's too bad, because you seem to have a very nice voice.

On the other hand, I was not convinced by the arranged version. Other instruments don't add anything to the song for me.

But I must confess I have a tendency to dislike these kinds of computer sounds.

Original lyrics:

I try to be calm

In the face of your rage

Your grandmother's face

Your grandfather's rage

Pulls you out of your seat

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of your genes.

The stone and the sod

Whiskey and God

Run from the law

Sleep in the straw

Pulls you onto your feet

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of your genes.

I curse you to never feel satisfaction

To see injustice in all of its forms

I bless you with strength

Quickness of mind and

A hurting desire to learn.

I curse you to be unable to follow

This curse and these gifts I give to you

Because I carry them too.

We're dancing marionettes

Tied to the strings of our genes.

I took another look through the lyrics and reflected on some of the feedback I have received here and elsewhere, and I am not happy.

The song is about fate and the formation of personality. However, as written, the song exclusively touches on predestination and genetic determinism. This is not what I believe, is not what I hope for, and worst of all, is completely lacking in dramatic interest.

To adopt Melville's classic formulation, fate is the nexus of predestination, free will and chance:

I was the attendant or page of Queequeg, while busy at the mat. As I kept passing and repassing the filling or woof of marline between the long yarns of the warp, using my own hand for the shuttle, and as Queequeg, standing sideways, ever and anon slid his heavy oaken sword between the threads, and idly looking off upon the water, carelessly and unthinkingly drove home every yarn; I say so strange a dreaminess did there then reign all over the ship and all over the sea, only broken by the intermitting dull sound of the sword, that it seemed as if this were the Loom of Time, and I myself were a shuttle mechanically weaving and weaving away at the Fates. There lay the fixed threads of the warp subject to but one single, ever returning, unchanging vibration, and that vibration merely enough to admit of the crosswise interblending of other threads with its own. This warp seemed necessity; and here, thought I, with my own hand I ply my own shuttle and weave my own destiny into these unalterable threads. Meantime, Queequeg's impulsive, indifferent sword, sometimes hitting the woof slantingly, or crookedly, or strongly, or weakly, as the case might be; and by this difference in the concluding blow producing a corresponding contrast in the final aspect of the completed fabric; this savage's sword, thought I, which thus finally shapes and fashions both warp and woof; this easy, indifferent sword must be chance- aye, chance, free will, and necessity- wise incompatible- all interweavingly working together. The straight warp of necessity, not to be swerved from its ultimate course- its every alternating vibration, indeed, only tending to that; free will still free to ply her shuttle between given threads; and chance, though restrained in its play within the right lines of necessity, and sideways in its motions directed by free will, though thus prescribed to by both, chance by turns rules either, and has the last featuring blow at events.

The lyric should depict the dynamic and dramatic interplay of these three forces.

Verse 1 (Predestination)

I try to be calm

In the face of your rage

Your grandmother's face

Your grandfather's rage

Pulls you out of your seat

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of your genes.

Despite Chicken Monkey's reservations, I think this is ok. rage/rage is a weak rhyme, but the parallelism with face/face as well as the way the sound reflects the sense of enforced repetition is strong enough to keep this for the time being.

Verse 2 (Chance)

The stone and the sod

Whiskey and God

I am fond of this couplet for some reason, but the rest has to go, and the chorus has to change from the first verse. It would be nice if it rhymed with "genes".

Bridge (Free Will)

Something about freedom. I'm also unhappy with the existing bridge on a musical level. Some possible models here are the chorus of Aretha Franklin's "Think" or the chorus of Paul Simon's "50 Ways To Leave Your Lover".

Coda

Something about "and when you go to find/make/create your future I hope that I can come too". Again, it should rhyme with genes or else genes has to go. The song as written is way too much about me and way to little about my son. He's the one with the infinite possibilities which are so dramatically enchanting, I'm just a middle aged man stuck in his mid-life rut.

Now I just have to figure out a way to implement this plan.

I'm thinking about Pinocchio. The marionette who turns into a real, live, boy is a great reference, but I don't want to deal with the nose/truth telling aspect (which is all anyone remembers of the story - damn you Walt Disney).

Also looking at this (off the slush pile):

Like the geese forming their ragged vees

And wending their way to the south.

His mind so like mine, but his words emerge

From the image of his mother's mouth.

Not sure it fits anywhere.

I didn't know there were 3 versions...I just listened to the acoustic at first...the Fl Studio sounded best to me...

Like the geese forming their ragged vees....this most feels like the bridge...the son finding his way, his freewill.

And wending their way to the south.

His mind so like mine, but his words emerge

From the image of his mother's mouth.

Verse 1 (Predestination)

I try to be calm

In the face of your rage

Your grandmother's face

Your grandfather's rage....I don't care for this either...it sets up the word "stage" to be used if I follow your thinking of the predestination...at least for the son the stage has been set.

Pulls you out of your seat

A dancing marionette .............I like these

Tied to the strings of your genes.

My life is my own

No thanks to you

What do I know

What can I do?

It pulls me up to my feet

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of my genes.

I try to be calm

In the face of your rage

Your grandmother's face

Your grandfather's rage

Pulls you out of your seat

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of your genes.

[bridge]

You'll find the way through

And when you do

I hope that I can come too

Meh....

Nature vs. Nurture, interesting... I believe strongly in that.

His mind so like mine, but his words emerge

From the image of his mother's mouth.

I LOVE these lines especially...

I did a synth version that was kind of fun

Strings Of Our Genes (Synth Version)

I am seriously thinking about incorporating a sample from "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac as a viable alternative to rewriting the lyrics.

Oh yeah, and I really want to feature grace_slick singing the hook.

What do you mean?

Ram--I see what you're doing with rage/rage, and I could see it working--I didn't catch what you were setting up at first look. It's not a rhyme at all--it's a, well, I don't know what it's called. A rhetorical elaboration? Accumulative repetition? I'm not sure if there's a word for this device, and I feel like I have a half-dozen examples of it on the tip of my brain, but it works as an idea. The problem is that it's build to fit the rhyme scheme at the moment, which kind of cheapens it.

I'm really enjoying watching you struggle through this process, though. I've been writing on self-imposed deadlines, trying to get material ready for the band, with the intention of going back and cleaning up all the weak spots at some later point, which has resulted in me doing very little editing. Seeing you go through it makes me yearn for it, and also glad I've avoided it so far.

Originally Posted by rockinrobby

Nature vs. Nurture, interesting... I believe strongly in that.

What do you mean?

Well, I thought it was intuitively obvious, but email is the least affective form of komunication...

A dancing marionette

Tied to the strings of my genes.

I try to be calm

In the face of your rage

Your grandmother's face

Your grandfather's rage

Pulls you out of your seat

To me, a dancing marionette, tied to the strings of their genes, implies "nature vs. nurture"

In otherwords, some things we can control easily? Others are more difficult because who we are is what we are, a product of our genetics.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nature_versus_nurture

I thought it was an interesting way to express it.

I see. Sorry for the digression, but I didn't know what it meant to "believe" in nature vs. nurture, as it's a dichotomy. It's like believing in war vs. peace or health vs. sickness.

Or love vs hate? :-)

New working titles

Thesis! Antithesis! Synthesis!

Hegelian Dialectics at Dinnertime

Nature, Nurture, and the Power of Love