Beta Test (new song)

Here's my latest song. Any feedback is appreciated. I'll post it without (musical) explanation for now, to see the unbiased reactions. Then I'll let you know my thought process.

This is just a beta test.

Doesn't matter if I fail.

Ignore the thumping in my chest.

No, I'm not a little pale.

If I work I'll finally know

I'm ready for a 1.0.

If I crash, retry, abort,

Better file a bug report.

This is just a beta test.

This is just a beta test.

Don't be scared to try me out.

I may not be the stablest:

That's what betas are about.

Promise me you'll let me know

How my trials and errors go.

I only hope you haven't seen

A fatal operation screen.

This is just a beta test.

This is just a beta test.

This is not the final code.

I don't need to be the best,

Just good enough to not explode.

Maybe I'm no Everquest but

If you'll run my beta test I'll

Work until my eyes are sore to

Get this product out the door.

This is just a beta test.

I like the musical aspect of it. The melody and chords are pleasant and the guitar playing is very good. It sounds sort of like early Leonard Cohen. The lyrics kill me though. They're well written and the song has a very effective theme, but I think you're severely limiting your audience by singing about computers. It feels a little nerdy, especially when you mentioned Everquest. Not that there is anything wrong with being nerdy (most good musicians are geeks of some sort) but it's just not the kind of thing I could imagine a crowed singing along to.

Ah... a heartwarming little ditty.

Nothin' like hearth, home and IDE to make a man say grace.

I like this a lot -- but it seems it takes a slight veer in direction about halfway through the first verse (like who so many dev projects, eh?)

His heart is pounding (and I, frankly, am thinking love metaphor because, well, I'm in love with love [as the guy said on Law and Order just before he shot everyone in the store.])

But then, the rest of the song can really be taken literally more or less...

Now, don't get me wrong, it lyrically still makes sense, but the song pulls back from the seeming openness and vulnerability that's so charming in the first verse and by the end it's so offhand, overly casual...

And, well, while I've certainly had romances that followed that arc (in fact, I think I'm having a personal revelation about myself right now ) but I guess what I'm saying is early on I think I'm headed one way and then later I'm not sure exactly where I am, though I've enjoyed the ride.

You know coders... we might tolerate spaghetti code; we might look the other way past expedient hacks preferring to focus on the big picture -- but no matter how far down that road we go... we'll never be able to tolerate ambiguity.

PS... here's more proof that great minds may not necessarily think alike -- but they may often cross paths.

PPS I really liked how you laid the lyrics out unexpectedly across the melody flow and chords. And I loved a lot of the rhymes. How can I resist "stablest" with... anything.

OMG, I love this.

Love some of the rhymes -- particularly 1.0 and Everquest

I didn't get that love song romance feel at all but maybe it was the pounding heart thing that triggered that in B2B. I think you could take the whole thing into that additional sub-story area if you wanted or you might consider changing that pounding heart line to something else. Not sure there's much of a commercial audience for it, but hey that's okay cause I like it.

Well done.

KAC

Thanks for the thoughts, guys. I spend a lot of my time writing software, so if it seems "nerdy," I guess that's why. Some songs I aim for more of the commercial audience, but on this one I pretty much accepted that wasn't the goal. Sometimes I just write for the song itself.

I have to think back now, to figure out whether I was thinking romantic thoughts. I think I probably was, because it always makes a song more interesting when it's about something more than it seems to be about, IMO. Maybe I can accentuate the the romantic aspect without making it too obvious. Perhaps even by changing some of the I's to We's in the first couple verses. I don't know. I haven't had my coffee yet, so I'll have to think on it some more.

B2B, is there anything you haven't written a song about? (Please say aardvarks. I'd like to think I'm unique on that one.)

Here's some more of what I was thinking:

This song I paid a lot of attention to the meter, which is something I haven't done in a while. I picked a sort of simple, sing-songy rhythm, but one which seems to have been pretty successful through the years:

DAH-da-DAH-da-DAH-da-DAH

This is just a beta test

Twinkle twinkle little star

Eeny meeny miney moe

Tiger tiger burning bright

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

Hank the angry drunken dwarf

etc.

The last verse has a few lines with an extra syllable at the end, which I think helped to add to the tension. (blue2blue, I think that's what you were referring to in your second postscript?)

I described my reasoning for the beta test theme on my website.

Musically, it's intentionally simple as well, sort of accentuating the theme of "just a beta test." It's your basic I vi IV V progression (with another I V7 tacked on). And if it seems like I stole musical ideas from my other recent post, well, it was the other way around.

Thanks again for listening!

Oh, it's not nerdy to me at all. My day job is as a Software Architect and spend most of my days doing things described in the lyric. All I meant by my comment was that yeah, to the general public it's either nerdy or cryptic.

As far as the romantic aspect, yeah I'm a nerd.

I too love multi-layered songs so I'd encourage you to bring that out more if possible.

KAC

Perhaps sadly, it's far from my first song about software development. Some are more obvious than others, though. Surprisingly, there may actually be a niche market there. I'm happy to report I'm the number one Google hit for the term Internet Wasteland.

Congrats!.....I think.

KAC

Well, I ain't no Sammy Cahn... but in the old days when I'd take two books filled with all my good songs and a lot of the bad ones, I'd sometimes throw it open to the audience, Suggest a topic! But, you know, they're out, drinking, looking at members of the opposite sex (or their target sex, whatever ) and... you know... the locus of their thoughts was pretty predictable... gettin' drunk, gettin' lucky, cheatin', gettin' caught...

So that was easy.

I don't think I have a song about aardvarks -- but I did have an instrumental I recorded some time back dedicated to my 'pet' stuffed armadillo that I bought at a swap meet for a dime. I donated it to the high school biology class (the teacher was advisor to the folk club and -- at a super conservative, right wing school (this is the school that banned all afterschool activity rather than allow a "gay-straight alliance club" -- and that wasn't back in the 60s or 70s, it was in the late 90s or early 2000s) this guy wore a button every other Thursday (for Folk Club meetings) that said "Folk You.") I don't know what ever happened to "Arnie the Armadillo" or whatever the hell his name was, but the folk club adviser moved to N. Cali when his wife got preggers. He whispered that he wasn't about to try to raise a family in Orange County... they lost a great teacher but they were glad to see him go. Natch.

Armadillo's ok. I actually have one of those songs too.

Oh no, it's the avatar wars!

Gorgeous. Another former coder who enjoyed that a ton. I'll have to play it for my (IT project leader) wife. The intro's a little long but the rest was masterful.

I don't think I need to point out that mine is armored.

I can't pick as pretty as you can, I don't have all that music theory on tap like you, and I suspect I'm not half the coder you are -- but, dammit, my avatar can lick your avatar in a fair fight. Or... at least outlast it...

Hey, btw, eeglug's smackazz right, it's really a neat little piece. I've listened a few times and I'm increasingly charmed.

For me it's about a little software app that just wants to be loved...

Of course, I'm a cyber-pagan. An information-is-alive guy... so, you know...

Thanks, eeglug! You're right about the intro, though. I stuck the long intro on there because I felt the song was too short, at just over two minutes. I guess that's cheating.

Armadillos are nice and all, but I don't know if they would make good pets. I mean, have you ever tried to hug one?

On the other hand, you don't have to worry about hurting it if you roll over when it's sleeping on the bed next to you.

Armadillos -- they're the new ferret.

Everyone has them in LA.

I think they brought them back from SXSW.

I think I'd prefer something like:

KAC

I was actually thinking of that armadillo-hybrid after I found 'my' armadillo...

I could never really figure out what that armadillo-juggernaut had to do with ELP's music -- but back then album covers were sort of an excuse to have a cool picture... which is the one thing guys like me really miss from vinyl days.

I have to say that "Arnie" (my stuffed armadillo) was considerably less buff and big-shouldered than my armadillo avatar image...

This one in particular is special to me. I was in college and really really into ELP when that album was out and I actually painted that cover on my dorm door in oils.

I was reading the wikipedia entry where I found this and it said something about Tarkus was supposedly the symbol of the industrial-military complex...

KAC