Category: Music
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New Rough Song Demo: “It’s Over Now”
So, for the first time in a while a tune struck me out of the blue. I’ve been in straight poetry writing mode the last month or so, so I decided to apply the lyrics from one of those recent poems to this tune. I was surprised that it worked out so well. I think its because in the past I’ve been applying tunes (or trying) to five foot iambic lines which just doesn’t work. And this poem was based on two foot lines. I think the basic measure of songs is four feet, which makes sense. Everything in Western Music is based usually on 4s, 4/4 time is probably 99% of all Western songs. So the two feet lines of this poem probably just joined together to make a four foot rhythm that worked with the 4/4 time.
This is from the poem “I Know the Lake” I wrote last week. I just kind of hurried that title. I’ve changed the song title to “It’s Over Now.” Chorus lyrics seem to work better as titles. I think I’ll change that first line from “I know the lake” to “I know it’s late.”
“I Know the Lake”
I know the lake.
There’s nothing more.
What is at stake
Is behind the door.Up in the sky
Your hair flew wild.
Your sunglassed eyes
They hid the child.I thought you said
To meet down there.
We’d find the bed
Without a care.It’s over now.
It died somehow.©2010 Stephen Pickering
For the song I need to write another verse extra from the poem which is written in 14 line sonnet form. But I notice the song structure needs to change. The chorus needs to come in sooner anyway, so writing another stanza will make a nice two verse two chorus structure without having to repeat the first verse all over again. These lines just popped out of my head:
Remember when
The water fell
We jumped right in
And didn’t tell. -
A New Original Poem: “There’s something dark…”
[audio:http://www.stephenpickering.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/Theres-Something-Dark.mp3]There’s something dark about this town.
It’s made my heart all broken sore.
The stars upstairs they hear a sound.
The dark hair girl she’s at the door.
I want to go somewhere and weep.
She hurts me with her darkest stares.
Through her I walk the lonely street
Of silent dreams and cold nightmares.
The scars of vice in Central Park
Arrest the man the news had lost.
He waltzes girls back to the dark
Who think of nothing nor what it costs.
These folks who tell their dreams goodbye,
Build towers up to cut the sky.These flowers bloom and the night goes on
The T.V. tells us what’s right from wrong._____________________________________________________________
*Notes: I’ve been experimenting with different sized ‘feet’ than pentameter. So, the above poem is just like a sonnet in its structure, except its in iambic ‘quadrameter’ or four iambic feet. I don’t know why. Just to try something different. I did another in iambic tetrameter. Oh actually I posted that a few days ago, I think. Oh yes, in this lot of three poems, it’s the first: http://www.stephenpickering.com/2010/08/28/saturday-reading-three-new-poems/I’ve also been working with some that have varying lengths. I think the best bet in the long run for me, is to let the line speak for itself, in the sense that, however it hits me, whatever length that is, just go with that. And then I think you get to a point where you don’t really need to fit the line into a structure if it doesn’t come to you that way, which naturally is free verse.
So I guess, one of the points of writing within structure, is almost like exercise. You do that (or this) for a while, then your brain feels strong enough, confident enough, if you will, to walk out on the “limbs” alone.
©2010 Stephen Pickering -
Download One of My Songs “The Darkest Hour Comes”
(Right Click This Link and Hit ‘Save As’ to Download this .MP3 if you would like it for your own iPod. Or if you would simply like to play the file on the iPhone or iPad Simply Click the Link.)
You know, I always put my iPod on “Shuffle.” I have around 1700 songs on there and I just like the sense of being surprised by what is coming next. Also it keeps things from being forgotten and somehow the juxtaposition of completely different styles of music creates some kind of spark in me, turns me on more. I look back on the days of listening to the same album over and over again as sort of a rusted, dated, “Provincial” type attitude, as it were.
There’s also another benefit for me. Since my own songs are on there, every once in a while, I get to unexpectedly see how my songs and music, fit in or “hold their own” against the “legitimized” tracks in my library. And to my surprise, and usually when I’m at a point where I am sort of “down” on the quality of my own work, I get this strange sense of feeling my own work objectively, as if it were someone else’s. It seems a trick the brain plays when the setting is on shuffle. And its a pleasant one. And more often than not I end up actually enjoying my own work as much as the preceding and ante-ceding tracks that have qued up. It’s a weird sort of exhilarating feeling of seeing myself as someone else, and liking that someone.
I was playing golf the yesterday evening. And in the middle of the shuffle play list one of my songs came up, “The Darkest Hour Comes.” It’s a song I did a year or so ago. I’ve posted it on this blog before. I can’t remember which songs it came in the context of, but I remember I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked it and the quality of the recording within the context of the “professional” cuts that surrounded it.
