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Tag: song

  • New Song: “The Cinnamon Line”

    Kind of a “Cosmic” Country number. I got that word from Daniel Tashian. I’m nowhere near as good as him, but I hope you enjoy! You can download it free to your computer with that little download arrow on the player. If you enjoy please re-share, “like” this page, or “re-tweet” or all three! To help me get a little exposure. Thank you!

    The Cinnamon Line by spickeringlr
    If you can’t see the player above, click that link that says “The Cinnamon Line,” and you can play it on your iPhone or iPad.

  • 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.

  • Download One of My Songs “The Darkest Hour Comes”

    “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.