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My first ever song: Clouds on fire

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(@hoogomoogo)
Eminent Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 12
Topic starter  

Please tell me what you think and how I could make it better. thanks so much. Also, I know you guys are probably pretty honorable, but please no stealing these lyrics. Thanks.

My Song

This is a song about a sunset that I watched. It is for the acoustic, and meant to be slow and both happy and sad (if you know what I mean) By the way, this is the first song I have ever wrote, so be nice.

Possible Title: Clouds on fire

The world is a painter,
Its canvas is the sky,
The clouds are its paintbrushes,
and the sun its Paints (I need a better word than "paints")

Chorus:

Clouds on fire,
Displaying Natures Majesty,
Its wonder and its power,
For all of us to see.

Now the finish,
The sky, becoming black
Yellow to orange, orange to red,
Red to nothing.
(chorus)

End part:

Staring blindly,
Amazed by the unseeing Splendour.
Burning embers hang in the sky
Scattered by the wind,
A promise for all the world,

Clouds on fire. (x2)

I sorta Play the Guitar.......Only sorta tho. *shifty eyes*

Now working on: That Dang F-Chord, Barre chords, strumming faster, And the Prelims of Finger picking.


   
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(@citizennoir)
Noble Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 1247
 

Hey Hoog :D

I really like the title.

And it's a great idea for a song.... especially your first.
It must have moved you quite a bit (and I can understand that :) )

My biggest criticism would have to be that you didn't bother to mention
just HOW it moved you.

You supplied ample description of what the scene LOOKED like....
Though I'm left wondering HOW it made you FEEL.
What did you HEAR, and how did that tie in to the visuals and the feelings....?

Because it's a sunset, and not a sunrise, you could also play on that a bit.
Psychologists say that if they show a picture of a sunrise/sunset, and ask to pick one of those,
people who choose sunrises are optimistic, sunsets; pessimistic.

Also, sunsets are the END of something.... and a beautiful ending at that.
Symbolically they can suggest the end of a life, or lifetime.... etc.
Though at the same time, they offer the promise of a new begining :wink:

So, you said it was both a sad and happy song - Perfect!
You need to show that more in the lyrics though.
Why did it make you happy?
Why is it also sad?

No need to rush thru it....
Take your time and get in the mood;
Try to re-experience that sunset and share it with all of us :D

Ken

"The man who has begun to live more seriously within
begins to live more simply without"
-Ernest Hemingway

"A genuine individual is an outright nuisance in a factory"
-Orson Welles


   
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(@hoogomoogo)
Eminent Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 12
Topic starter  

wow thank you so much for that amazing advice! Looks like ive got some sunset hunting to do. I really hope this turns out good!

I sorta Play the Guitar.......Only sorta tho. *shifty eyes*

Now working on: That Dang F-Chord, Barre chords, strumming faster, And the Prelims of Finger picking.


   
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(@citizennoir)
Noble Member
Joined: 17 years ago
Posts: 1247
 

Hey :D
No prob.... glad you found it was helpful.

You might also want it to lead up to a revelation of some sort....
That is; Perhaps the experience 'changed' you somehow, or allowed you to see some part of life
in a whole new way.

Glad to have you around 8)
And welcome to GN :)

Ken

"The man who has begun to live more seriously within
begins to live more simply without"
-Ernest Hemingway

"A genuine individual is an outright nuisance in a factory"
-Orson Welles


   
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(@vic-lewis-vl)
Illustrious Member
Joined: 20 years ago
Posts: 10264
 

Great comments from CitiZenNoir there, we've come to expect that.....

Now I'm a little more mundane, more prosaic, more down to earth - where Ken's looking at the big picture, I look at the small details. Where Ken looks at the imagery, I look at the language....

I have to say, I like everything apart from the first line, which I think grates - it doesn't make sense, either lyrically or poetically. I looked at the first verse as a whole, and the first thing that struck me was, that first line's led you into a minefield of imagery - that one false move has killed the whole verse.

The world is a painter.......sorry, that line means nothing. It's not the world that's doing the painting - it's (insert deity of your choice) or mother nature.

Its canvas is the sky.....here, you're trying to extend the metaphor - and because the first line doesn't work, the second line doesn't either. It's not a bad line, per se - but it's trying too hard to make up for the first line.

The clouds are its paintbrushes....I can see where that imagery would fit, but again, because the first line's so weak, you're STILL trying to flog a metaphor that's on its last legs.

and the sun its Paints....again, I can see where that imagery would fit, but again, any impact that line would have is dissipated somewhat by the false imagery already alluded to.

My suggestion would be; first, you need a good opening line. This kind of poetic imagery's not really my strong point - but surely something like,

"A sky to be painted" or "A world to be painted"

or

"Mother Nature's Canvas" - something along those lines. Still using the poetic imagery, but more allusive than a plain statement of fact.

If you took "A world to be painted" for example......

"A world to be painted,
Mother Nature's (blank) canvas,....if the word blank will fit with the meter...
Clouds to be coloured,
At a whim of the sun."

There are so many possibilities you can explore - never settle for the first thing that comes into your head! Play around with words or images - give them time to settle, the strongest image/metaphor will eventually come out on top.

As for the rest of the song - only thing I'd change is "unseeing" - strikes me as clumsy - to unseen. To sum up, I'd say you're well on the way to a good song here - you handicapped yourself with a bad first line, which led to a weak first verse. You recovered well and finished strongly....and for a first ever song, it's a REALLY good effort. There's a lot of thought gone into it, and you've tried to do something different from the norm - always a bonus point!

All I'd suggest is, get your point across first, work on the imagery secondly - you have some really good lines here, you have the potential for a very good song.

As always, this is just MY opinion, this is how the lyrics made me feel - others may agree, or disagree. I wish you the best of luck with your writing - you obviously want to write, and you will write, and you've definitely got the potential to write well - you've just got to find the happy medium between making a point and using imagery, and if I knew how that worked ALL the time I'd be a rich man!

:D :D :D

Vic

Vic

"Sometimes the beauty of music can help us all find strength to deal with all the curves life can throw us." (D. Hodge.)


   
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(@chris-c)
Famed Member
Joined: 19 years ago
Posts: 3454
 

Hi,

Congratulations on taking up the wonderful hobby of songwriting. You've made a good gutsy start. Great comments from Ken and Vic. I had similar responses when I read through.

If you don't mind me passing on my reactions, they went something like this:
The world is a painter,
Its canvas is the sky,
The clouds are its paintbrushes,
and the sun its Paints (I need a better word than "paints")

Like Vic, I thought the first line got you off on the wrong foot. I couldn't swallow “the world” as a painter. If you had said something like “Nature is a painter” it would have seemed more believable.

The overall idea of painting with clouds is fine, but I did struggle to see them as the brushes. To me, they seem more like part of the canvas, or part of texture and form of the painting, than the actual brushes. I would be more comfortable with the general idea that nature was the painter, the sky and clouds were the canvas and light was the paint. I think that's pretty much the way it's usually portrayed. It's not necessary to find an exact parallel for everything in the process but perhaps the sun itself might even be seen as the brush? Of course, it's good to depart from the usual view if you can, but it's harder to pull it off if listeners already have other comparisons in mind from previous reading or listening.
Now the finish,
The sky, becoming black
Yellow to orange, orange to red,
Red to nothing.

A couple of small points here. “Now the finish” didn't seem to quite flow comfortably and looked hard to sing. If you've got something in mind that the words don't seem to suggest on the page, then of course that might not be an issue. If you're writing lyrics, rather than poetry, then I think that it's good to try and tie the rhythm of it all to some music as soon as you can. The words and music need to match and work comfortably together. If the words make all the demands then it can make the job of writing convincing music harder if you leave until late in the process.

I also wondered about “Red to nothing” as you opened by saying that it was heading for black. I got what you meant, and blackness and nothingness could be seen as evoking similar feelings, but the way it was phrased just struck me as slightly off the mark as I read it. Again, the music and the way it's sung can sometimes sell a line, and make an image work, in a way that doesn't look quite right on the page. So that's just passing on an impression, rather than saying I think it's necessarily wrong.
Staring blindly,
Amazed by the unseeing Splendour.
Burning embers hang in the sky
Scattered by the wind,
A promise for all the world,

The whole thing so far has been entirely about visual imagery and impact. Bringing in blindness and unseeing seemed really odd. Did you mean to refer to an “unseen Splendour” - in the sense of a creator who was unseen? If so, then unseeing looks like the wrong word. If not, what did you mean?

I thought that you had some good ideas and images there, but hadn't yet worked out where to take them. Some sort of movement is always good in a song - take the listener somewhere. It doesn't have to be a long trip, but it should have emotional impact, a bit of story, or something to catch the interest and imagination. At the moment, this says “Sunsets are awesome, and the effect is a lot like painting”. So far so good, but I'd like to hear more. That could be more about your emotional response, as Ken suggested so well, or it could be more of a general story, or...well, just more... :)

All the best with song-writing. You've made a good strong start. The very hardest part when you begin is the editing. Sometimes the way the song needs to go means you have to remove a line or image that you're very attached to. That's extremely tough to do. So if anything does seem to work well, but just not fit this time, do try and be prepared to put it aside. Not in the bin, but into a scrapbook file of some kind.

I once read some advice by a well known novel writer who said that when she got scraps of ideas, edited lines, surplus phrases and so on she would jot them on a piece of paper and toss them into an old shoebox. Later, she might be working on something else and think "that phrase about clouds might work here". Or, on a quiet day for ideas, she would go through the box and often one of the scraps would fire up her imagination and take her off in a whole new direction. I don't have a shoebox, but I have file sitting on my hard drive that is named Shoebox in honour of her tip. All the 'offcuts' get carefully parked in there. Why waste a good thought... :mrgreen:

Another useful trick is to completely put something aside for a while. Not just minutes but days or even a week or more. At the time of writing you'll have no trouble bringing every word and image back to life, but it can be hard to judge what's really still in your own head and what actually did make it down onto the page. If you pick it up a week later and the words don't quite flow, or the images and feelings don't return in quite the same way, then that's invaluable knowledge. If you stumble slightly as you go then a new listener or reader will certainly have even more trouble.

Cheers,

Chris


   
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(@hoogomoogo)
Eminent Member
Joined: 16 years ago
Posts: 12
Topic starter  

I can't belive the advide im getting here. Its so awesome. Thanks so much. As for the song, I am going to, from what everyone is saying, take a good hard look at it, especially the first part. I think I'll leave it for a couple days and take a look then. Here's hope that this turns out!

I sorta Play the Guitar.......Only sorta tho. *shifty eyes*

Now working on: That Dang F-Chord, Barre chords, strumming faster, And the Prelims of Finger picking.


   
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