SUNDAY SONGWRITER'S GROUP - WEEK 45

Hi Bob,

Could I put in a plea for something completely different soon please? :)

Wading through pages of personal "let me tell you about my inner pain" stuff is palling somewhat. :wink:

I seem to have recently filled my life-time quota of reading songs about you hurt me, I hurt you, we sighed in the night, we're parting, we have blood on our hands, we're suffering on life's lonesome highway, my heart is aching, I'm lost, you're lost and we're passing in the dark, and so on. :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

Can you perhaps try and steer us towards something that can't be turned into yet another investigation of the writer's inner angst?

Make us write about one legged frogs, or house bricks (no, wait, not bricks - someone will write "brick by brick you built a wall and shut me out"... ). Maybe scuba-diving, or furniture, or what makes us HAPPY, or.....anything but more moping and moaning.... :twisted:

Sorry..... I'm ranting..... :? .... Maybe I'll write about a one legged frog who has one more chance to go scuba diving.... :oops:

lol guess I won't be posting any tunes this week. See I play blues, so there aren't a lot of happy things, otherwise it wouldn't be blues. :P

Geez TF, don't take any notice of my rantings. :shock:

Surely there must be some cheerful blues, or at least blues about outer suffering instead of inner suffering????

The "If I'd known how short the fuse was, I'd never have lit the dynamite" blues??

The "Never try to use your toaster in the shower" blues??

or maybe the "Grandma's been chewing tobacco with my false teeth again" blues??

And, hey! It's your sig that's partly responsible for my unseemly outburst. It's just the sort of thing I'd like to see us write about instead of concentrating on the inner struggles. How about some "WOW - What a ride!" songs for a change.

nah no harm Chris. I pretty much agree with you. :lol: Check your PM's for some blues humor. :D

I gotta go with Chris, so when I post up my song for this week its gonna be something way way waaaaaaaaay of course of what I normally write.

So is the rule of "No inner emotion" going to be next weeks assingment? :)

I'll try it this week.

Hey Chris,

I know what you're talking about. (If I'm honest I have to admit that that's part of why I'm spending less time even reading the songs on the other Song Writing forum... there's a fair bit of angst there.)

However, I'm thinking that maybe the point of picking 'similar' themes for the last couple weeks has been on purpose to achieve one of two desired outcomes:
1) People will start solidifying they're thinking in the area and be able to churn out something solid once all the cliches have been spent. In this regard, I don't want to discourage people from writing songs of angst if it is going to be a good song.
2) Or the opposite, that people will take the familiar theme and go in a brand new direction, like what you've suggested. This is very good too, and the direction I'm planning on going this week.

I'm odd. In songwriting, I prefer angst.

Happy songs never pleased me much. Well, until I started listening to Keith Urban.

Geoo

I know what you're talking about. (If I'm honest I have to admit that that's part of why I'm spending less time even reading the songs on the other Song Writing forum... there's a fair bit of angst there.)

Hi SP,

I couldn't agree more. I've stopped by there a couple of times and it sometimes seems like there's actually only one song there - just endlessly re-written. And usually badly re-written at that. Yet another half done effort by somebody who has never contributed to the discussions but just wants the rest of us to tell them how cool their stuff is. :? . Maybe we should all try and collectively do a thread along the lines of "101 over-used words, themes, phrases and general cliches to avoid"?

But your two points are excellent. We should be able to take any theme and do it in a fresh way, or consolidate our thinking and improve on what went before.

After thinking that I'd skip this week I've begun a song that fits the theme, but has nothing whatever to do with inner angst... :D I should be more tolerant, I've just sort of overdosed on reading the one style. :D

Oh dear..... If I spent us much time practising as I do waffling I'd be up there with Eric Clapton by now.... :wink:

Cheers, Chris

If I spent as much time practicing as I do waffling. I'd be up there with Eric Clapton by now.
ROFL! Sigged!

ROFLMAO!!!!

ALTHOUGH I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT AGAINST "BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!!!!"....that was one of mine, and one I was pretty pleased wih, the way it turned out... :evil: :evil: :evil: (I've even got to play it in the pub the last couple of weeks, and one of the guys has been coming round to jam, we worked on that and a couple of other songs of mine....!!)
Only joking....but seriously, I know what you're getting at Chris, there does seem to be a surfeit of doom, gloom, melanchola and angst of late - however this week's subject does leave room to go either way....upbeat or gloomy....

Maybe it's time to find our happy thoughts....

(Although I'd love to have seen your face when someone pinched your one-armed scuba diving frog idea....then again, at least said green amphibian wasn't burbling along to "Axel F".....)

Ah well - got a couple of ideas already, maybe this week I might just get a few minutes to spare....they're both pretty upbeat....

But just because I'm by nature one of life's optimists (my glass is always half-full, never half-empty...) does that preclude me from writing a blues song, or a dark minor-chord laden ballad???

:D :D :D

Vic

ALTHOUGH I'D LIKE TO KNOW WHAT YOU'VE GOT AGAINST "BLOOD ON YOUR HANDS!!!!!"....that was one of mine,
:D
Vic

Whoops! :oops: :oops: Humble apologies Vic. I just randomly grabbed a few phrases that I know that I've over-used myself. I was actually trying to avoid using the phrase "blood on the knife" because I knew that a couple of people recently used that allusion (and perfectly reasonably too).

Looks like I swerved to avoid a car and ended up hitting a truck instead! :wink:

BTW. I've been thinking a lot this morning about your idea of "reverse engineering" of songs. It's a technique I've used a lot in other walks of life and found very handy. So expect a rave from me about that some time this week.... :shock:

Cheers, Chris (From behind sandbags....)

Hey Chris,
But actually I have to get on with the day's work instead. Rats.
I thought you were supposed to be working ??

:P :P :P

Well, I guess I won't take any offense at that since I somehow managed to attain the title of jokey songwriter on this group (which I wear proudly, by the way.). But jokey or not, I do think you need at least a little angst to write well. It's your character that takes that angst and distinguishes between songs to run to and songs to be depressed by. I'm not sure I wanna write about frogs (though I'd surely give it a go), but I don't have a problem with doing some happy stuff. In fact, I'd thought about suggesting it myself. But then I figured I'd just do it (whether I post or not). As for your rants, Chris, somehow your personality tends to come through in all your ranting, and even if any of this actually applied to me (I never use cliches, hehe), it'd still be pretty hard to be offended by anything you say. In fact, I'd probably buy you a beer. Oh and I apologize in advance that this isn't the week of jokey for me. Timing really is everything, isn't it?

Joe