Week 11 - Transparency

hi

when people call you on your crap it skips a beat

I'm lost... I gather the word heart maybe missing ?

I think there may a couple too many forced rhymes in here which for me detracts from what could be a very nice song .

Just my opinion

Wow.... erm, that is quite.... macabre. Well, perhaps macabre/comical would be more accurate! You have two verses about how boring this person is, while trying to set up this bizarre x-ray.... 'scenario' (by the way I noticed that the word x-ray occurs 3 times :yikes: while the three synonyms 'dull' 'boring' & 'bland' ram their point down our throats a bit too forcefully). Then one minute everything is boring and the next minute we've got a red nail through our hand! Holy crapola! From here on, all the reader/listener's attention is drawn to the word 'red' which recurs 4 times (5 including the final 'twist') and the fact that you are talking about red paperclips, pipes, etc, just doesn't seem to flow well - it's just too bizarre and left-field for me. I agree with hilch that many of the rhymes are forced, and frankly the whole song seems rather rushed and sloppy. I think you need to be a teeny bit more abstract and metaphorical with your imagery, otherwise it will stand out like a sore thumb with a red paperclip through it. Also - and this is the main advice you should take from my post - as a writer you need to value every line of your song equally. You can't write a good song by having one or two standout lines in each section and just writing 'filler' material to get from each one to the next.

I think that this is very arresting and has great potential. The general idea is great but you should be careful about how the narrator could easily be perceived as being as biased and one-sided as the "person" he or she is railing against. As it stands now, the narration comes across as being slightly (but very normally, if that makes sense) psychotic. Kind of like the minor-violence daydreaming most people have towards their bosses, as we saw last week. :wink: Playing more on the psychotic nature would make this song more interesting and keep it from falling into the potential cliche of most "you"-don't-get-"me" songs.

In terms of execution, I agree with Hilch and Martin that some of the lines seem thrown together, for lack of a better word, but I do like the laconic feel to it. The second verse particularly is strong, except for, surprisingly, the "you'd stop judging me" part of the second line. That makes the song sound whiny and actually takes away from the surprise of violence at the end on the verse.

This is a great start. Looking forward to more.

Peace

Thanks for the feedback. I wasn't expecting too much from this because it was different from anything else I have written. It was also the first song I had the music before the lyrics. Oh well, I'll figure out how to make it work better. Preferably with the music I have.

I have a question about re-working this song or any song. Say you take out one or two lines from a verse because they sound forced. Now you have to find something else to put there that doesn't sound forced? I'm having trouble re-working songs to make them sound less forced but I feel like I am actually forcing it when I do that.

Say you take out one or two lines from a verse because they sound forced. Now you have to find something else to put there that doesn't sound forced?

That would be called inspiration! ;)

Sometimes you just have to keep on trying lines that sound forced until the right words magically pop into existence - and that's when you start worrying that the good parts you kept need changing too!

Hi 1-wing,
This is certainly an interesting song. Some good advice from the others here. What I really like about this song is that it grabbed me. I got the image of someone looking at and x-ray and thinking of another person, maybe the subject of the x-ray, but seeing their own fingernails (painted red) through the photo-plate and the red paper clip as there expression of passion or anger against that other person. I thought that was excellent imagery and a great idea.

Cheers
pbee

Interesting thoughts on the imagery pbee. Not what I intended but I kinda like the idea of people interpreting it different ways.

Anyway, this song was hard to write, and hard to re-write. The reason being I'm not normally subtle or clever or anything like that. I'm normally direct and in your face. So this song was a big challenge for me.
But I re-worked it, it now has absolutely nothing to do with this week's topic. Is that a bad thing?

==============================================

You are black and white, dull as you can be
Like an x-ray picture your intentions easy to read
With this I see your heart, black as can be
when people call you on your crap, it skips a beat

I wish there was more colour, more to see
A flaw laid out in the open for you to see
I wish there was a way to make this photo less bland
Maybe like a red nail, right through your hand

I would show this mark to you, the mark I left on you
So that you would see what's wrong inside of you
But the flaws you keep ignoring, only looking at the rest
So now to blemish your picture more, with paper clips in your chest

You try to cover the marks on your picture, with all your lies
You keep running from the truth, by hiding your eyes
I'll make you admit, I'll make your world come apart
By adding something you can't ignore, a dagger through your heart

Your picture is full of flaws, forever scarred
The illusion of yourself burned and charred
I've made you into the one thing didn't want to be
I made you imperfect, I've made you just like me

Anyway, this song was hard to write, and hard to re-write. The reason being I'm not normally subtle or clever or anything like that. I'm normally direct and in your face. So this song was a big challenge for me.
But I re-worked it, it now has absolutely nothing to do with this week's topic. Is that a bad thing?

Bad thing NO I believe it's called growing as a writter , on 2 fronts to challenge yourself to write out of your comfort zone and to re-visist your work and make alterations that flow smoother and read better ...

Mind you I did read somewhere once " Songs are sung not Read "

Mind you I did read somewhere once " Songs are sung not Read "

They have to be written, too! :wink:

Songs, by their nature, are sung, which means the words are part of the melody that's being sung. And that means that the lyrics often follow (or closely follow) the rhythmic pattern of the notes in the melody. Which usually means that you're working with a specific syllable count.

One of the natural parts of songwriting evolution is the discovery that you usually need to write a lot less than what you do as you need to be able to convey your message within the syllable count. So you start getting picky about what words mean or what words best tell your story while being both ecomonical and entertaining. Specific words which can create images while also multi-tasking become dear to a writer. To put it in the context of this week's topic - the four syllables of "Rich deep yellow" can be replaced by the single syllabled "Gold," freeing the writer of three more valuable syllables.

These last paragraphs, by the way, are a good example of how prose is a lot more wasteful than a song lyric! :wink: And so, I suspect are the following ones! :wink:

The main evolution of a songwriter, though, comes from having an audience other than oneself. When you write for yourself, you can be as direct and in your face (and if you love words, you'll have to appreciate all the nuances that marketing and advertising has - this phrase wouldn't even exist without it! :wink: ) one wants.

But if you want your music to last and have a true effect on people, you also have to write for an audience as well as yourself. Songwriters have to walk a very fine line - being specific enough to please oneself but also to be universal enough to allow each listener his or her own interpretation of the lyric. After all, we all love lyrics that "speak to us" as individuals. A song that says something special to me is a song I'm going to listen to, and also play and sing.

So rewriting should be part of everyone's songwriting process. Once you've gotten a lyric down, then it's time to see whether or not you could come up with words that better describe what you want to say, that provide the best images, that covey the specifics that you want while leaving the door open to the personal interpretations of others.

Boy you can tell when I'm up at four in the morning, can't you? :wink:

Peace

David all I meant by that little quote was alot of the time when you read lyrics they do not have the same emotion as if they were sung .

Take a simple phrase like

" I love you "

if I were to write it it just means feelings emotions that sort of thing

But if Olivia Newton-John was sitting there looking you in the eyes and sings , " I love you I honestly love you "

Now you tell me which one would get your heart racing :?: :?:

Iam not disagreeing with what you said but that is all I was meaning to say , in that quote

Sorry for any miscommunication David

Sorry for any miscommunication David

Not to worry! As I said, I'm up at an ungodly hour and I simply saw a line worth writing about and, being in "instant rant" mode, went straight to it! :wink: I agreed with what you said earlier and wanted to add to it and ended up just writing...

Methinks we've hijacked this thread long enough, my friend! :wink: Back to the topic at hand...

Peace

Not sure if I agree on writing for an audience. A teacher once told me that when you write to please someone else, you end up pleasing no one. I have no idea what would happen if someone wrote a really specific song though. Though Polly by Nirvana is about a kidnapper torturing someone, and I haven't been a torturer or kidnapped, but the song draws me in anyway.

I agree with hilch too, melody has a lot to do with how much effect words have.

Anyone have any comments on the re-write? It took me almost 13 hours to do..........ok so I took like a 10 hour break somewhere in there.

I thought the second version of the song was a great step up from the first. Words weren't over-used and, all-in-all, it just sounded way better. The ending twist on the second version helped me understand more as to what it meant.And you'll see the red blade you left, in my spineThis one sounds like you were getting revenge upon the person you were singing about and the re-make is just saying how he/she should be imperfect like you. Keep it up!