Y9W27 Willy's Water

When the first rhyme is manure and entrepenuer, how can you go wrong? This was a lot of fun to listen to and loved the verse about Grandpa.

My only thought is about the chorus. The "keep your eye on Willy's Water" seems wrong for an advert, spoof or no. You might want to go for the throat, so to speak:

'Willy's Water', 'Willy's Water',
Ii comes in grande, short and tall.
Quench your thirst with 'Willy's Water',
It's the brand that beats them all.

or

'Willy's Water', 'Willy's Water',
Ii comes in grande, short and tall.
Chug yourself down on 'Willy's Water',
It's the brand that beats them all.

Again, definitely fun. Looking forward to more!

Peace

Hi Wilhelmina,

Nothing to add to what Dave and Peter wrote; both brought up good points....and yes, I really liked the "manure and entrepreneur" rhyme as well :lol:

Thanks for sharing :D

James

PS no problems with the link :wink:

I think it is my first post in this forum (it's never too late!).

I can not write criticisms or comments on your song. I only can say I like very much. The lyrics seems very funny to me and your voice is very nice.

This week your song inspired to me a sketch (well, David wrote about it in the last newsletter: usually I use the guidelines for drawing but this time it was different, your song did I "saw" the sketch as an advertising).

Hope you like it! :D

You can get bigger images here, the blog where I usually post the drawings.

Thank you very much and, as we say in other forums, thanks for sharing.

PS. I sent a private message asking for your feedback and permission on the sketch some days ago. I don't know if you read your messages, I didn't receive any answer so I am writing here again. I did put links from the my blog to this page and even your name is in the sketch. If you have any problem with credits, please let me know and I'll modify it as you want.

This twisted mind likes the way your mind works!

I'm playing catch-up at the moment - life's been getting in the way of writing and critiquing for the last few months - but hopefully, fingers crossed, normal service is now resumed. I've been reading back through some of your other songs, and all I can add to the comments yoiu've already got is.....keep 'em coming!

As for this song....took a listen to the mp3, first thing that strikes me is you've got a good, strong, clear voice. The song comes across as old-fashioned C&W - Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Faron Young, I'm not that well up on C&W so they're the best comparisons I can come up wth. It'd probably work well as a CCR-influenced (so THAT'S what Willy's been up to since the Poor Boys split up!) country-rock song - think "Lookin' Out My Back Door" or "Lodi."

Excellent writing, looking forward to many more from you!

:D :D :D

Vic

Oh yeah, got to add, I love Nuno's sketch - if this was actually a CD single there'd be no problem finding artwork for the cover!

:D :D :D

Vic

Hi Nuno,

Nice job on the art work! :mrgreen:

It reminds me of the style of the illustrator for "The Series of Unfortunate Events"
http://www.bretthelquist.com/

Thanks for sharing.

James

Sorry to be late responding but I rarely go online.

First of all - Numo - your sketch is delightful! I'm tickled! Of course, you can do absolutely anything you like with it. Be my guest. I was interested to see your drawing blog and how you're using SSG as inspiration. I like to do watercolors, too. So many things to do, so little time!

Secondly - speaking of time. Willy's Water is my 'swan song' with SSG. It's not that I have stage fright whenever I submit a song (although I do), and it's not that learning to write within the structure of a song hasn't been fun (I've loved it). It's a question of TIME!

As you probably know, I have this new guitar, and I came to guitarnoise with hopes of learning how to play it. Now I find myself getting shunted off on a songwriting track, and this train leading me in a new direction and picking up speed as it goes. But what I'd really like to do is make my guitar sing! I need to lift my pen from the paper and put my fingers to the strings. And where does the time come from?

So, I'm going to back away from SSG for a while and put my attention on working through some of David Hodge's fine lessons. I may one day come to understand HOW a melody should be constructed, and HOW accompaniment gets properly fitted around a tune. This is going to take a lot of time with scales and strumming, music theory, and on and on. That's what I'll be doing now.

Thirdly, thinking of people, of you, Peter, and you, Neil, and Chris and Chefie, and Melody and Numo, and David and James, and all the rest of you, from such scattered places around the world. It has given me a warm feeling to think that I'm a member of your community. Thank you all so much for your kind and encouraging comments. - Wilhelmina

First let me say, Wilhelmina, how impressed I've been with the songs I've seen you post here. Your proliferation puts me to shame! I enjoy your humorous slant on topics as well. I don't think that learning to play and songwriting are mutually exclusive. I've been writing as long as I've been playing, and that's over 40 (gulp) years@!# I would suggest you keep at the writing. you seem to have theses songs just clamoring to get out! You certainly don't have to write music for all of them, I certainly don't. As you master more of the lessons, or even take private lessons, you can go back and use technique you've learned to add music for them. You can also collaborate on the music with other, more talented(or skilled, if you rather) musicians. I've done that and it brought my level of playing up a notch. :D
So I hope in fact, this is not your "Swan Song".You certainly don't have to post every week for every topic, very few of us do; But I hope to see you jump on the SSG at least occasionally and amaze us with some more of your witty lyrics.

Kathy

Wilhelmina, thank you very much. Usually we say "the virtue is in the middle point" (sorry for the direct translation, I guess there is an equivalent adagio in English). Play your guitar, write songs and don't forget you watercolors!

Guitar Noise is a wonderful site. Stay here. I did it and I learnt alot and also I made many friends. But don't read the guitar players forum or you will be buying a guitar every couple of months! LOL!

(Vic and James, thanks you guys! And thanks for the link, too!)

So I hope in fact, this is not your "Swan Song".You certainly don't have to post every week for every topic, very few of us do; But I hope to see you jump on the SSG at least occasionally and amaze us with some more of your witty lyrics.

Kathy

Wilhelmina, do heed the wise words of Kathy - she knows a thing or two about songwriting (she wrote and sang many good songs here, including one that's still probably the best song I've heard on any forum).

I'm sure that you won't stay away for too long - writing lyrics is in your blood. Now that you've experienced the smell of the greasepaint and the roar of the crowd, or as Bricusse and Newley put it "The Roar of the Greasepaint – The Smell of the Crowd" you probably won't find it easy to just drop it. However, you are definitely wise to back the writing back a notch or two and increase the focus on guitar. You are obviously a quick learner, and it's not too hard to do the learning about 'what' to do. But the 'how' does take a lot of time. It's one thing to known where your fingers need to go and another to keep doing it over and over until your fingers and brain work together and get the touch and timing up to the standard that you want. There's only one mistake with guitar and that's to lose focus and give up (a big percentage do just that). But you have the crucial motivating factors - an obvious love for the joy of music, and the carrot of some talent with lyrics that won't want to go to waste.

I didn't take up guitar until I was nearly sixty, but the last five years have given me enormous pleasure and satisfaction as I slowly pluck and strum my way forwards, writing a few songs as I go. I also kicked off with a rush of lyrics and then eased off to improve my playing. Like Kathy, I don't post everything I'm working on, and I also regularly ban myself from posting on forums for a while and get back to guitar practice. Writing heaps of chatty posts about music can soak up even more time than songwriting. :shock:

One of the most important tricks with learning guitar is not to rush it. If you don't take the time to discover the joy of the simple then making it more complex isn't likely to provide the answers. It's tempting to think that the place you seek is still a few more chapters or lessons away, but you can make satisfying music with just three or four notes or a couple of chords. When you can sing - which you clearly can - you've already got control of the best instrument there is, the human voice. So the guitar only needs to add modest support (one simple strum per bar can do fine) and you're playing two instruments at once.

See you soon then. :D

Chris

Sorry to rattle on. but here's an example, copied straight from a post I did on another forum:

A, D and E are great chords for a beginner to learn, for two reasons:

1) They're relatively easy to change between, because if you use the 2,1,3 fingering for the A chord then you can leave your index finger on the G string as an 'anchor' for all three chords. It makes it much simpler to land the other two fingers if one has stayed in position (it just slides back one fret for the E).

2) They are the I, IV, and V chords in the key of A. So you can play hundreds of songs using just those three chords. Put a capo on fret 3 and you can use the same 3 chord shapes and play hundreds in the key of C (With a capo on the third fret those shapes become C, F and G).

One of the first tunes I ever learned from a book was a version of Amazing Grace using those 3 chords. Something like this:

( A) Amazing Grace how (D) sweet the (A) sound that saved a wretch like (E) me.
I (A) once was lost but (D) now I'm (A) found. I was blind but (E) now I (A) see.

Strumming pattern - whatever feels right. Anything from one strum per change to something as rocky, smooth, reggae style, jazzy, or whatever you feel like at the time. See how many different ways you can do it.

P.S. Of course there are a great many different versions of that song, using all sorts of additional chords, but those will do the job. Once those are working you can try lifting the index finger off the G string just for the words "lost but" - which will give you an A7 instead of an A. You can change what you sing there to suit if you like. You could also try using an E7 instead of the E (just leave your ring finger off the D string to change an E to an E7). And so on. Start with the simplest possible and keep adding extra flavo(u)r to taste...

You'll soon have that Dragon Guitar roaring.

Chris

And I'll add my twopenn'orth, as we say in Lancashire.....you have to keep writing. Or - what are you going to do when you've become a pretty decent guitarist and you've got no songs to play? Think of the fun you're going to have putting music to your lyrics - that's the best part of writing, when your lyrics finally become a song you can play and sing.

I've been writing songs a long time - long before I joined GN. Trouble was, I only knew a handful of chords - A D and E, G, Em C and D - so everything I wrote was either a 3-chord rocker or a four-chord ballad. Nowadays, I have very little trouble putting music to my songs - I've used a variety of tunings, and a lot of different chord voicings to give various different shades of texture to my songs. I'm not bragging here, BTW - just paying tribute to all the people here who've taken the time and trouble to help and encourage me along the way. Any bragging rights go to them, without their help I'd have probably given up years ago.

Finding the SSG was the best thing that happened to me - it gave me a goal to focus on, namely getting good enough on the guitar so's I could do justice to the lyrics I'd written, AND the incentive to write better songs.

So stick around, Wilhelmina - keep the songs coming, practise the guitar and before you know it, you'll be playing and singing your own songs like a seasoned pro. Then when the guitar playing's as accomplished as your singing we'll REALLY have something to look forward to.

(BTW, since I joined GN I've also learned to play bass, some keyboards - using the music theory I've learned here - and harmonica, as well as improving my songwriting. So you can learn two or more things at the same time.....)

:D :D :D

Vic