Year 4, Week 6 -- Constant Love

I like it a lot, but I am also a mathematician.
It reminded me at first of Aimee Mann's "One" ("One is the loneliest number... etc).
The only part I have a problem with is the line "to describe my love for you". Too corny.
Whether you find a way of rewording that depends on whether you want this as a permanent song or just a throwaway exercise. I would say it is too good to throw away.

Hey Scratch,

I'm a Chef not an Engineer or Mathematician
So If I were to write this it would go something
like:

I wish I had a recipe
To make a batch of you

Good job even though I had to read it a couple times
to sort out all the math.( my fault not your's )

I see what Martin means about "to describe my love for you"

But maybe if you didn't use it twice in the chorus it would
not stand out as much.
Maybe if you changed it on the last line of the chorus
and gave another Math reference.

Just a thought

Good to see you writing again I always enjoy your stuff

John

Yeah, I felt the same about the lines with describe in.
For me description means using words, where as you are talking about numbers. Some kind of math reference would probably work better, IMO. But then I'm not an Engineer or Mathematician either!!!

Besides that - I love it!
Yeah, it is a bit corny, but in a cute way, not a cringeworthy way.
With you and me together
one and one's much more than two. Great stuff!
It may have been a rough draft to begin with, but I think you've actually got a keeper here.

G

Overall I liked it alot. I didn't have the problem with number to describe my love for you as the others had. The only thing that really caught my notice was that the rhyming between the third and fourth lines in the verses seemed a bit forced.

hey scratch..... really good to see you back to writing

I for ones like this song a lot(and I'm no mathematican either, but I'm lucky(!?) to still be in school... just heard about fibonacci again last week and our maths teacher just started the e-thing.....)
and have to agree with G that it's really cute
I especially liked the lines about "no variable would do"

keeper, definitely.
cheers,
bluenightangel

Thanks guys, (and gal) for the encouraging remarks. A couple notes,

1. It is corny. When I was singing it through while I wrote it, it was definitely corny. I don't know if any of you have heard Arlo Guthrie singing (I think) Tom Paxton's song, "I'm changing my name to Chrysler" or not, but that's the voice and tone I had in mind while writing this. And if you haven't, "Alice's restaurant" or "The Motorcycle Song" will give you the same idea.

2.
For me description means using words,...
That struck me as funny, gjbrake. :D For me, numbers are used to describe things that are too complex for words. All they do, really, is describe things. They break down in their descriptive ability when they're misused, ("you have to give 110%", "on a scale of 1-10, she's an 15", etc...) or, I think, when we try to describe emotion using numbers. Then again, when we try to describe emotion, words often lose their power as well.

Anyways, I'll look those lines over a bit yet, and see if anything else goes there. Maybe the repetition is too much. I was thinking it served to "start-stop" the chorus, like bookends. But perhaps re-phrasing one or the other would be better. We'll see.

Thanks again,

I think comments and suggestions are a great thing but also remember that YOU are the only one that knows that the song sounds like. I cant count on my digits (LOL) the number of times that I have seen a song on here and thought "That wont work" and then heard a MP3 and it certainly did.

As far as corney. Love is corney. Life is corney. Nothing wrong with that.

Great job
Geoo

Though life is logarithmic,
and without you, cataclysmic,

I love this line, best one in the whole song. Really gives a feeling of the change from order to dispair.

And what, no references to E=MC 2 :D :D

Very different and nice to read.

Maybe ....

"If there was a number
I could equate to you"..........

or something similar?

OK, I haven't the faintest clue who Fibonacci is, or what the golden ratio is....if you could enlighten me please?

Love the song though, reminds me in a way of that old song about the elements...the one that ends

"These are all the elements we have in stock at Harvard,
There may be many more but they have not yet been discovard...."

Clever stuff, Scratch, nice amusing take on the assignment....

:D :D :D

Vic

OK, I haven't the faintest clue who Fibonacci is, or what the golden ratio is....if you could enlighten me please?
Alright, mate,... but remember, you asked. Actually, it's the very coolest, but seeing as how I've had my 2nd scotch & water, I'm not sure I'll do it justice, so just in case, I'll give you a link at the end.
Fibonacci was a mathematician named Leonardo Pisano. (Fibonacci was a nickname of sorts) There is a series of numbers known as the fibonacci numbers, and the pattern is that each number is the sum of the two numbers preceding it:

0, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 34, 55, 89, 144, 233, 377, 610, 987...

As you go higher in the sequence, you can choose any two adjacent numbers in the sequence, and divide the larger by the smaller, and you get 1.618034.... That's the golden ratio. The higher you go, the more accurate the result becomes. (if that makes any sense, remember... scotch) What makes this significant, is that it appears all over the place in nature. In the spiral of a nautilus shell, the curvature of a wave as it breaks, the arrangement of seeds in a sunflower, or a pinecone, or petals on flowers, or cauliflower... etc....
Now, you can construct a rectangle with these same dimensions, i.e., widht of 2, length of 3, width of 3, length of 5, width of 5, lenght of 8, width of 8, length of 13, etc... (these are nested rectangles, each one squared, by making the width of the larger the same as the length of the smaller.) Then draw a spiral that arcs through each square ( there's a picture of this on that link, which is much easier to understand), and it gives you that curve, or spiral I mentioned in the nautilus shell. Rectangles with these dimensions were called "golden rectangles" by the greeks. Interestingly, (to me anyways) if you look up the dimensions of the Ark of the Covenant in the Bible, and divide the length by the width, you'll get the golden ratio.
Now, since I'm worried that this has been more confusing than clarifying, here's that link I promised:

http://www.mcs.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/R.Knott/Fibonacci/fibnat.html

be sure to scroll down to "Fibonacci rectangles and Shell Spirals" that's where it gets interesting.
so,... that's probably way more than you wanted to know. Anyways, check out the link, then, if you want, rent the movie "Pi, Faith in Chaos" But be forewarned, it's a weird show.
Clever stuff, Scratch, nice amusing take on the assignment....
Thanks Vic, that's what I was going for. :)

You say the song is intentionally corny... to me it seemed like it has the potential to be a genuinely heartfelt and sensitive love song. The whole story is summed up in the one line "without you, cataclysmic", and the rest of the song is the engineer/mathematician struggling to find words to describe his emotions and only coming up with numbers. But hey... it's your song. If you like corn... (it's very nutritious but I wouldn't eat it every day)

You say the song is intentionally corny... to me it seemed like it has the potential to be a genuinely heartfelt and sensitive love song...
That's one of the things I've always loved about this forum. By looking at the lyrics alone, you tend to "generate" a melody in your head while reading. Quite often, if you get a chance to hear the recorded version, it ends up totally different than you imagined.
If you could do this one as heartfelt and sensitive, that's great! But I don't think I could do it with a straight face. But then again, that's the beauty of this place, 5 people can come up with 5 different takes on the same song.

Hey scratch, late addition here..

Its a cute read.. but like Star Wars dialogue before it.. you can write it but you can't say it. You yourself said you probably couldn't sing it with a straight face.. I'd have to agree. Not knocking your song.. but definately more than a mouthful to try to make a tune out of.

It does remind me of "The Math Song" by the Darkest of the Hillside Thickets. I'd be shocked if anyone here had ever heard that song though. They're a weird little Canadian band that performs songs based primarily on H.P. Lovecraft stories... geek rock at its finest (or not).
It reminded me at first of Aimee Mann's "One" ("One is the loneliest number... etc).

[music snobbery]

Harry Nilson wrote that song which was originally popularized by Three Dog Night 30 years prior to Aimee Mann's version. I do like hers better though.

[/music snobbery]

-marv