I make music. Here's some of my songwriting. I'll show you the lyrics and what's going on in my mind when writing. I understand that this is a bit over the top for someone who's an amateur like myself, but I hope that seeing into my music will make it more accessible and more likable. Or something.
3-11
More recording was supposed to happen yesterday, but it was cancelled...so we'll try again later. I've also written one more song this week..it doesn't have a title yet, but it might be the end track to this CD. Or maybe in the middle. I'll work it out and see what sounds good...I'll see if this song itself even sounds any good. I think it does.
2-24
"Hope" and "Not Ready For This" recorded, mastered, finished, posted on music myspace. They're awesome. I love having such good recordings of my songs. Today I guess I did 25% of the album I planned, which is great. I'm not sure when I'll next get to record...three of the songs will go quickly, since I have fewer tracks to record. Hopefully I don't have to wait too long, but it's up to George and Kyle and all the equipment.
2-23
Tomorrow I start recording at my friend George's house. I have a list of eight songs that I really want to do...I've arranged them so it shows a change in me from early junior year to right about now. These are the songs that I'm most proud of over the last year and a half.
Hope
Her mother was lost on her way
With a deadbeat dad, I hate to say
She was born, as he lay on the floor
He slurred, "Name her Hope," and never said any more
Now she lives on her own
Away from the life she'd always known
Her life is bleak, but her outlook remains
Bright
And she's all right
She's all right
Hope
Her plane went down but there's still hope
The soundwaves clashed but there's still hope
Her problems resonate
Death's handed to her on a silver plate
Wait
There's still hope
Once her parents left her out
Her father done, her mom in doubt
She was broken, she lay on the floor
She didn't want this anymore
A light shines brighter when there's none
And things will always come undone
A light shines brighter when there's none
Just ask Hope
I wrote this when I was thinking about people who are just happy, no matter what. My friend, Nikki, was probably on my mind when I wrote this. This was probably the first song I wrote that I really felt like playing and singing for people. It's a fictional girl named Hope (symbolism ha ha) who has an alcoholic dad and a mother who doesn't care at all about her. Even though everything sucks, she's still happy and cheerful. Eventually, her dad dies and her mom forgets about her. She's all by herself, and ready to start a new life without her awful parents. And she does. The last stanza comes after a piano solo, and it's just showing how she handles herself and stays happy throughout all the garbage.
Not Ready For This
Hurt to hear it last night, tossed and turned at the thought
Had a scary dream or two
Thank god for rebirth, waved goodbye to all my doubt
Once the night was through
Sunday morning came, and I feel much better
As long as it's normal, so hard to forget her
As long as I'm thankful that I ever met her
I guess it works out fine if she's doing well
Off in the corner of a photo of some crazy kids, your eyes off in the sky
Back then, it made me go to a chair and sit alone, now I don't even try
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
I'm not alone now, neither are you
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
Said goodbye from outside the house, not that you'd hear
More to reassure myself, more to help myself be more sincere
I have to be better off after this, I have to be more of a man now
I have to be better off after this
I'm not ready for this
I made a CD after I'd been writing songs for about a month or two, which was the same month or two after I'd gotten dumped. Most of the songs on that CD were about feeling awful about getting dumped, and most were total garbage. This song is the only one that actually had something to it other than "I'm sad because I got dumped." While I won't go into the specific event that inspired this song, it's just about not being over the girl even after I got dumped and we'd both gone our separate ways. It was stupid of me to hold on, which I realize now, but back then, I was just afraid to start over. I wasn't ready. Then I got ready, but it took way too long.
Rainman
You can't go splashing in the rain, she said
Stay inside where it is warm
Wait a little longer, we might see a movie
Once we're out of the storm
I'm gonna grab my hat and gloves
Pull a jacket on over this sleepy heart
Go on outside and slip in the mud
Slowly make my way out to start
On my rainman
There's not enough snow left on the ground
To make a man out of it
There's not enough pain stuck in my life
To make a man out of me
I'm sick of staying with all of the crowd
They wander around with glazed over eyes
Bumper car relatives stumbling 'round
Slowly I stumble under the grey sky
And work on my rainman
It falls apart no matter how much I try
Seems to be real, real as birds want to fly
Get me out of here right away
It was the day after Christmas, and it rained. All day. I really needed to get out of the house, away from everybody. But instead, the whole family wandered around the house all day bumping into each other, not knowing what to do. It was all suffocating.
Not Angry Just Mad
Where did the walls go? And what is this place?
The borderline is gone without a trace
Now he can't be sure what's in his head and what's outside
Without walls to hold back his view
His world's entirely new
Without them to see what he sees
His world has fallen right through
Who's in the world now, and who is not
This whole big beautiful world is all a thought
He formed the bits and pieces in his head
Where are the followers?
If he can create it all, he must be
A better man than most, but we'll call him crazy
'Cause we cannot see the world that he sees
Does majority win? And who's to say what is real?
The lot of them claim a world that's unfair
His world is so different, does he get the chair?
Or some other stuff to suffocate his world 'cause it's rare?
They'll get him alone and he'll have a new world to bear
Over the summer before my senior year, I read "A Beautiful Mind," the biography of John Nash, a schizophrenic math genius. I thought about schizophrenia for a long time, and then this song came out. It's about a schizophrenic being made aware of the fact that the hallucinations he sees don't really exist. This song, however, implies that the doctors put down the man because the world he imagines is better than the actual world, which then begs the question as to whose world is real. Just because more people see one world, does that make it more real than a world inside of one man's mind? Reality ends up being nothing at all, and the world that has more people in it rules. It doesn't have to just apply to schizophrenics...it also seems to channel activists that fight for a better world, but are silenced. It works on a lot of levels.
I recorded this initially with all computer-generated beats and tracks, except for vocals, a few solo guitar tracks, and some sound effects. At George's, I plan to keep the computer beat, but add more instrumentation.
Billy Monahan
One car down, no more parents back at home
Left to the older ones, my, how he has grown
Billy Monahan's grandparents aren't as sharp as they were
More of this and Billy might slip under
A friend of his picked up and called
Billy's watched from wall to wall
This experiment must be the worst
Everything is analyzed and criticized and nothing is all right
Everything's wrong
He knew that all along
Nowhere else to run, he's trapped and hypnotized
Psychologist can't stop looking at his eyes
Won't give him peace, they will question every note
A shining bit of hope is forced down his throat
A friend of his picked up and called
Billy's watched from wall to wall
This experiment must be the worst
Everything is analyzed and criticized and nothing is all right
Everything's wrong
He knew that all along
Out the window of the office on the seventh floor
He looks below and wonders if he needs to be here anymore
Silence floods the room as the doctor takes a puff and waits
For Billy Monahan to make the first move towards a clean slate
Was it all a dream, or did he really make that choice
Is it just a dream, or do I really hear his voice
All the questions swirl around the elderly grandfolk
What did we do wrong? How long was it 'til my heart broke?
I read somewhere about someone who wanted to commit suicide, so a friend told someone and then doctors took care of him and the friend was praised as a hero. This made me wonder what happens after everyone knows a person is suicidal. I've known depressed people, but thankfully, none who have gone so far as to end their life. This song is about a fictional person named Billy Monahan who loses his parents in a car crash and has to live with his senile grandparents. He wants to kill himself, but a friend calls for help. Doctors then look at Billy as an experiment, prodding him and forcing happy thoughts and ideas down his throat. I left the end of the song a little vague...either Billy decides to give in to all of the bull that the doctors feed him and he starts over as happy little boy, or he jumps out a window and ends it all. I don't know which happens, but in either case, the doctors didn't help Billy at all.
I originally wrote the chorus with the line "Suicide watch must be the worst," but I decided that that was a horrible generalization to make. Clearly, people who want to kill themselves need immediate help. Billy just got awful help and was made into an experiment, hence the revised chorus.
Barricade
Your red house, your yellow roof, your orange windows
I run to the door with all that I have
Ready to give it all to help you out
You've locked the door and boarded the windows
You're sitting in the corner
Suffocating in the world you've created
I'd break the door down for you
I'd break the door down for you
I'd break the door down for you
But you filled the doors with bricks
The walls around crumble, fall, evaporate in the smoke
The door stays still and will not break
It absorbs all of the force I make
My body breaks to a thousand pieces bashing down the brick
You never even noticed, the smoke's grown too thick
No matter how loud I shout, none of it will stick
For God's sake, let me in
Let me help you out
I wrote this song when I felt completely useless in helping out someone who was feeling down. I tried everything, but they wouldn't let me help. I felt as though they were in a burning house, and I was trying to break my way in to pull them out, but they'd built a barricade in my way, and I couldn't get to them, no matter how hard I tried.
You Know You Know
Turn off your highbeams
You only need the patch of tar
Ten feet in front of your car
To figure out where you are
Keep away the carnies
You don't need their fortune telling cards
Ten dollars won't get you too far
In figuring out where you are
Stay away from the phone
You're better off left in the dark
Ten digits until au revoir
Won't help figure out where you are
Take yourself out of yourself
Forget about how you're the star
Outside of yourself, it isn't too hard
To figure out where you are
This song was written as advice for myself when I was trying to figure out "who I am." There was a ton of stupid things I was worrying about, but I knew the solutions. I just needed to get them outside of myself and onto paper. I needed to stop looking so far into the future. I needed to stop caring about what other people said. I needed to look at myself from other perspectives. That's all this was. It was one of the easier songs I've written, but I'm really proud of it. It's one of the heaviest songs I have.
Stock
Days to weeks of worryworting
Trying to see what needs some sorting
Bathed in light on a sea of white
Seeing what is here
All I needed was a save
A sweet taste for which I've craved
By your side, nothing to hide
Here is what I am
Didn't bring the things I bought
Ignoring all the things I've thought
No more walls that make me crawl
Reaching what I can
Look me down, break me apart
Take me back to the start
Breathing deep, the warm air sleeps
And wakes inside of you
It's the culmination of everything that I worried about for years - all the "self-searching." It's me finally discarding all of the bullshit that didn't matter and finding myself. With a lot of help from Amanda. I used computer effects for most of this song in the first recording, but I plan to keep a few effects and get some more intrumentation in it. It seems like the perfect end piece to an album like this - all of the songs before it are me worrying or feeling lousy, and it all makes sense in the end.
3-11
More recording was supposed to happen yesterday, but it was cancelled...so we'll try again later. I've also written one more song this week..it doesn't have a title yet, but it might be the end track to this CD. Or maybe in the middle. I'll work it out and see what sounds good...I'll see if this song itself even sounds any good. I think it does.
2-24
"Hope" and "Not Ready For This" recorded, mastered, finished, posted on music myspace. They're awesome. I love having such good recordings of my songs. Today I guess I did 25% of the album I planned, which is great. I'm not sure when I'll next get to record...three of the songs will go quickly, since I have fewer tracks to record. Hopefully I don't have to wait too long, but it's up to George and Kyle and all the equipment.
2-23
Tomorrow I start recording at my friend George's house. I have a list of eight songs that I really want to do...I've arranged them so it shows a change in me from early junior year to right about now. These are the songs that I'm most proud of over the last year and a half.
Hope
Her mother was lost on her way
With a deadbeat dad, I hate to say
She was born, as he lay on the floor
He slurred, "Name her Hope," and never said any more
Now she lives on her own
Away from the life she'd always known
Her life is bleak, but her outlook remains
Bright
And she's all right
She's all right
Hope
Her plane went down but there's still hope
The soundwaves clashed but there's still hope
Her problems resonate
Death's handed to her on a silver plate
Wait
There's still hope
Once her parents left her out
Her father done, her mom in doubt
She was broken, she lay on the floor
She didn't want this anymore
A light shines brighter when there's none
And things will always come undone
A light shines brighter when there's none
Just ask Hope
I wrote this when I was thinking about people who are just happy, no matter what. My friend, Nikki, was probably on my mind when I wrote this. This was probably the first song I wrote that I really felt like playing and singing for people. It's a fictional girl named Hope (symbolism ha ha) who has an alcoholic dad and a mother who doesn't care at all about her. Even though everything sucks, she's still happy and cheerful. Eventually, her dad dies and her mom forgets about her. She's all by herself, and ready to start a new life without her awful parents. And she does. The last stanza comes after a piano solo, and it's just showing how she handles herself and stays happy throughout all the garbage.
Not Ready For This
Hurt to hear it last night, tossed and turned at the thought
Had a scary dream or two
Thank god for rebirth, waved goodbye to all my doubt
Once the night was through
Sunday morning came, and I feel much better
As long as it's normal, so hard to forget her
As long as I'm thankful that I ever met her
I guess it works out fine if she's doing well
Off in the corner of a photo of some crazy kids, your eyes off in the sky
Back then, it made me go to a chair and sit alone, now I don't even try
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
I'm not alone now, neither are you
I'm not ready for this, but I have to be
Said goodbye from outside the house, not that you'd hear
More to reassure myself, more to help myself be more sincere
I have to be better off after this, I have to be more of a man now
I have to be better off after this
I'm not ready for this
I made a CD after I'd been writing songs for about a month or two, which was the same month or two after I'd gotten dumped. Most of the songs on that CD were about feeling awful about getting dumped, and most were total garbage. This song is the only one that actually had something to it other than "I'm sad because I got dumped." While I won't go into the specific event that inspired this song, it's just about not being over the girl even after I got dumped and we'd both gone our separate ways. It was stupid of me to hold on, which I realize now, but back then, I was just afraid to start over. I wasn't ready. Then I got ready, but it took way too long.
Rainman
You can't go splashing in the rain, she said
Stay inside where it is warm
Wait a little longer, we might see a movie
Once we're out of the storm
I'm gonna grab my hat and gloves
Pull a jacket on over this sleepy heart
Go on outside and slip in the mud
Slowly make my way out to start
On my rainman
There's not enough snow left on the ground
To make a man out of it
There's not enough pain stuck in my life
To make a man out of me
I'm sick of staying with all of the crowd
They wander around with glazed over eyes
Bumper car relatives stumbling 'round
Slowly I stumble under the grey sky
And work on my rainman
It falls apart no matter how much I try
Seems to be real, real as birds want to fly
Get me out of here right away
It was the day after Christmas, and it rained. All day. I really needed to get out of the house, away from everybody. But instead, the whole family wandered around the house all day bumping into each other, not knowing what to do. It was all suffocating.
Not Angry Just Mad
Where did the walls go? And what is this place?
The borderline is gone without a trace
Now he can't be sure what's in his head and what's outside
Without walls to hold back his view
His world's entirely new
Without them to see what he sees
His world has fallen right through
Who's in the world now, and who is not
This whole big beautiful world is all a thought
He formed the bits and pieces in his head
Where are the followers?
If he can create it all, he must be
A better man than most, but we'll call him crazy
'Cause we cannot see the world that he sees
Does majority win? And who's to say what is real?
The lot of them claim a world that's unfair
His world is so different, does he get the chair?
Or some other stuff to suffocate his world 'cause it's rare?
They'll get him alone and he'll have a new world to bear
Over the summer before my senior year, I read "A Beautiful Mind," the biography of John Nash, a schizophrenic math genius. I thought about schizophrenia for a long time, and then this song came out. It's about a schizophrenic being made aware of the fact that the hallucinations he sees don't really exist. This song, however, implies that the doctors put down the man because the world he imagines is better than the actual world, which then begs the question as to whose world is real. Just because more people see one world, does that make it more real than a world inside of one man's mind? Reality ends up being nothing at all, and the world that has more people in it rules. It doesn't have to just apply to schizophrenics...it also seems to channel activists that fight for a better world, but are silenced. It works on a lot of levels.
I recorded this initially with all computer-generated beats and tracks, except for vocals, a few solo guitar tracks, and some sound effects. At George's, I plan to keep the computer beat, but add more instrumentation.
Billy Monahan
One car down, no more parents back at home
Left to the older ones, my, how he has grown
Billy Monahan's grandparents aren't as sharp as they were
More of this and Billy might slip under
A friend of his picked up and called
Billy's watched from wall to wall
This experiment must be the worst
Everything is analyzed and criticized and nothing is all right
Everything's wrong
He knew that all along
Nowhere else to run, he's trapped and hypnotized
Psychologist can't stop looking at his eyes
Won't give him peace, they will question every note
A shining bit of hope is forced down his throat
A friend of his picked up and called
Billy's watched from wall to wall
This experiment must be the worst
Everything is analyzed and criticized and nothing is all right
Everything's wrong
He knew that all along
Out the window of the office on the seventh floor
He looks below and wonders if he needs to be here anymore
Silence floods the room as the doctor takes a puff and waits
For Billy Monahan to make the first move towards a clean slate
Was it all a dream, or did he really make that choice
Is it just a dream, or do I really hear his voice
All the questions swirl around the elderly grandfolk
What did we do wrong? How long was it 'til my heart broke?
I read somewhere about someone who wanted to commit suicide, so a friend told someone and then doctors took care of him and the friend was praised as a hero. This made me wonder what happens after everyone knows a person is suicidal. I've known depressed people, but thankfully, none who have gone so far as to end their life. This song is about a fictional person named Billy Monahan who loses his parents in a car crash and has to live with his senile grandparents. He wants to kill himself, but a friend calls for help. Doctors then look at Billy as an experiment, prodding him and forcing happy thoughts and ideas down his throat. I left the end of the song a little vague...either Billy decides to give in to all of the bull that the doctors feed him and he starts over as happy little boy, or he jumps out a window and ends it all. I don't know which happens, but in either case, the doctors didn't help Billy at all.
I originally wrote the chorus with the line "Suicide watch must be the worst," but I decided that that was a horrible generalization to make. Clearly, people who want to kill themselves need immediate help. Billy just got awful help and was made into an experiment, hence the revised chorus.
Barricade
Your red house, your yellow roof, your orange windows
I run to the door with all that I have
Ready to give it all to help you out
You've locked the door and boarded the windows
You're sitting in the corner
Suffocating in the world you've created
I'd break the door down for you
I'd break the door down for you
I'd break the door down for you
But you filled the doors with bricks
The walls around crumble, fall, evaporate in the smoke
The door stays still and will not break
It absorbs all of the force I make
My body breaks to a thousand pieces bashing down the brick
You never even noticed, the smoke's grown too thick
No matter how loud I shout, none of it will stick
For God's sake, let me in
Let me help you out
I wrote this song when I felt completely useless in helping out someone who was feeling down. I tried everything, but they wouldn't let me help. I felt as though they were in a burning house, and I was trying to break my way in to pull them out, but they'd built a barricade in my way, and I couldn't get to them, no matter how hard I tried.
You Know You Know
Turn off your highbeams
You only need the patch of tar
Ten feet in front of your car
To figure out where you are
Keep away the carnies
You don't need their fortune telling cards
Ten dollars won't get you too far
In figuring out where you are
Stay away from the phone
You're better off left in the dark
Ten digits until au revoir
Won't help figure out where you are
Take yourself out of yourself
Forget about how you're the star
Outside of yourself, it isn't too hard
To figure out where you are
This song was written as advice for myself when I was trying to figure out "who I am." There was a ton of stupid things I was worrying about, but I knew the solutions. I just needed to get them outside of myself and onto paper. I needed to stop looking so far into the future. I needed to stop caring about what other people said. I needed to look at myself from other perspectives. That's all this was. It was one of the easier songs I've written, but I'm really proud of it. It's one of the heaviest songs I have.
Stock
Days to weeks of worryworting
Trying to see what needs some sorting
Bathed in light on a sea of white
Seeing what is here
All I needed was a save
A sweet taste for which I've craved
By your side, nothing to hide
Here is what I am
Didn't bring the things I bought
Ignoring all the things I've thought
No more walls that make me crawl
Reaching what I can
Look me down, break me apart
Take me back to the start
Breathing deep, the warm air sleeps
And wakes inside of you
It's the culmination of everything that I worried about for years - all the "self-searching." It's me finally discarding all of the bullshit that didn't matter and finding myself. With a lot of help from Amanda. I used computer effects for most of this song in the first recording, but I plan to keep a few effects and get some more intrumentation in it. It seems like the perfect end piece to an album like this - all of the songs before it are me worrying or feeling lousy, and it all makes sense in the end.
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