[The Sensitive Female Chord Progression]

This blog definitely qualifies as the "stumbled-upon" category, but it's got a lot of interesting stuff that I think is actually worth reading, despite the intentionally whimsical name: The Sensitive Female Chord Progression.

And while we are on the subject of chord progressions, I give you http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdxkVQy7QLM. A cello player's railings against a cello player's classic(al) curse. Also fun listening, and yet, informative as well.

Really, it makes you want to scream ... (another fun link)

(Wikipedia ... ... I swear, you can get lost in there!)

[Chord Progressions]

Plus, the more distortion you use the worse those additional notes sound, which is why the "power chord" (which is really just the root & perfect 5th, sometimes with one note or the other doubled) is so popular in metal; most of those guys use so much amp distortion even the major or minor 3rd becomes too dissonant...

That's an interesting idea ... the "fuzz boxes" as a musical instrument. They do transform the notes being played and thus alter the notes' true values and their relationship to one another. (I've heard it referred to as "bending the notes on the staff," as one bends or pushes the strings around on the fretboard. Or maybe, "if I smash this guitar to pieces on the stage, what note is played?) I wonder if anyone has actually figured out what notes are actually coming out of the speaker, vs. being sounded on the guitar itself? Those rock-guitar chords obviously aren't being sounded as-writ, when all the electronics are finished doing what they do.

[Chord Progressions]

Well, here is where I would love to be able to see the exact combination of notes you are talking about, Nick, because I can't quite visualize what you mean by:

C add 9 - C E G C D with the D falling above the octave of the root rather than

C add 2 - C D E G C with the D falling below the octave of the root

To quote Victor Borge ... (sigh, R.I.P., my good man) ... "where the hell is C?" Or in this case, "D?"

It sounds to me like one of the points you are making is that the effective distinction between a "2" chord and a "9" chord is the voicing, "open" vs. "closed," since of course they are the same note, e.g. "D."

Whew! Music theory in the early morning. Time for another cuppa joe.

[Who Cares About Songwriters?]

Howzabout the songwriter who doesn't sing?

As for me, I write computer software commercially ... I write text commercially ... maybe someday I can write songs commercially ... ... but don't ask me to sing them! I'd much rather give you a lead sheet, maybe a simple "scratch" arrangement, but a vocal performance from me would not be a pretty thing.

Maybe we should be encouraged, not discouraged, by all that is happening around us. The demand for music is huge ... which is why there's so much out there and somehow it's still selling. People are obviously interested in musical performance, because they buy video games to fantasize about doing it. And a music all about songwriting just won the "Best Actor" and "Best Original Score" Oscars, here in the States.

Somewhere out there, among all that wretched "bubble gum," there must be someone who's gonna blow all our socks off someday. But he or she might not be a "singer + songwriter."

[Who Cares About Songwriters?]

Alright, okay, that tears it! I've had it up to "here" with all the cracks about "Band-in-a-Box"! Why, I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll BLOW YOUR MANUSCRIPT PAPER DOWN!!! (smile, laugh, guffaw!)

Peace! That's why I tried to say that I wasn't slamming the product.

As it has been said, "computers can't do music for you, but they certainly help." There is a lot of the process of arranging and even writing a song that, I can see, are well-defined enough that a computer could reasonably and usefully help you do them. And so, without further ado, I'd say... "that's what a digital computer is for." I would no more want to do music without computer assistance (now...), than I would want to use a typewriter to write papers. Now that the tools exist, let us use them (and improve them). "A million monkeys," digital or no, still won't write Shakespeare.

[Chord Progressions]

That makes some sense.

Does it make the same sense to all of us ?

Aaah...

So maybe not.

I didn't know that.

Obviously, "I didn't know that, either." Thanks, Retro!

You learn something new every day. Now, what's the real scoop on suspensions?

[Chord Progressions]

My understanding is that "C9" and "Cadd9" would indeed be equivalent.

The "suspension" term comes from the notion that the note (2nd or 4th) is going to move ... it has to move ... (say) to the 3rd. It's a dissonance that adds spice or tension, then relieves it directly.

One of the best books on chord progressions that I found was a chapter in Jimmy Webb's definitive Tunesmith, but that is a book where it literally took me a week to read one chapter through.

[Who Cares About Songwriters?]

Tom Watson, Sr, the founder of IBM Corporation, used the following little example with his salespeople:

"Two shoe salesmen were sent to Pango Pango to explore business opportunities there. Both of them immediately wired back:

COMING HOME NEXT BOAT X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX

and...

GRAND OPPORTUNITY X SEND ALL YOU HAVE X NO ONE HERE WEARS SHOES XX

You bet: "it's a pithy point." (But it was written for salesmen, remember...)

There have always been many kinds of writers serving many kinds of markets. I still remember, and I still miss, Grit magazine. No one can argue with the success of the supermarket tabloids. Being a soap-opera star is, well, "steady work in Hollywood," which I guess is rare.

The folks who have their "band in a box" songs and "writer in a box" software (no doubt... and yes, I am "being cynical" here, not actually smashing product-pumpkins) will always have a market for their work. Maybe they don't need writers at all. But have you actually listened to their stuff? Would you want to? Go ahead... name one actual tune by Britney Spears. Hum a few bars. I can't. I don't want to. That's not my music. These folks might have at one time been in a position to be so smug, but the tide goes in and the tide goes out. "The water makes dry land." (Hmm... that sounds like a song...)

But of this we can be sure: no matter what kind of taste in music we like, there are millions of other people out there just like us, and we are all connected now. For the very first time in all of human history. "We live in interesting times." Probably the most interesting times of any generation that has ever yet lived... period.

Former business models simply do not apply. It is no longer a model where "you find them." In a real sense, "they find you." Just as you, when "you" are "they," seek and find.

And the true shape of the market now? Well, "no one here wears shoes." Here's a pencil. You write the next line.

[Songwriting Declared Dead]

Eh. I can shamelessly say I play guitar hero. (Or played, havn't played in a few months). But, I also play 3 instruments, (one of those being guitar, though I'm still learning) and write songs. And understand that guitar hero doesn't make you make a good guitarist. But electronicly made music and music written by someone with talent have a huge difference, and I think the difference will show.

And I heartily agree that if you do know something about a real instrument, and you're "playing" those difficult riffs even if only in fantasy, you are learning something very important about that performance.

"Ditto," also, about "electronically made music." I know that my performance skills are lackluster. ... truth is, I don't practice much ... but I know that I can work on music of some complexity that someone else can play. They always use the score as a guide; which is really all that it can be. They always improvise. I try to compare what they did to what I wrote.

I guess that you can take any piece of music, say, Fur Elise, and when fifteen different good pianists each play it, you've got fifteen fantastic songs. No argument on that point. The digital computer is just as limited a tool, as it is remarkable.

[How Much Time Do You Spend On Music]

I suggest that we can all take a lesson from the other creative arts that can be pursued (semi-)professionally: working with it every day is probably more important in the long run than "exactly how much time" you spend. (Even the most enjoyable effort can become an obsession.)

And, I think, you need to know that not all of that time is really going to be "enjoyable." Really, you've created a little "job" for yourself and you have to finish it. (Sometimes I think that the subconscious mind will quickly dump a good idea in your lap as if to say, "There! Now, can we please move on to something different?") Y'know, just to shut you up. And then again, sometimes it just won't.

There are days when you are capturing a flow of ideas; days when you are transcribing them from a scribble-pad and a hastily hummed sound file on your iPhone; and there are days when you are developing or arranging something from the recent past. I almost never have a day that involves more than one of these things.

I kinda like what Charles Schulz (Peanuts) once said. Every morning at the same time he shut his office to all distractions and put a pencil and a doodle-pad on his drawing board and that is exactly what he made himself do for an allotted period of time. I get up, start the coffee, feed the cat and sit down in front of staff-paper (software, actually...) and I do this every morning that I can. A new version of whatever I am working on is added ... even if it is exactly the same as yesterday's.

No, I do not make my living at this (yet...), but I know that somehow it "unlocks" my thinking, on whatever subject, for the rest of the workday at Reel Job. It's like the every-evening long walk at dusk ... it just makes you feel better. I write computer software for a living. And I know that sometimes my mind is thinking about both things at once. Some days, I swear the source-code is musical.

[What Makes A Good Songwriter?]

The "reality of being creative" may appear boring to an onlooker. It may feel boring to a poser. But with other creative people or in the quietest solitude there is plentiful joy in the creative process. The reason I don't perform (setting aside my absolute lack of performing talent) is, for me, the boring part begins when the creative part ends.

What I meant by that was simply that after that magical bolt of creativity hits you with the initial idea for the song, then the craft-work begins. The magical outline of an elephant has appeared on that great big block of marble, and a hammer and a chisel has appeared in your hand. Get to work.

And we can be honest here: after you have run-through a song for the eleventy-umpteenth time, trying to push it just a little more ... yeah, that can start to get boring. Starts to feel a bit like a "the J-word," you know. But that's also just another aspect of "being creative." You want to snap your fingers and all of the notes just rearrange themselves perfectly, but instead you have to dig for it. You are working as an arranger. And that's just a different "creativity."

I started to quip, "Where's Harry Potter when you need him?" But J. K. Rowling would have a very different answer for that, than the rest of us.

[What Makes A Good Songwriter?]

The "popular image" is probably done that way because the reality of being creative is very boring. You schlep away at something for hours each day, for days on end, and that will never "make good copy," as any journalist or P. R. man would very quickly tell you. The mental image of Venus just popping up out of that clamshell (and oh by the way, she's starkers...) is much more agreeable.

And how did those "famous" people "that are household words" do it? By writing That One Hit Song, of course. Not by writing something to accompany that commercial you just heard, or by writing that "dum de dum dahhh, dum de dum daah" bumpers for NPR. Nope, "first she ate a lot of bis - cuits / then she smoked a lit - tle dope / and she wrote a one - hit - won - der / and that was All She Wrote."

(Heh. Not bad. "I'm a poet and I know it. Make a rhyme every time.")

[Melody]

Working, as I do, with (electronic...) music-paper, I start with a "lead sheet." (The sort of thing you buy as a "fake book.") And I'll write a line, add a few empty measures and then a new-line break. On the next staff, another line. And so on and on, sometimes for many pages. The pages are there because I studiously avoid deleting anything. If I rework a line, I copy-and-paste and then rework the copy. (Obviously, if there's a clam, I'll just fix it in-place.)

From "all this stuff," I choose things to copy into a new document, in which I'm now trying to "string together" melodies and, if I have any, perhaps a counter-melody beneath them. Chord patterns also begin to suggest themselves because by now I've worked-through the stuff for a while. I label the lines so I know where they came from in the other document(s). If a particular instrument suggests itself, I might label it that way, but usually it's just a piano-sound now. In this way, I build up pages of "strings."

It is strange what a mixture you come up with. Some of the lines are obviously-garbage. (Yet, studiously kept.) Sometimes the melody feels right but the timing is wrong. And sometimes that "mis-placed" note is just what you were looking for. You can feel that your subconscious is thinking about the song even when "you" aren't. When you drift away during a dull afternoon meeting, the song is there.

Sometimes a line is, well, "just a line." It's a descending progression with triplets dancing around the top. Or something. I have no idea where to put it or what it belongs to... but, "there it is." I toss a copy into the "pieces box." The mind is like that.

The computer's great because it can accurately play-back whatever you've written ... even if you don't have anywhere near the manual dexterity and hand/eye coordination to do such a thing yourself. (I write a lot of music that I can't play. Sigh...)

Having lost more than one digital file (despite backups... the files were somehow borked), I do print-out and label the working draft copies, and I shove them into a banker's box beneath the printer table.

And all of this is still just a lead-sheet: it's just notes. Maybe I've plinked on a keyboard a bit to sketch in a I-IV-V harmony. (Well, if the melody in progress really leans upon surrounding harmony, I have been known to sketch that in more detail.) But I kinda think that the melody has to be as strong as you can make it, first. Arranging the thing trying to build a three-minute song out of all those pieces, really is a separate process altogether. And making a recording is voodoo of which I know not.

[Music Creation And Recording Programs ?]

I know it's kind of a different angle on the creative process, but I work with musical scores as my starting point. Notes and markings on five-lined paper.

I have been very impressed with MuseScore, an open-source program that runs on everything. It is quite solid, full-featured (as you can see for yourself... the documentation's all on the website), and of course lets you run-through the music as you're building it.

I do say, "building it," because that's what you'll do: note by note. You can import and export to various other tools in all the usual formats. (And, yes, there are tools out there that can also do "auto-arranging.") But these workflows are deliberate ones, not seamless.

If you do work this way, MuseScore is a very good tool.

[Male To Femail Voice Change Software]

You can usually find collaborators who will provide vocals (and everything else) for you.

For instance, on macjams.com, many of the very best songs (and they are legion...) are the "collabs" of many talented individuals. "The Sisters," "Roxie," and many others there have amazing voices and are very willing to share. And this is simply one of the places where I "lurk," listening. The Internet (and, I am quite sure, this site) is full of people who can help you with your song, and the sum is much greater than its parts.

There isn't any question that the whole thing began with "the songwriter." But someone else might have done the arranging, or offered a killer solo track, or done the mix. A few very talented folks are aces at the arcane art of mastering.

So, "who wrote it?" Perhaps one soul. But, "who made it?" Many.

Write your song. Take it as far as you can. Make it inviting. Then, invite others into your world.

[Songwriting Declared Dead]

well it might weed out those who pick up a guitar to look cool or attract the opposite sex, if they think they can do that on guitar player they'll maybe take that option lol

Alas...

" ... the girls just turn a - way

To another guitar picker

In another late night place ..."

-- Alabama

But every song that any "Guitar Hero" ever fantasized of playing "expertly," somebody else did play "expertly." And, another person (or group of people) wrote it. Visual artists sweated hours away on displays that the erstwhile "hero" will barely notice. Programmers ran yet another regression-test on mountains of source code. Someone did the mixing and the mastering. All unseen.

No one on this planet has ever been transported ... not "Over the Rainbow" or "Up, Up And Away" ... without a song taking them there. There are many other places to go, and songs that will take them there. Those songs are just waiting to be written.

Maybe, though, things like Guitar Hero aren't too much different from what I remember doing as a child with my ... umm ... transistor radio. "Air guitar."

Maybe now, as the computer does what a computer inevitably does, it will expose more people to music and even allow them to progress beyond their own piano-lessons. I know that this has happened to me. Recently. Yesterday. This might make utterly no sense to anyone (except the sort of folks who hang out here), but here I was, writing the start of a little tune ... oboe, harp, and still-imagined strings. No one really there but me and the computer, a couple of hours in, and... suddenly it took that magic little turn and it was something that I had never heard before. I swear it was an accident. But... my own music... my own... sent me ... somewhere. It was like it wasn't quite "my music" anymore. (Yeah, you know. I know.)

I mashed the backup button. Twice. Copied to the spare hard drive. Printed it. Stared.

And the computer did make it possible. Maybe it was that very nice oboe patch, that auto-dynamics, the magic that comes from tweaking MIDI pressure and velocity settings on a modern patch. But, another song is coming to life and perhaps someday you shall hear it. My organ-lessons could not have done that on their own. They took me far, but a computer can go farther. The song could not have been realized and be coming out of my speakers without that technology.

Or, it can just be high-tech air guitar (and another novel new market for songwriters).

There will always be late-night places. There will always be crowds in the back, and magicians in the front.

[Tips For New Lyricists]

A lyric does not have to strictly be locked to its music, nor to (especially, "obviously contrived") rhymes, but it will always be revealed to the listener one word at a time. And from these words, especially the first ones, the listener will begin to form a mental image. And that mental image, coming as it does from the listener's own experience of whatever you are singing about, has to be engaging.

Although you, the lyricist, are writing words, the listener probably will never read the words you write.

[Impro-Visor]

Well, since it is written by a professor of music (and since I am, at heart, a computer-science geek ) I do intend to have a look-see at what it might have to offer. I don't perceive that the real thrust of this software is to be "Band-in-a-Box."

Maybe, such a tool is meant partly to study what can be done algorithmically. It's like the people who work with chess-playing software in order to study how humans play chess. (One of the grand-masters of chess is working with IBM on that.) I find that interesting, although I myself do not play chess. In a sense, the computer is made to produce a mirror against which we find our own selves reflected. When we construct such a thing, we notice what is missing or different. Our brains are especially good at spotting differences (any one of which could be a tiger in the grass, that's ready to eat you).

The folks who seriously expect "a band in a box," or that they can buy musical genius from Microsoft, probably also think that a hayseed farm-boy can impress an Italian supermodel just by buying a piece of software that calls itself Rosetta Stone. But then again, there's not much to be said or done about attitudes like that... except, of course, to sell them something. I don't think that this is what these folks had in mind. (And BTW, I also don't mean to sell-short a commercial tool that I know many people find to be useful.)

It also seems to me that they chose well, and deliberately, when they selected jazz improvisation as their field of study. This is extemporaneous composing, never the same thing twice and intended so to be. A computer would have a much better chance of doing that because it would largely consist of stringing-together riffs. So, they seem to be confining their "scope of work" carefully.

As I listen to their sample song (which, admittedly, has four or more alternate endings back-to-back), the repetition shows. The notes change (although in limited ways); the rhythm and pacing doesn't. And so on.

But, could a songwriter profitably learn from that anyway? Would it bust people out of writer's block? Would it introduce new ideas (taken from a library of riffs such as these programs have)?

Indeed, might it do so in a different way precisely because of what the digital computer can uniquely bring to the tale? The user can instantly both hear and see (simultaneously and in real-time) something that is, literally, "altogether new and unexpected." I'm quite intrigued to think what the actual impact of such an experience might be, say upon a serious music student or a young child (who is also serious about music).

Would it in any way substitute for the very valid things that you say? I think, absolutely not. Nevertheless, here is something that a very readily available piece of digital hardware can do, which, one might well argue, nothing else can do. How could such a tool, with such novel properties, be used in the context of music (self-?) education? I personally would love to find something that a computer can do for young people besides spoon-feed them expensive musical fantasies . . . (Pshaw! How can you call yourself a "Guitar Hero" when you can't even play the damm thing?)

[What Software Do You Use?]

I have been pleased with MuseScore (http://www.musescore.org) which is a very full-featured open source, free, music notation program that runs on everything. It is very solid, very complete, and (as you will see from the website) very well documented. The entire manual is on that site, and it speaks (well) for itself.

(AnneC, you're not the only "odd duck" around here.)

[Impro-Visor]

Looks quite interesting and useful . . . what do you think?

http://www.cs.hmc.edu/~keller/jazz/improvisor/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impro-Visor

[I Could Use Some Help]

To me, there are two distinct parts to the process: (1) capturing a musical idea, and (2) developing it into a song. I don't know if it's really possible to do both of these things at the same time. So, "when the ideas are flowing," just capture them any way you can. A tape recorder (or, these days, your phone...), a hasty scribble if you know how to write music. Literally, whatever works.

Eventually, this improvisational process will wind down. You'll have a lot of "stuff." Some of it will sound very repetitive. Some of what's on the tape is nothing more than "dah de-dum de-dah," with not so much as the faintest suggestion of the complete symphony orchestra or the killer hard-rock band that you heard in your mind's ear. C'est la guerre... But if you take the time to capture it all, carefully and completely, it can never "get away." (You can add that killer guitar riff later ... you can write the part.)

Treat everything that you write with respect. In other words, "keep it all." Instead of writing a big red "X" through it and ripping it in half, write a neat, small "X" in the margin (along with today's date) and shove it into a nearby banker's box. (Take the time also to put a title or project-name on the scrap as well.) Or, put the electronic file into a folder named "Trash Can" that nonetheless isn't the "real" trashcan. Let the backup system run once-an-hour like it always should. Disk space is cheap; so is paper; so are banker's boxes. You wrote it... you put time and human effort into it... and, who knows, you might be going back through your "boneyard" someday and find the perfect riff, or the (re-)inspiration for one. (Great thing to do as a warm-up.) Keep a diary or journal: thoughts are fleeting. And of course, that notepad by the bed, along with a "iddy biddy book light" to avoid waking up the spouse (or the cat, who will wake up anyway and insist on a midnight snack).

Those pieces that you at first impulse would have "ripped up and thrown away" might well prove to fit into the overall puzzle somewhere: you just couldn't see how they could fit at the time. Plus, there is a lot of choice involved, and it always helps to have plenty of things to choose from.

"Developing a song" from all those ideas is a much more deliberate exercise, literally picking-and-choosing in order to assemble these disconnected musical thoughts into musical sentences and paragraphs. At this point you're not so much "looking for new material" as trying to choose what to do with what you have. This is where you'd love to be able to "surprise" your ear with something that's a bit unexpected, thus putting your ear into the place of being "a member of the audience" rather than always "the conductor." You might think that it's all just absolute junk ... going nowhere at all ... and then... The geode falls open and there are diamond-like crystals inside. The work paid off. (And to think, just a little time before, it looked like nothing more than an ugly rock.)

[Approach To Writing A Song]

It would be fun to keep this going . . .

I actually "write a song" with music paper. Well, these days with an open-source scoring program (that is quite good and runs on everything).

I start with a key and noodle around with intervals. Look for an arrangement of four or five notes that seems to be going somewhere. Look for various possible arrangements of those notes. Sketch a bunch of those out, with several measures of rest between them. One or two of them usually hop out. I work with those.

Various things you can try... copy and paste, shift 'em up and/or down, flip 'em end-for-end or upside down. Change the length of notes. Insert some rests.

I usually work in silence, strange as that may seem. Humming to myself. Occasionally turning the sound on to listen to a phrase.

Eventually, what comes out of all this a lead-sheet. It's just a single line of melody. I block-in the very basic (I, IV, V) chord structure just to give a sense of what it might sound like in some sort of a setting. It's not intended to last; just to make it sound a bit more encouraging than just a single line of notes.

Usually, by this time, something definite has begun to take hold. So, taking the idea phrase-by-phrase I start writing out (on the computer) more detailed ideas of different possible versions of the various possible lines. I do not know which one(s) I am going to use yet, and I am very meticulous to keep them all. There is, in a folder, every file I ever did of every song (there aren't many yet) that I ever write, or tried to write. One folder (containing subfolders) is called TrashCan, and yet it is not the Trash Can. Time Machine is always running once-an-hour (or sooner) on my Mac, and nothing goes into the trash, no matter how snarly. Nothing.

Strangly, there aren't any lyrics yet. Quite a bit of my stuff does not have lyrics at all. Yet. And I've also got ideas for lyrics, poems and such, that do not have songs to go with them. Yet. Ditto the idea of keeping every version, every scrap of everything.

I really wrestle with it, I'm afraid. Copy and paste phrases from one page into another trying to stitch them together into a cohesive piece that makes sense. Usually don't get it right. File-away the abortive attempt (don't delete it!) or "Save As," and keep going. Days go by that way. But, poco a poco, it actually works for me.

When a song finally gets as good as a lead sheet can make it, it's time to try to arrange and orchestrate the piece into something that can be played. Usually by someone with much better technical skills on the keyboard than I actually possess. Or, by the computer, which plays better than I could ever dream to. "Orchestration and arranging" is what I'm really trying to self-study and master right now.

Anyone else out there?

[Songwriting Declared Dead]

I'd say that Guitar Hero is the best thing that ever happened to real musicianship. And this program is therefore the best thing that ever happened to songwriting.

In both cases, the best way to demonstrate how difficult the real stuff is, is to positively fill every available inch of sound-space with mediocrity. You'll have "that warm, fuzzy feeling" long enough to buy the product, but it won't be too long before your fake-guitar is hanging up at a used book store, looking pretty cheap and stupid for $20. ("On Sale Today!") Maybe their aspirations will have been spent, and they'll have moved on to something truly wonderful ... like hip-hop ... or maybe they'll become truly interested in learning how the real world works.

Hey ... we know it ... we're in the minority. We bust our for what we love to do. And we know, when we come up with something, it's real.

Those who seek, as we do, will find. Perhaps a program like this will show them, as nothing else could, that the real thing is "worth seeking."

[The Best Melodic Writers]

Johann Sebastian Bach. No, I'm not kidding. He was a great keyboard writer. The classics are chock-full of phrases and ideas and the old ones are all public-domain now. They get cabbaged all the time.

A "good melody" isn't just a melody, though. It's an arrangement. Rare is the melody (Bach's dum-de-dum-dum de-dum-dum de-dum-dum de-DUM-dum-dum dum-dum-dum-dum ... yeah, you know the one; of course you do. Or, Pachebel's Canon...) that it alone is an unmistakable motive in just a single line of notes.

[Looking For Some Lyric Writing Advice]

The lyric writing is becoming a huge issue for me. My productivity has dropped to almost nothing because writing lyrics takes me so long.

I've posted a few lyrics here, not for crtique, but simply as an idea of what my last song was like. In the end I was reasonably happy with them, but I sweated blood over them and they took FOREVER. If anyone can offer some advice, so I can make even a small improvement to my songwriting I'd be very grateful.

Writing good stuff can take a long time, because so much of writing is re-writing. (In all disciplines.)

"Sing me your mantra, I’ll tell you my favourite joke

I smell your perfume, you breathe my cigarette smoke

Love’s a misunderstanding, between two simple fools

This is strong. It shows the differences between the two people using purely sensory terms. The first two lines are absolutely wonderful. Plus, the third line also shows they're still in it together. This is about the relationship, and about relationships, not a stormy ending. Good. I'll bet that line #3 can be tightened yet; a word-swap or maybe two. Maybe not: there's a time to call it "done," and maybe this verse is there.

You’re oil on canvas, shadows and light

You’re oil on canvas, shadows and light

Thinking about a painting as "shadows and light" is also strong. I wonder if the second line could be replaced with another simile, without becoming trite. I'm not sure. I'm not sure at all.

A million times I’ve looked looked into those eyes,

Too many times I’ve tried catching the secret behind, whatever’s inside

Your Mona Lisa eyes

"Mona Lisa eyes" is a good simile, yet coming here for the first time it is unanticipated. Could it be faintly suggested at, in an earlier line? Maybe, maybe not.

You smile poiltely yet I sense a distance between us

I kiss you lightly, it dies on your lips with sigh….

We’re static and drifting, both together alone

Another good scene, yet I sense it could be made stronger. "Both together alone" is an interesting mental image; the four words before it are weaker.

Too many times I’ve looked looked into those eyes,

A million times I’ve tried catching the secret behind, whatever’s inside,

Your Mona Lisa eyes"

"Too many times" okay, but rhyme with something other than "a million times." And I wonder if instead of these the "painting" metaphor could be brought up again. I'm not sure.

If this is "what took you so long," fine! It's a strong lyric.

I've been known to tackle a piece of writing with a yellow and an orange highlighter: yellow for stronger, orange for something I wish I could find some stronger way to say (or that I ponder if is carrying its weight as-writ). And I stare for some time at it, but thinking about it every day somehow so that my "other mind" knows I'm waiting impatiently.

What kind of music do you envision your lyric being set to? Or have you done that already?