An original song demo completed for the Songwriting course at Coursera.org. All instruments (acoustic guitars, bass guitar) and vocals performed by me.
This wasn’t a serious effort to record this song; I merely wanted to get the idea down and complete the class assignment. I thought the lyrics were weak when I wrote them last week- throwaway lyrics to meet the requirements of the class- and now they’ve come back to haunt me. I do like the groove, though. Maybe I’ll try to rewrite the lyrics.
I’m a better composer and musician than I am a lyricist or singer. I’m OK with that.
And hey Susan! No funny effects except for some reverb and panning. This isn’t the one I mentioned earlier today, however. I just wrote this.
Radical Totality 
I really hope you re-record this one. It’s got way too much potential to be abandoned. Nice work!
Thank you! I’m not going to abandon it, but I do have to rewrite the lyrics- they’re really weak.
I do like the sound of it but the lyrics are awful.
A special trip to the library for a quick listen (eats up too much data on phone at home)…
Lovely guitars. Neil Young/ Appalachian-ey vibe. Panning distracting, doesn’t seem to serve anything in the song…. (like it does in Pink Floyd, for example)
Great work !
Thank you! I do think my sound is Neil Young-y, late ’60’s-y or early 70’s-y, though I was told by a friend who’s an accomplished musician that when he heard me rock Ray Charles’ “Hard Times” “THAT is your sound.” (I can’t put that on Soundcloud unless I get the rights to it.)
I agree about the panning- I decided this morning when I listened to it that when I rework the song I won’t do the wild panning. The sound would drift away from one ear and I wanted it back. If this was meant to be a finished product I could easily fix that.
The thing that bothers me is the lyrics. I really dislike them- I just think they’re very weak and not at all either poetic or in my voice.
I put this whole thing together in about 2 hours late last night so I could still have a shot at passing the course. The assignment mandated I use lyrics I wrote last week, which were toss-off lyrics at the last minute before I went out of town so I had something to turn in. I knew they were bad but didn’t care at that point. I thought this week I would get the chance to write something better, but that’s not the way it worked. I will be working on rewriting it.
I learned quite a bit by going through the process, and built confidence that I could throw a passable demo together so quickly- but I surely want to write better songs than this.
I even think about removing the vocals altogether and making it an instrumental- I could improvise solos with several other instruments.
The experience has also taught me that I’m not bad at composing this kind of music, but my lyric writing really needs upgrading. I know it’s a process to learn, but I am feeling a bit discouraged about lyric writing. I just haven’t found a writing process that works for me yet.
I really liked it! My one suggestion has also been mentioned.. the panning was crazy distracting and unnecessary. I think it’s ok to have instruments segregated on separate channels, but when you start moving music from one channel to the other, it’s unnerving. I can only see it as useful if you’re trying to create a feeling of motion, which didn’t seem appropriate in this context.
Thanks boss. I detest the lyrics enough that I have to rewrite them. And I agree the panning has to go.
Very Neil Young. You’ve got something to build on here, as others have said.
Thank you. I wrote some music today and have a concept for another song- but I’m not sure they belong together. The music is weird with jazz-infused chords with a little Pete Townshend thrown in.
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