#280 - Music, music, music.

One Day [rough]

One Day

I know you feel the storm that brews beyond that sky
I know you fear that help will pass you by
But this path you walk is your own
So even if you fall, stand up and move on
Because I know

One day, one day
You'll reach your El Dorado
Where all is as it seems
One day, one day
You'll find the Shangri-La
Of your fevered dreams
One day...

I know you fight to keep control
I know it feels like the trail has gone cold
But just take the detours and see
That you're going where you need to be
Believe me when I say

One day, one day
You'll reach your El Dorado
Where all is as it seems
One day, one day
You'll find the Shangri-La
Of your fevered dreams
One day...

One day, one day
You'll reach your El Dorado
Where all is as it seems
One day, one day
You'll find the Shangri-La
Of your fevered dreams
One day...

One of the things I try to keep in mind as I compose the piano for my songs is that I want it to be as distinctive and interesting as the lyrics and vocal line, and not "just" an accompaniment to those things. Ideally, if you played just the piano part of my songs, it should sound like an almost complete instrumental piece in and of itself. Part of it is just that it sounds better to me - it's one of the many things I love about Vienna Teng's music, even when she's already advanced enough in her music career to be able to allow for other instrumentation when composing her songs. (Just wait 'til y'all hear the piano for "Antebellum"! Lovely, lovely song.) Part of it is also feeling self-conscious about the vast difference in ability between my piano performance skills and my vocal skills, hoping to make up for my lack of vocal skills at the moment with some interesting piano work. Unfortunately, then you have to take into account that my actual composing skills are even worse than my vocal skills, so now here I am, a bit of a trainwreck of musical (in)ability...

At any rate, this is, I suppose, one of those "writer's block" songs, which would explain why the lyrics are simpler and shorter than usual. I was just tired of playing my usual songs, and I was stuck on my unfinished songs, so I threw this one together the other night when I probably should have been doing homework. I'm not entirely sure what to do with it now; as usual, once I get the vocal melody and the chords down, I'm at a loss for what to do for the piano accompaniment that isn't just the same shit over and over again.

***

Also, the Gods help me - I ordered Inland Territory straight from the German Amazon website. The album can't arrive fast enough. o_o!

Also also, there's finally a clip of the song Vienna wrote for a singer-songwriter "reality show" called Sagebrush Valentine, in which a group of musicians were given a title and had to write a song based on that title in an hour. You can see Vienna's version of "Nothing Left For Us to Find" here on Vimeo.

-Reileen
I am left silent here, trying so hard to understand