#280 - Music, music, music.

[reileen]

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

Comments

[dantaron.livejournal.com]

Remember, you don't have to have a steady predictable eight-note rhythm, or whatever. =3 Feel free to toss up the timing, a quarter note, a sixteenth note, etc. Hell, you could even use rests. xP
For this song, I think you could do a left-hand rhythm playing simple/quick appeggios in a driving rhythm (think similarly to Blue Caravan's bassline), and with your right hand, you could play some really high notes (either single or chords), and add them as punctuation at random places throughout the line, high and ethereal. You could progress from that style to ascending pentatonics during those final two choruses and harmonize your left and right hands and kinda give this uplifting feeling, although you could just have them compliment each other and play, say, the third/fifth, instead. xP
I wonder if I could use msn to try (and fail) to convey these riffs to you. xD 'cause, well, I'm the opposite of you. xD Better at songwriting than I am at actually playing the instrument - and trust me, it sucks just as much. =P

[dantaron.livejournal.com]

Oh, forgot something important. xD
I'm in class, so I didn't get to listen to it yet, nor watch the Vienna video. xD It may be good enough the way it is, in which case, disregard what I said. xD

[reileen.livejournal.com]

It may be good enough the way it is

TRUST ME, IT'S NOT. >_> Although it's not meant to be an overly complicated song anyway.

"Sphinx", on the other hand...

[dantaron.livejournal.com]

lolz, it's not that bad. =3 I listened to it afterwards - and concerns about your song sounding the same, well... individually, your songs still are very good. =3 And after all, if Disturbed and AC/DC STILL can't get their songs sound different from one another, then you don't have to worry about it, yet. =P

I'm not even sure if I remember the lyrics for "Sphinx" beyond that it was ungodly complicated/awesome.

As for writing riffs, you could just do what Metallica does - have the lyrics written seperately from the riffs altogether, just jam around and record a bunch of totally random riffs whenever you feel like playing, and then when you make a song, listen to your riffs and pick whichever one you think fits it the most.

[reileen.livejournal.com]

As for writing riffs, you could just do what Metallica does - have the lyrics written seperately from the riffs altogether, just jam around and record a bunch of totally random riffs whenever you feel like playing, and then when you make a song, listen to your riffs and pick whichever one you think fits it the most.

That sounds like a good idea - I'll definitely try it out.

The lyrics to "Sphinx" are pretty cryptic-ish (http://reileen.livejournal.com/64677.html), and the melody seems to have established itself in the key of B-flat minor. ...I think that's the name, at least. Whatever it is, it has lots and lots of flats, joy! I think the meter is 4/4, but the vocal line for the chorus - which was actually the first thing musically that I figured out about the song, a while back - has a bit of an odd rhythm to it that I'm having trouble dealing with on the piano end of things.