j0, Thought You Knew, ltne(dit)
Dec. 25th, 2009 01:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
solarbirdThe first song I ever wrote for any stringed instrument was a five-verse piece called "Thought You Knew." I started it a year ago last March (in 2008), and had something kinda performable by summer, and I've been playing it ever since. I tweaked a few things here and there throughout 2008 and have really left it alone since, until tonight. I changed one line that I've been meaning to fix - the original was a real anvil around its neck, the penned-in replacement in my performance sheet was better but not actually good - and somehow that ended up opening a whole bunch of changes I hadn't really set out to make...
...which, now that I think about it, is kind of in theme for the song, aheh...
None of the changes are really large, but there are a bunch of them: one chord in a recurring linking bit, a couple of chords in the outro, some shifting about in the bridge, one string different in the extended outro I stole from The World Falls Down; one line of lyric in verse 1, one word in the chorus, one phrase in verse four, and... verse 5. The last verse got turned over a good bit, but it mostly means the same thing.
It's a much better song for it, at least, for me. I can't imagine anyone will get the significance of the single word change in the chorus to the song in my head, for example - and there's no reason they should. They'd at most go, 'well, that makes a little more sense, I guess.' But... if the song is a story, and I think songs are stories, then this song's protagonist is making a promise, of sorts, that she doesn't know she's capable of keeping - even if she very much wants to keep it.
Is that honest? I don't know. It's certainly a better song for it, though.
...which, now that I think about it, is kind of in theme for the song, aheh...
None of the changes are really large, but there are a bunch of them: one chord in a recurring linking bit, a couple of chords in the outro, some shifting about in the bridge, one string different in the extended outro I stole from The World Falls Down; one line of lyric in verse 1, one word in the chorus, one phrase in verse four, and... verse 5. The last verse got turned over a good bit, but it mostly means the same thing.
It's a much better song for it, at least, for me. I can't imagine anyone will get the significance of the single word change in the chorus to the song in my head, for example - and there's no reason they should. They'd at most go, 'well, that makes a little more sense, I guess.' But... if the song is a story, and I think songs are stories, then this song's protagonist is making a promise, of sorts, that she doesn't know she's capable of keeping - even if she very much wants to keep it.
Is that honest? I don't know. It's certainly a better song for it, though.
no subject
Date: 2009-12-25 11:35 pm (UTC)And yes indeed, songs can definitely be stories, and not always intelligible. Language is individually tunable.
Day's pleasance, as would be!
no subject
Date: 2009-12-26 01:20 am (UTC)