[Dan-d-1985]

Hi guys,

I thought i'd post this as my first song on here. It's about 6 months old and Im not quite complete with it, but I don't know where to take it.

The song is called severance and is about a breakdown in friendships from mid last year. I was in a band with a friend and his fiancé as well as a few other folk. Over time in that band the tension got pants based largely on it becoming very much a "them and us" kind of thing where you couldn't yell boo without getting her in tears and by October 2011, we disbanded the band for a few months (realistically it was the end then tho and I knew it). I could tell if we kept going it was going to explode and cause alot of collateral damage.

Anyway, mid last year, we hadn't caught up all that much - life, jobs and general mayhem got in the way and they never contacted me or close friends ever regardless of the number of reach-outs to them but we saw them last early summer and the next day the gates of hell & Mordor and mount vesuvius itself could have opened/erupted up and caused less devastation. The fiancé started crazy shenanigans which tore alot of friendships up and I cut them out after that.

This song was my goodbye to them. It's mostly an acoustic track with a wee noodle at the end. I don't know what I was doing with my vox, I guess I was pissed at them to go all grunty haha!

I'll link my dropbox acc here:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/83213778/Severance/17%20Severance.m4a

I'd love to hear thoughts on everything from you guys.

Acoustic tuning - Low-CGCGCC-High

LYRICS:

I'm, done with you tonight
You've burned your bridge and
Run Away
I gave you all I could
But you wanted more

Now the walls are falling
For all to see
The madness that has swallowed me
Now I must go
And take my leave
You've drained the life from me

So please don't play those games again
I’ve seen them played a 1000 times
I wish you all the best, I do
But I can't take you any more

I lie awake at night
Could I have done much more
I guess it was bound to pass
This fate was assured

Now the walls are falling
For all to see
The madness that has swallowed me
Now I must go
And take my leave
You've drained the life from me

So please don't play those games again
I’ve seen them played a 1000 times
I wish you all the best, I do
But I can't take you any more

So goodbye
I leave you
In the rear view
No longer will
I let myself
Be governed by your whims
I've got my life
You've got yours
Now let us part as weary souls
And start our lives again

[terrysains]

Tried to listen; said error? Terry.

[Dan-d-1985]

Tried to listen; said error? Terry.

Cocked up link - sorry!

Hopefully you can hear it now?

D.

[bewarethisboy]

I think this is great. I would love to know what your plans are for it. I could see it turning into quite a production! I like the guitar work and the melody works. I wonder if there could be just a little more variety between the verse and chorus? They tended to merge together a smidge perhaps. And I felt it was a bit on the long side. But still having said all that - a really good song and one well worth working up to the next level. BTB

[Alan Starkie]

Hi Dan,

I can hear Seether in this.

It's classic acoustic/metal unplugged fayre.

Nice one. I think you achieved exactly what you were aiming for.

Alan.

[habiTat]

Oooh this is cool, loving that guitar and the rocky vocal. I reckon that band was pretty good on it's day if you were the vocalist

This is well worth working on further, not that much needs doing, just a more hi-fi recording.

I recommend getting a soundcloud account so you can keep track of the number of listens, likes etc..

Welcome to the forum, bloomin' excellent guitar work sir

hab..

[stephaniedema]

Hey Dan!

Nice first post!
The vocals remind me of Eddie Vedder (and that's a huge compliment, I idolize that guy!)
I don't know where you should take it. I actually think this works pretty good as an acoustic song, as it is now.
Maybe put in some vocal harmonies?
Just my ideas of course

SD

[Dan-d-1985]

Thanks for the compliments and feedback guys!

I'm glad you like it, as I say, I think there's needs to be more in there, I just don't know what. I worry that putting drums/bass etc would clutter it up and kill the almost acoustic only vibe it has. I'll maybe make an acoustic version of the solo and keep it true to roots. I was and am quite the grunge metal pop rock latin jazz fan so I'm glad some of that came out Alan , thanks!

bewarethisboy - when you variety between verse and chorus, do you mean vocally or guitar parts? If there was a 2nd guitar part over the top in the chorus sections, maybe a counter melody, would that kind of thing work?

habiTat - I was mainly guitars (although I did sing in falsetto alot oddly). The fiance had the lungs - she's a great singer, i'll still give her that. She's just got an ego the size of the gobi desert to go with it....

You're right about the recording itself, I don't have the greatest home rig.

I for this double tracked the acoustic -

DI'd into my interface (a TC electronic desktop konnekt 6) into my mac in cubase 4 LE.
Also Had a mic over the acoustic itself at same time to get a bit more natural sound.

I'm just rotten when it comes to post porcessing and knowing how to do what I need to do.

I should know more since I want to be a proper song writer, but I know how to get my ideas down before OCD and ADHD squirrels, oh there's that fiver I was looking for. Now I can go to the shop and buy that unicorn out the window wow todays been trippy.

Sorry..... 

I get distracted with guitars and ideas all the time so my main aim is to have them roughly down before I forget my train of thought on that specific piece.

Harmonies. That could work really well. To be honest, I think I could do with doing a cleaner vocal the more I revisit this track so I could both at the same time. Thanks stephaniedema



Quick question to any and all - to avoid putting .wav and .aiff files up on a soundcloud account as they're huge, what's the best way to convert from  these formats to mp3? iTunes converts to m4a easily enough (as it's an apple thing), but not mp3 and cubase LE doesn't mix down to mp3. Any tips?

Any recommendations?

Thanks again!

[Alan Starkie]

I use Winamp for all my wav-mp3 conversions.

Not sure that its included in the free version though.

Check it out. It's good.

[Neil C]

Dan -
re file conversions check out this post http://www.songwriterforum.co.uk/recording/help-importing-a-loop/ I'll have a listen later.
 
Neil

[Michael]

Hi Dan,
great first song post and welcome to the forum!

The acoustic guitar sounds very cool and works absolutely perfect for that song I think.
This could be one of those unplugged version bonus tracks at the end of a rock album, that ends up sounding better than the original version.

The vocals are really good as well. We don't get a lot of those rocky vocals on here, and I'm glad you posted this.

Oh, and to get the mp3 file I think you can use the inbuilt 'convert' function of the free VLC media player, CTRL+R should get you there.

[Dutchbeat]

Hi Dan,
welcome to the forum!
a cool song coming out of such a bad situation....

[James Nighthawk]

I like this. Are you american, or just singing with an accent?

Reminds me of American Acoustic Rock tracks. I daren't throw names out as I'll get them wrong!

Great guitar, vocal and chords. 5 minutes is a stretch in its acoustic guise, but I can hear a full band on this! Careful with the drum arrangement if you go full band with this; it needs to be "full" and avoid sounding ploddy, which this tempo can trigger

Great first post, thoroughly enjoyed

[seriousfun]

Love the sound you got going here. Love the vocal, adds some real edge to the song which is supported by the lyric. Nice guitar play . The song is a bit long for this style though IMHO but I think you need to revisit the lyrics and maybe rewrite them so there could be an opportunity there to condense the song at the same time. The main issue with them being that there is no standard rhyming pattern in the verses. The odd rhyme throws up now and again but you really need to establish a solid rhyming pattern. Its really important as this helps to carry the listener along and lead them from line to line.

The chorus is fine cause you have a rhyme with before and more.  I do question the validity of reapeating the verse starting "now the walls are falling..... "  when you have a song of this length this represents a great opportunity to shorten it by about 40 secs and that's a good start.
 Also with the part starting "So please don't play those games again" I would go with the second version of this as it adds a great contrast to the song and acts as a great bridge. I get a feeling its written more as a bridge as it brings something new to the table. And I think I would end with the "goodbye..."  as it is a natural ending to the story.

Sorry if I sound pedantic and picky, but Its such a good song and I feel it is being let down a little by the structure of the lyric. The words themselves are great, but its the arrangement of them and lack of rhymes.  As its a WIP this is the time to look at these areas.

You have actually done  something very clever with these lyrics though. The way have you written them exudes integrity. Your personal connection with this story shines through. But, you have not only maintained you personal story but have also written it in such away that the listener can feel a love story imbedded in here which makes it a very marketable pop/rock song. Just get it in under 4 mins and rhyming and it will be a sure fire winner.

Loved it
Allan.