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Song Of The Month Club - May 2024
What is the Song of the Month Club?
It's a place where musicians come to give and receive feedback on their work. Anyone is welcome, whatever their level of ability.
The spirit of the club is to contribute: if you submit a song for others to comment on, you should also have the courtesy to listen to everyone else's contributions and give as much feedback as possible. Posting a track and not listening and commenting on others is not cool.
The purpose of feedback is to be honest. Essentially you should give your truthful impressions of the song, whether good or bad. Negative feedback, if done in the right spirit and with courtesy, can be the most useful and can help the artist to grow.
All submissions are welcome, don't hesitate if you want to contribute. We like all kinds of music and we are particularly fond of vocals (but of course we still love a great instrumental). If you are thinking of experimenting with vocals this is a good place to get started.
We ask that you only post one song per month in this thread - if you're lucky enough to be able to produce more, then please just submit your strongest material
And finally, iOS is not a requirement for posting here. If you've recorded your song using nothing but a ukulele and a Fostex 4 track, that's fine.
Comments
My entry for the month, lyrics in the spoiler:
When you fight you stand your ground
You don’t give in or turn around
You won’t let me answer
I have to concede
And I found
When you are around
The things you say the things you do
All the words that don’t ring true
How
Can you be so wrong?
You thought you would never
Be the only one
Tell me why again
I don’t know what or when
What is it you want feel?
What is it is it for real?
You and I we’ve been around
I’ve kept my ear close to the ground
So I know you’re not quite
The man you believe
And I found
When you stare me down
The things unsaid between us two
The words you speak that don’t ring true
How
Can you be so wrong?
You thought you would never
Be the only one
Tell me why again
I don’t know what or when
What is it you want feel?
What is it is it for real?
Great chorus, the high "How" is lovely, signalling what's to come. The guitar tone in the solo/outro is really nice too, as is the melody which shares duty with the synth nicely.
Here's my entry, from my Burnt Earth project with my old bandmate Steve. It's another orchestral slab of misery.
I really like that. It’s got a turn of the century r.e.m vibe to it. Up, reveal, ect. Their vet sounds phase, I call it. (Not a typo.)
The held high how is a nice launch into the chorus. I’m expecting it to repeat that note phrasing when it comes around to the tell line. It might be more ‘chorusy’ if it did, but I kind of like that it didn’t. Some bvs there might be a thought. But that might just be my inner beach boy speaking.
Like I said I really like it. It’s got a nice groovy melancholy going on.
This is really cool. My only gripe is it’s not long enough! I wasn’t finished with the piano when the strings came in!
But it’s not like I’m unhappy with what they are doing either.
I can actually imagine this being used for end credits or for that bit in a spy moving where it’s raining and he has to research things in a a university library in Gothenburg or somewhere.
Nice work.
Thanks for that great and detailed feedback, it’s really nice when that much thought has been put into a feedback post.
Good R.E.M. reference, I like those later (vet 😉) albums, although my absolute favourite just predates them: New Adventures in Hi-Fi
I actually hadn’t thought of repeating the high “how” in the chorus, I tend to write long chorus sections with at least two distinct parts, but that repetition might have worked. I might think about adding backing vocals, it’s something I often do, but this time they’re just doubled.
@richardyot i love new adventures. It’s the album that convinced a friend of mine to think of rem as 3 different bands and to love the later version for what they are, not get annoyed for what they aren’t.
I’m working on a cover of be mine with a friend. I like the idea of how having a woman sing it, how different instrumentations can change how people interpret the song. It’ll be interesting at least.
Be sure to post it here
I love everything R.E.M. did up to Reveal, but the final three albums were disappointing for me. The quartet of Out Of Time, Automatic, Monster, and New Adventures are the high point for me personally, but everything they did for the first 25 years of their existence was awesome. Murmur was a pretty amazing first album.
This one is a big departure from your recent album, where are the saturated edgy drums?
The piano theme is perfectly complemented by the strings, and the whole thing is quietly evocative, with more than a hint of melancholy. I like the way the strings lift the piano theme, with the counterpoint that contrasts beautifully with the more static piano part.
I love planets, I think this and fjords are two of my favorite. You have a talent for this type of music
Great song. I particularly like the interludes of guitar, the doubling with the synths. Also the bridge and chorus are great. Nice solo section too, it ends really nicely
Thanks! Looking forward to hearing your contribution this month
This is a music track that I improvised on two MIDI keyboards connected to Bitwig Studio on a desktop PC. There the MIDI was routed to Solo for the bassoon, oboe, violin, and flute; Dolce for the basses; and Omnisphere, ZebraHZ, and Alchemy for the other instruments.
After bringing the audio recording into Vegas Pro, I applied the Lurssen Mastering Console plug-in to the audio mix.
It's titled Beneath the Trees.
Another one featuring my fledgling piano playing…it’s quite scary being this exposed!!
The Man In The Restaurant
He’s stone cold sober, he walks in quite alone
Diners raise their gazes, his head, tilts to check his phone
Takes a table in the corner, pulls his chair in tight
He catches no one’s eyes stares out the window, into the black of night
The man in the restaurant, his story untold, behind his
Fixed smile someone ran off with his soul, don’t you know that
The man in the restaurant he’s dying inside, as he fights
Memories pretending he’s nothing to hide
A foreign waitress politely asks “Sir, will you be dining tonight”?
He orders from the a la carte and a single glass of white wine
He’s still, he waits and a circle of tension weaves around his table
Inside his head, it’s exploding with his thoughts, and he’d run if he felt able
Without warning he jumps to his feet, storms past discerning diners
Demands to see the maitre d’, though the food could not be finer
Arms raised in front of blood shot face “Sir, are you alright”?
@DavidEnglish
That is a lovely piece of music. Very nicely balanced.
@BillS
i find it quite refreshing to hear your piano playing tbh. I’ve long held the belief that it’s the imperfections in music that we relate to. Or rather if things are too perfect it feels off.
I fall into the trap myself often of quantising, stretching, moving things to be precise, but the world isn’t and neither are musicians. Violins don’t always keep volume levels consistent, bowing often affects the dynamics, piano chords don’t hit all the notes exactly at the same time etc etc
So it’s actually that vulnerability in the playing with this song that draws my ear, it gives it dimensions. Set against the strong vocal it reflects the lyrics and adds weight to the character.
I love the synth lead! Also the chorus is really sweet. I like the guitars in your tracks and sometimes they are a bit buried in the mix, but maybe it's what you wanted.
Sad and dramatic, I absolutely love it. I would have just emphasized more the key change around 1:30 because to me was really asking for more drama
Killer track though!
Lovely synth hook as an intro that drew me in. The guitar refrains are lovely too. You are a skilled song crafter, lyrics are always strong and this is no exception.
Can I ask about your overall production style? It may be just my personal taste but I am always wanting your great songs to benefit from more dynamics. At least, I think that’s what I mean! For the drums to punch through more, for there to be a bit more top end sparkle. To my ears (and I may be wrong), the production seems a bit overly compressed - I.e. the dynamic range is quite restricted. In my “full band” songs the comment I hear about my production time and again is “clean” or “very clean””…which I think is a compliment. There are certainly a zillion ways to approach production and I guess we are aiming at different things and have different styles.
Anyway, great song, listened to it a good few times on good equipment and it’s right up there with your best!
Wow that melodic phrase at the beginning, and repeating certainly captures you. It is indeed a dark piece, although slab of misery is probably a bit harsh. Darkly beautiful actually, with a traditional classical music feel running through it. Creative and excellent I would say.
Sublime and mesmerising (especially if you watch the video whilst listening) as ever David. You create the finest ‘mood’ music - funny, I was thinking this piece could have accommodated some tasteful orchestral percussion to good effect - I wonder if that is something you’d consider?
You're doing great with the piano, I can see an album of Elton John-esque ballads in your future
This has the usual technical excellence and clean production that you are known for round these parts, another fine addition to the canon.
Thanks for the feedback. Interesting thought of yours. As it happens there is only very little compression on my tracks, just one or two db on the master bus and some heavier compression on the vocals, and that's it.
But I think I know what you mean, IMO it's not to do with compression but with instrument separation - I don't tend to use EQ to separate different instruments from each other, and the guitars in particular eat up a lot of frequency bandwidth. But I am definitely not aiming for a clean production sound, I want a little dirt in there, for things to be a little blurry and fuzzy - I don't think a super-clean production would suit my aesthetic.
An idea of the sound I am aiming for (production-wise) would be something like this, it's not all totally clean and separated, there is some dirt in there:
@richardyot Interesting. I knew that yours was a deliberate choice, and I have to say that the production of How Can You Be So Wrong and the Radiohead track is very similar - great job, you've 100% achieved that. I've never really listened to Radiohead or similar.
For my part, I also do very little EQ tweaking on the instrumentation, I prefer to get a the raw stems recorded as close as I can to the final sound as I can. The one exception is my vocals where I often spend time sculpting the EQ to get the voice to sit as well as I can in the mix. Vocals are what every casual listen focuses on after all.
Hi Guys.. This is my 4th track on my Label.. Enjoy..
That's interesting, I would have assumed that you would high-pass filter instruments like guitars or piano to clear up some of the muddier frequencies. If you're not using EQ or compression it's remarkable that you get such clarity and separation in your mixes.
Peaceful and uplifting in a melancholy sort of way. I love the tone of the basses.
Another contemplative peaceful piece. You have definitely mastered this kind of music. :-)
I love the folky and quirky storytelling, kind of like a modern day minstrel, which I mean in purely complimentary terms! I wish my piano playing was this good.
Thanks for listening. I’m glad you love it!!
I see what you mean about the key change. We went through various alternatives and in some I had a much more obvious transition, I quite liked the alternative with a little break before the next section came in, but this was the arrangement we both agreed on :-)
Thank you, ‘darkly beautiful’ is quite the compliment!