Do you remember your first songs ?

  • Thread starter Thread starter grimtraveller
  • Start date Start date
The night after I bought my first bass, I tuned it like a cello and worked out "Rain" by Status Quo. Except that I worked out the guitar part as opposed to the bass part but I didn't know it at the time. However, that same night, I wrote the first proper piece that has endured, an atmospheric sleepfest called "The virgin and the whore". I've done a few versions of it (one lasted an hour !). Playing "Rain" the way I did and working out "The virgin and the whore" the way I did was hugely instrumental in both the way I play bass and songwriting. Because I've written tons of songs on the bass and if anyone ever heard them, they'd never hear them the way I do for once other harmonies and melodies find their way in, the song is already mutating. But I always hear that bass part as central. In the first couple of years I played, I wrote loads of songs and fragments of songs. Some of them pop into my memory every now and again and get added to something current.
Also, at that '81~'83 period in my life, I had become accustomed to long songs, being a listener to Floyd, Zeppelin, Blue Oyster cult, Sabbath and a host of jazzers like Miles Davies, Pharoah Sanders, Stanley Clarke and others like Gil Scott Heron, that weren't averse to compositions that took up whole sides, half sides or 8~9 minutes. While jamming, I'd find whole long segments that, to me, fitted so well and went on to become multi part excursions. So lots of my things go on if not not quite forever, let's say a lengthy spell. I don't even think of them as epics.
Of late I've been disciplining myself to come up with 2 minute slices. It's hard !
 
Way back in early 2010.
No clue about how I was supposed to be mixing, the snare buzz was annoying, my guitar levels were weird, the bass was distorted "not the good kind"... you live and you learn right?
yep those were the days
 
I wrote my first song in fall 2008, in 3 days, and revised it about a year after. I find it a good approach to give ourselves time to learn the craft before producing demos, it allows us to see the missed opportunities. The song is ready to be demoed, but is still not.
 
My first song when I was 8 was very simple. Sadly I can't give you the tune with this software, but the lyrics were:

A hundred miles from Caterham
There is a robbery station
A hundred miles from Caterham
They gallop around the town
 
yeah, i was 8 and wrote a couple songs with my lil sis.

one called "Swing Up High" that went

"Swing up high, swing down low
I don't care but GO GO GO!"

and another called "Me In Jail" that went something like

"Me in jail and I can't get out!
How long do I
Have to shout?!?!"

We were drooling over these cheapo guitars and keyboards in the Service Merchandise catalog but we just never got em. We didn't really have jobs at the time.

A couple years later I wrote a dozen or so songs for a fictitious band I had with my fat portuguese buddy called The Golden Flames. KISS was huge then and we were also going to wear makeup, spit blood and have big explosions everywhere, cuz it was obvious how the world needed two KISSes.
I even had plans to denounce the real KISS as poseurs once we got big enough. This was of course before I found out about the whole "Knights In the Service of Satan" thing and shunned them altogether.
 
timtimtim said:
A hundred miles from Caterham
There is a robbery station
A hundred miles from Caterham
They gallop around the town
Click to expand...
I thought I recognized that !
My sister lives pretty close to there. I always see it on signposts when I head down that way. Even I'm closer than 100 miles from Caterham !

fat_fleet said:
This was of course before I found out about the whole "Knights In the Service of Satan" thing and shunned them altogether.
Click to expand...
You know, when I was a new christian, many moons ago, that was that period in the 80s when 'preachers' all over the States were on a seriously vocal anti rock crusade and every little 'detail' was dredged up in an attempt to ensure young believers weren't sullied and tainted by the unspeakably loud evil. Lots of that ilk over here were influenced by that. I actually heard someone in the middle of a meeting {she was my best mate so I didn't mishear it ! } say that KISS was an acronym for "Knights in Satan's service".
What a load of garbage. Total nonsense and utterly {and shamefully} false. If any of those folk had known anything about Gene Simmons, they would never have tried that one on !
For the glam rock era, Kiss was almost the perfect name, a bit like Queen {which did have connotations}.
fat_fleet said:
a fictitious band I had with my fat portuguese buddy
Click to expand...
"My fat Portugese buddy" would've been a fantastic name for a band. Much better than Mountain or Meatloaf {both named after somewhat portly gents....}
 
grimtraveller said:
.. that was that period in the 80s when 'preachers' all over the States were on a seriously vocal anti rock crusade and every little 'detail' was dredged up in an attempt to ensure young believers weren't sullied and tainted by the unspeakably loud evil.
Click to expand...

i remember that time vividly, right around when Ozzy bit the dove's head off. boy did that rub folks the wrong way.
 
Funny thing is that when I pick up any instrument. I always play a few of my first songs that I ever wrote on them.
Even if they are silly tunes I'll warm up and play a verse maybe a chorus or intro to several original tunes.
Then it's of to make more history.
 
Man, way back in 2000 was the first time I wrote and laid a record, thought I was so dope. Now going back and listening to the cassette tapes, i was so bad lol. Always love playing the old music, makes you appreciate the progression.
 
The title of the first song I wrote was called "Your Eyes." I was 17 and learning to play my moms Goya classical guitar when a beautiful girl broke my heart. I recorded it 30 some odd years later for posterity on my debut CD -- "Live at the Pemberville Opera House." You can hear it in it's entirety off of the myspace link. For a buck you own it. Check out my reverbnation page to hear what I am up to now (e.g. Old Folks Coming Down).

Best,

Dahl

P.S. I joined the forum because I like to capture the aspects of live music and the interactions they invite and support.
 
Spazhands said:
I remember sat in my old bedroom with my partner in grime drinking real cider and staring at a blank Ableton screen. That evening in particular we just ended up messing around with his Roland synth and not much more!! But we did get a riff down off my crappy old strat and went from there. We never really had much deliberation, it was more like "what does this track need" it just built and built until it sounded like it needed no more. I listened to it upon reading this thread, musically it is there... quality not so much!
Click to expand...


Remids me of that scene from Father Ted (UK Tv)


I wrote my first "finished" songs in around '76 playing in a few London Pubs. We opened with one that had the opening lines.

She wouldn't be the one
You'd go and see in a Movie
She wouldn't be the one
You'd ever thought would be choosy.

I aint no Liar
If you saw her
You'd aim higher.



What was we on eh! (oh by the way...that lot is copyrighted!!.............Jus sayin')
 
Last edited:
Oh yes... the "first thing I ever wrote" ?

I knew NOTHING of pitched instruments, as i was a drummer.

I had bought a giant casio keyboard... not one of those K-mart things... this thing was B-I-G, and had line outs and pedal inputs and stuff... i actuallyl SAW my own keyboard used by the "stack of keyboards" player that all 80s bands tended to have, lol

I remember going thru "book one" in pianoo lessons (the red book? LMAO) and thinking:

"Exactly HOW in the &^%$ is doing THIS ever going to teach me how to WRITE stuff? This is just teaching me to PLAY what someone ELSE wrote, gawdammit!"

yet... I once sat down to the thing, and with absolutely NO IDEA what I was doing, "fiddled" with white keays only, and came up with a short 20 second snippet.... which when played with "pipe organ" and "reverb" switches engaged... sounded sorta cool

but, it was a "one trick pony", LMAO. I used to like to approach a piano, sit down, and play "my thing", then get up and walk away, like at the student union in college... lmFao... chicks thought I could maybe play piano, lol, which was cool.

my fingers can still feel the "motions" of that short snippet piece, and i think in short order I could come up with it again...

oh GOD, now I clearly remember my "first song".... as in, was more than 10 seconds long?

it was a dreadful little "humor piece" I did... as a matter of fact, I posted it HERE on THIS site, many years ago... at THAT time, I thought of THIS site as "the BIG music site" where I had to get off and go back to the "little music site" for a couple years, LMAO...

I still remember the review one guy gave me, pointing out it had no "melody", lol... I was just trying ANYTHING to get SOMETHING out, musically anyways, LMAO.

I was using one note "synth drones" and doing "C", then "E", then "G". WHY? one might well ask?

ha ha...

at the time, all I KNEW was that C,E, and G made up the Cmaj chord... so they "must go together", ha ha

...I added in what I hoped was humorous voiceover, in lieu of any "lyrics" and mixed in "sex sounds" for "spice"




perfectly dreadful, but... we all gotta start somewhere, right?

in the back of my head, kind of "driving me", so to speak? Remember, I went "back to the other (little) music site" as I wasnt good enough to be "here"... it was childish crap i was making, LMAO... but, as I left, there was this ONE GUY, who said something like:

"Look, no one fooling around in their home, without real talent an experience... will "ever" produce ANYthing of ANY note, whatsoever... using downloaded free/pirated kmusic software... it just aint gonna ever happen"



I really took exception to that statement, as it was what I was DOING at the time, LMAO. hey, I didnt want to REPEAT my failure of youth, IE, buying a 550 dollar keyboard and regretting it later on, so... I downloaded some free shizz and played with it to see if this was going to be a "real thing" I ever got into

which i DID, and yeah, you end up paying $$$ for some stuff you actually need software wise, but...



I DID START out knowing absolutely NOTHING of music and pitched instruments, other than having been a drummer a long time ago... and yeah, i DID start out using "free" downloaded software.

*shrugs*

I since moved on, and spent a few bux on software, but... you know, I never WOULD HAVE had I not got SOMEwhere with the free stuff.

and... oh yeah...that ONE glib comment? lit a fire under my arse. By the GODS, I was going to show THIS GUY, you know? LMAO... My intention was to come back years later, and make him "admit" that even though that was where I did start...

...that I had come to make something "of note" eventually. That he was "wrong"...





ha hahahahahah hahaha ah ahahahahaaa...... *maniacal laughter*


god, I sorta/kinda "live" for the (imagined) moment... but, I have long since abandoned THAT for the simple time I realized that i was driving a couple hours trip... alone at night in a car... and that I realized I didnt mind listening to a long list of MY OWN tracks...

I was like "wow... I can actually listen to my own stuff, and it doesnt make me cringe..."

ha ha... I WISH I actually LIKED simple 3-chord country/simple-pop songs, LMAO... it would be a HECK of a lot easier to accomplish that sort of thing, rather than the "big format" stuff i aspire to pull off, LMAO...

when I was young, an older man accomplished in my field at the time, told me to ALWAYS "set the bar ridiculously high"... and in so doing? in THAT manner, if you "fail" and only achieve half, or even a fraction of what you intended?...

you STILL got SOMEwhere... *shrugs*

but I would definitely post my first "couple minute song" just for shits and giggles... and encourage the laughter, and I laugh at it now too, lmFao...
 
First song I ever wrote was called "Magic Eye". I was in 6th grade and it was about those Magic Eye books where you stare at some random colors and a picture appears :D

Magic Eye
See it with your eye
see it if you try
it is magic eye

It is missing
it is missing
it is missing
I CANT FIND IT

Magic eye is missing and I cannot find it
Magic eye is missing and I cannot find it

Magic Eye
See it with your eye
see it if you try
it is magic eye
 
I've done this a few times or dug up old songs I've written years ago and use those as starting points and improve on those. I had lots of good ideas but just couldn't expand on most things. Years later and being much more knowledgable it makes life easier.
 
phriq said:
First song I ever wrote was called "Magic Eye".
Click to expand...
I dig the lyrics of that song. It's really psychedelic. I'd be almost afraid to hear the actual song in case it didn't match up to the brilliance of the lyrics. I don't usually say that about lyrics that I've not heard the music to.
 
Some fun stuff here guys. I remember the first song I ever wrote was called 'My Girlfriend is a Werewolf'. A jokey track that pretty much explains itself. 'Yaknow baby somethings just not right, your hairy and you howl all night, your breath smells of rotting flesh, your laundry is a hairy mess' etc...yeah, but hey it was back in like 2004 and I was about 17. We still play it at gigs as it seems to get Resurrected a lot.
 
The first song I wrote came about through some tough time that I was having with the law. It didnt get to where the song takes it, I was ok. But I wrote the song before I knew I was gonna be ok.

It went something like this:

The pages of my life are ripped and torn beyond repair
There's a number on my pocket, the prison barber took my hair
At night I dream of freedom and the times I left behind
But I wake up in a cell put there by a man who must be blind

Chorus
I've seen better times before
God knows I can't take much more

I never used to do too much but all I did was wrong
The things I thought so innocent but they said I don't belong
I stood before the man who said, "You're guilty, nothing less"
My life is all I wanted to live, there's no more to confess

Chorus

Years will come and go and if I try I might do well
But I'll never wash away the memory of this prison cell
I've been here now, the scars are deep, I'm only half the man
If this is life, I want no more, I'll leave it if I can

Chorus
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top