Your Winter Eyes (demo)

[icystorm]

After originally posting my idea for this song late last year, I struggled with the arrangement for a while in Jamstudio. With the limitations of that tool, I was never able to produce the arrangement I was looking for. By then, winter was over...

Over the past few days, I finally resorted to using my midi keyboard to create a second crude demo of the backing track, sans the drums.

So, this demo is only me on my midi. It is intended to communicate the melody only.

Box.net mp3 (320 kbps version)...

http://www.box.net/shared/8xphya59t4

I would like to make a new demo of the song with rhythm guitars, a bass guitar, keyboard synths, and drums if any musicians would care to collaborate. My guitar playing is still not good enough to play on my own songs.

If anyone is interested in collaborating, I can provide sheet music, and, of course, you will have the demo of the melody as a guide...

Cheers,
Joseph

- - - l y r i c s - - -

Your Winter Eyes

Words and music by Joseph Spain
Produced by Joseph Spain
CD: Betrayal
Demo recording
Copyright: Joseph Spain 2009, 2010

Verse 1
Lost in the winter's
silence of autumn
Your heart can see
what's under the snow
Hope lies asleep
beneathe every white drift
Your winter eyes
still see what can grow

Chorus
So far and so close
So blind and so clear
The voices we know
are always so near
As each of us pines
for the one we hold dear
love is lonely
beneath the grace of your snow
while your winter is here

Verse 2
Hope in your heart
remembers the summer
Do your thoughts retrace
what's under the snow
Love lies asleep
but promised to waken
Your winter eyes
remember and know

Bridge
Try to recall everything,
every moment, each word
that you whispered to me
I live for the hour, the minute,
the second, the moment
your heart melts for me

 

[SEDstar]

...

I'd try to do something any way i could for you, I just never worked with anyone else to know if I'd be able to "do" much useful.

email me what you got, let me see if I can make something moderately useful? You've heard my stuff... one thing snail snot, another thing moderately useful in patches...

I need to know BPM too...

I figure I'mm make a serioulsy spartan drum track, just for a click track.... see if any of my "Donora Philharmonic Orchestra" seems to suit your flavor?

*shrugs* worst i can do is email you snail snot, right?

MAYbe i could get something basic you could sing over, if just for a reference to get the thingy moving... I mean, I'm vagyuely aware I'm SUPPOSED to be making music for musicians, I just never get to try it...

that instrument sounds like "generic strings" to me on the melody sample...

which makes me think "cellos" for a start... low root notes for the bass section to get started... real basic drum track just for an initial click track to be replaced later...

you'll kinda have to take charge of me, though, and play producer... I dont know what in the &^%$ a real musician wants. You leave it in my hannds, it'll start to sound like a classical tune, and nobody wants THAT, heh heh...

sen me that basic melody line, and BPM for it... see if i get that working, maybe i can add on...

 

[SEDstar]

...

and unless its obvious, scale used and key of that melody line, too... I dont have geck's perfect pitvch trick he uses, LMAO...

 

[SEDstar]

...

email=

sedstar(at)comcast(dot)net

maybe I can just read in a "midi" file...

my acoustic guitar sounds better than my electrics.... unless the rhythm is real basic, and stays in one octave, then the electric can be okay sometimes...

my bass is okay but not spectacular.

I could drop a pad or a synth in when it took shape, if it did start to...

 

[icystorm]

email=

sedstar(at)comcast(dot)net

maybe I can just read in a "midi" file...

my acoustic guitar sounds better than my electrics.... unless the rhythm is real basic, and stays in one octave, then the electric can be okay sometimes...

my bass is okay but not spectacular.

I could drop a pad or a synth in when it took shape, if it did start to...

Thanks, my friend! I'm on the road on business right now. I will be back toward the middle of next week.

The tempo is ~89 bpm.

 

[SEDstar]

...

I personally cant write lyrics, and put some soft strumming to them, and talk my lyrics over soft strumming and everyone goes crazy talking about my "songwriting talent"... to ME, thats... mysterious, black art "whooooo!", LMAO

what I have slowly learnedf I CAN do, is write instrumental music. At first, i was awkward and made funny sounding stuff, over time I learned that the better i got tryign to do "classical orch stuff", the better everything else got, it rubbed off on it.

My pop lines... well, its no fleetwood mac yet, LMAO... I know I aint nothing great. My pop lines have gotten a little more interesting the last year or two as "whatever" I learned doing classical stuff rubs off on everything else.

My classical atuff aint great either, John Williams will not get nervous if he hears anything I make, LMAO...

still, this has all allowed me to make instrumental music. I cant write lyrics, nor put lyrics to music... at SOME point though, I should be useful to a songwriter who has lyrics and a melody line down already, even if that use is limited to "working up" a song to see if its working or not, hopefully maybe a tad more.

This is a big deal to ME personally... as an instrumental musician, if I cant make something for a lyrics/melody writer to help out in some way... I'm really kind of useless still. I want to have "arrived" where i can be considered "useful" when songwriter types are around me. If that "useful-ness" is limited to whipping up rough drum tracks, and just dropping the chords for the harmonic progressions, thats fine to me... I still feel i'm being useful.

since I was young, I lived by the mantra "lead, follow, or get the hell out of the way". The fact I cant seem to put lyrics to melody lines, has made me go around that, and simply concentrate on making instrumental stuff. *shrugs* If later on, a live drummer simply takes my main beat and plays it "well", and the drum track gets dropped, I have no issue with that. Same with any piano or guitar I whip up to support the main melody. If my only core usefulness is in supporting those who CAN make a melody and lyrics "fit" properly... then I would like to make myself into whatever "resource" I can.

I guess songwriters dream of playing and singing their song on a stage one day, I do not. I'm not quite sure what "job" i aspire to in music, I suppose I picture myself making a decent weekly wage, on staff with some producer somewhere, and... when songwriters need a drum track, I immediately whip something up to tide them over. When they want a few chords dropped, to "hear" the song working on it, cool. I'm no "star" and I dont aspire to be one.

If I were useful ENOUGH, and some songwriter ever "got" somewhere, I assume they might think "hey... why cant I have that guy here? making drum tracks and lettign me hear the melody go thru different harmonic progressions and key changes so i can pick out what sounds good?"

You could... it doesnt even cost that much per week to "have" me, should I ever prove useful enough...

tell me what you want, give me all the information you can, we'll see if I can make anything useful enough that a song is performable, or even 'sale-able"...

 

[icystorm]

Thanks my friend. I have always enjoyed your compositions. I think you have a lot of talent as a songwriter.

Regarding your questions, were you able to listen to the crude midi demo I posted earlier?

http://www.box.net/shared/8xphya59t4

Is that enough for you to go on, or would the original midi file help?

Cheers,
Joseph

 

[SEDstar]

...

I'm no songwriter... I cant put lyrics to melody, LMAO... I simply write music. here, you wrote the melody line and the lyrics... I'm just, "helping" the songwriter.

I'm not geckozed, LMAO, i cant just hear notes and tell you what notes and keys and harmonic progressions I hear, I dont have that perfect pitch thingy, LMAO...

I heard the mp3 of the melody line, its cool. But, if you send me the MIDI and I put it into my sequencer... the NOTES pop right up on my scren, and I now have the score that way, without me trying to work by ear.

email = sedstar(at)comcast(dot)net...

what to email me? Midi so i can see if I can open it right up on my computer, sure. if you used a scale, tell me what it was... if not, thats cool. Is it written tonally? This is the KEY? tell me what KEY its in, dont let me guess... if it has a harmonic progression impressed on it? (IE, 6-1-4-5 chord changes...)

I mean, if i can open the midi, read it into my sequencer... and NOTES pop right up, that makes it easy... then, if you tell me its in the key of C minor, cool as well... if you further tell me you used Pentatonic Minor to make the melody, thats really cool and makes my job easier... then if your email further says "Well, its Cminor... but the harmonic progression goes C-F-C-G (1,4,1,5) that tells me even MORE...

the more information you can give me, the easier it makes my job. If its not in 4/4 time, mention it, LMAO...

if you can send the MIDI tonight, that'd be great, I'll start "fiddling" right away! email it to me, its a small file... along with ANY of the information I mentioned you can... in MY mind, you are the "producer". You give me instructions what you WANT, and its my job to try to extract something useful from my sequencer...

in email, if you want to tell me "the song such and such by whosits in 1989... thats kinda the "sound" i want..." thats cool. Any anything else you think is what you want, as I email you stuff back, you just tell me yes or no, or whatever. I'll try to make it for you... like... you are able to just issue english verbal commands to a computer, and it magically understands you and sends you stuff to give further directions on...

email me the midi and any info you can... as soon as i have your email, i can get back to you with stuff...

 

[icystorm]

Thanks much, SED! You have mail!

I am not a schooled musician. I cannot read music. I have taught myself just enough keyboard and acoustic guitar to be dangerous, but I am sloooooow with chord changes. I know enough to compose songs by ear based on what sounds good. I usually compose the music first with Jamstudio and Mixcraft, then I write the lyrics.

For this song, I could not get the arrangement that I desired in Jamstudio, which is why I finally gave up on that and banged it out on my midi keyboard player, which was the demo I posted earlier in the thread.

Your assistance with the arrangement and instrumentation is greatly appreciated, my friend!

Cheers,
Joseph

 

[Strat1958]

Joseph, this has nothing to do with your song per se - but at the exact moment I was reading your lyrics, "Everlasting Love" by Andy Gibb came on the radio. I know YOU will see the extreme coincidence in that!

 

[icystorm]

Joseph, this has nothing to do with your song per se - but at the exact moment I was reading your lyrics, "Everlasting Love" by Andy Gibb came on the radio. I know YOU will see the extreme coincidence in that!

When I was a lad in grade school and junior high, all of the pretty girls that I had an eye for liked the songs by the Bee Gees and Andy Gibb. I quickly surmised that I needed to try to write songs like the Gibbs.

The oddity today is that the pretty girl I ultimately married likes country music. D'oh!

Regarding Andy Gibb, he will have a CD in the Bee Gees 4 CD box, Mythology", that comes out next Tuesday, Nov 15. It includes one of his final demos, "Arrow Through The Heart".