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I Gave My Love To Someone Who Was Loveless
© Williams 2007

I gave my love to someone who was loveless
You say you want to fix it but it’s not for you to mend
I gave my heart to someone who was heartless
It’s not broken, there’s just nothing left

I gave my fear to someone who was fearless
I go blindfolded and bound, alone into the dark
I gave my joy to someone who was joyless
And it burns like fire in their laugh

I gave my hope to someone who was hopeless
It smothered them like a desert under snow
I gave my worth to someone who was worthless
You say I’m precious but I’m fool’s gold in the stone

I gave my name to someone who was nameless
I left no trace upon you, no memories to lose
I gave my law to someone who was lawless
This is the prison and the freedom that I choose

I gave my songs to someone who was songless
I gave my love, my heart, my hope, my worth
I gave my fear, I gave my joy, I gave my name, I gave my law
I gave my voice to someone who was voiceless

Download: I Gave My Love To Someone Who Was Loveless (mp3)
Last.fm link: I Gave My Love To Someone Who Was Loveless

Background

Fresh! Fresh! Didn’t exist last week!

People are always curious as to how songwriters write songs. I used to get asked all the time if it’s the words or the music that comes first, but it’s different for different songs. This one started on the tram on the weekend as I was reading Perfume. I was thinking about the main character creates scents, yet is scentless, and how he steals scents and files them away in his brain – the essences of living things. This made me wonder if someone would give him their scent willingly if they could, and set me thinking to the things that we can and do give willingly. And if we give those things to people who didn’t have them, do we gain something or lose something? Do we have a finite amount of, for instance, love or fear? And once we give something of ours to a person who lacks/lacked it, do they then have it/not lack it? Do the helpless become helpful? Does it bounce back to us, multiply or disappear? Does it free us, hurt us, enslave us, make us less or make us more? As a result of these questions, this song risks being exceptionally pretentious (in fact, when I first played it for someone else I was too embarrassed to finish, and had to go away and edit it pretty harshly).

Music-wise, I wanted to have some quicker chord progressions, rather than playing each chord for a bar or two. So I’ve got this: C / / / Em / G / Am / / / (capo on 2). It’s not much, but it’s something. The rest came from playing around. I like the fingerpicking in the instrumental middle bit, even though it’s a bit of a dodgy take. Never mind, it has C9 in it, so it’s awesome. The bit at the end? If anyone here knows Mark Knopfler, I would be totally happy to have him on board. Mmm, sexy.

Vocally, when I started mucking around with the idea I was speaking the words rather than singing them, so I wanted to keep that feeling in the song. I haven’t really got the control to rock out any more, so I think I’m gonna be writing low-key tunes for a little bit.

Here are some lines that didn’t make it into this version, because it just got a bit too samey and long and tedious after a while (I think it’s a bit that way now, but I didn’t want to cut any more out):

I gave my home to someone who was homeless / That meant that where we lived was not a home

I gave my rest to someone who was restless / I wander like a shadow in the night

I gave my face to someone who was faceless / You say you know me but you haven’t picked me yet

Recording

Having learned my lesson re: recording vox and guitar on the same track, I’ve done this individually. I have vocal, guitar 1 and guitar 2 tracks. I’ve doubled the vocal and guitar 1 tracks, putting different effects on each one. I like to keep one fairly natural, and add the reverb/change the eq/mess with the tone on the second one. This means I don’t fuck everything up beyond repair, and it also means I have more room to play with textures and bring certain sounds forward at certain times (because in GarageBand you have to put the effects on the entire track, rather than on each segment, and you can’t alter them in the middle of the song). You might be able to hear that in the higher bits, the vocal track with more reverb (etc) on it is more prominent. I did this to keep the sound lighter and help lift it above the guitar track/s.

On the subject of reverb, I LIKE IT. I like it more when I have more control over the shape and texture of it (let me take a minute to love on ProTools again), but any reverb is good! Yeah, it’s tacky. But it’s just a thing. I always loved singing over the valley when I was a kid and hearing the echoes answer me. I always sing in the fire escape stairwell at uni because it has the most awesomely sustained reverb happening. Sometimes I can get a beautiful cadence going in three (or two-and-a-half) part harmony, all by myself!

Also, my computer is being a bit noisy at the moment, so there’s a LOT of background hiss. I can’t be bothered going through and doing the kind of precise editing around each word that is required to make it sound much better than this (esp. and Garage Band is not the easiest thing to use for this). I tried to EQ it out of existence, but it meant that the vocal line was utterly smothered.

Likewise with the sybilance on some of my S sounds. I have a naturally piercing S, and though I try to alter it a bit when I’m recording, it often comes through anyway. Next time I might try putting compression on it and then somehow putting the reverb on. I haven’t fiddled around with this much in GarageBand. Hopefully this won’t mean exporting the track then bringing it back in.

Things I Like

I like that the last line is “I gave my voice to someone who was voiceless”. I thought for a bit about whether to have a second line after that, but decided against it.

I like the idea of having the lead guitar bit at the end, even though this is a pretty scrappy version. Part of not having so much of a voice means that I need to concentrate a bit more on the music side of things, I’m thinking. Maybe time to play the guitar a bit more to brush up on my mad skillz. I also kind of like that my really short fingernails mean that I’m using my finger tips instead of my nails, so it makes the steel strings sound a little like nylon strings in places.

Things I Don’t Like

Hissy hissy hissy. It really bugs me. Perhaps this is a sign that I really do need to invest in a good mic. Maybe I’ll buy myself one for Christmas.

I’m still not certain that this song doesn’t fall flat on its face from being too repetitive, too long, too wanky, too boring. I’d like to hear what you guys think on the matter (do the comments work on this site? I need to figure this out, so help me here!)

Conclusion

I really like this song, though the cruisiness could also come across as a bit samey. This could be fixed with more vocal control and variation (which comes with familiarity, often, and this song is only a couple of days old), and with more instrumentation (anyone wanna be my band?). The recording is OK, but as usual suffers from the lack of professional equipment (and possibly from my love of reverb).

Please share it if you like it, but link to this post rather than directly to the download.  Thanks!

Brought it on Yourself
© Williams 2004

You can’t blame me if my eyes are wandering
If I look at others fondly
You brought it on yourself
Oh, you brought it on yourself
You can’t accuse me of betraying something
I admit that I’ve been wondering
How you really felt
Oh, you brought it on yourself

You spend most of your time with Hermione Granger
When I search in your eyes I find a stranger
What of all the times we laughed and cried together
Had pillow fights together
Almost died together?

Don’t look at me in that tone of voice
When you catch me checking out the other boys
You brought it on yourself
Oh, you brought this on yourself
You played my redhead fetish for too long
I’m fixated on a pure-blood pale blonde
Grey eyes make me melt
Oh, you brought this on yourself

You’d rather play Wizard’s Chess with Seamus and Dean
Could it be that those two like you more than it seems
What about that time they shared a tent together
Sat on the bed together
Have you all slept together?

You were my best friend, Ron
How did this suddenly go terribly wrong?

Don’t over-estimate the time it takes
For carnal lust to turn to hate
When you brought it on yourself
Yeah, you brought it on yourself
And while some may think that I’ve been cursed
The same goes when it is vice versa
And if I’ve been bespelled
Well at least he treats me well

And I don’t care if he’s a Death Eater’s son
We were meant to fall in love at the start of book one
Feel the tension sparking when we are together
We’ll go so far together
J.K. can’t make us wait forever!

Download: Brought it on Yourself (mp3)

Background

Something a little more lighthearted this week! Clearly, I needn’t mention that I was totally into Harry Potter fandom a few years back.  Oh, wait, I just did.  I was totally enamoured with Harry and the Potters, and Draco and the Malfoys and all the other Wizard Rock bands of awesome. And I still love them!  I was also totally enamoured with what was possibly my first all-encompassing OTP (that’s One True Pairing for those who have been living with their heads in the proverbial sand) – Harry/Draco!  Whee!  Served here with a side-dish of Harry/Ron angst!

It seems timely to give this song a bit more airplay, now that we’ve just had the last HP book.


Recording

This was done on my old iMac, using ProTools Free.  I really can’t tell you much more than that because it was ages ago and the old machine doesn’t like to run ProTools any more so I can’t check how many tracks there are, or what kind of compressor I used, or how I altered the EQ etc.

I do, however, know that I was a lot more careful with this recording than with the one you heard last week – each of the tracks are recorded separately, so I had a lot more flexibility with sculpting the sound.  On the other hand, I still used the inbuilt mic, and thus it isn’t a great sound quality.

Things I Like

I really like the guitar, the (hardly there) bassline, the riffs, etc.  I like (most of) the lyrics, I like the harmonies.  I like it all! It is weird listening to these things i recorded years ago – makes me very concious of the way my vocal style has changed, the way my writing style goes through cycles, and how much I haven’t been playing guitar recently.

Things I Don’t Like

Apart from the bit where I like it all?  Well, I wish I could write such catchy songs FOR SERIOUS!  Why are the fannish/silly/funny ones always so much boppier?  Maybe it’s because I have less to lose with such throw-away subjects and so have more fun writing throw-away songs.

Also, J.K. obviously CAN make us wait forever.  Pfft.

Conclusion

In conclusion, HARRY/DRACO 4 EVA! I hope you get something out of this song.

Please feel free to share this with your friends, but PLEASE link to this post rather than directly to the download. Thank you.

River/Lonely
© Williams 2007

I want to sing myself to sleep
I’m sick of counting sheep
I’m lonely
I’m gonna send it to the sky
I’m tired of asking why I’m lonely

I’m lonely because I can’t let go
I’ve got a secret no one knows
I’m lonely

I went out walking in the sun
I saw the river run below me
I tried to swim the width
And then the water closed over my head

I’m drowning because I can’t let go
I’ve got a scar that doesn’t show
I’m lonely

I wish the things I wanted
Were less impossible to get
I wish the things my arms sought
Were easier for me to hold

I took the longest road I knew
I found that very few can sleep here
For when the frost comes creeping slow
And settles in their bones
They weep here

They’re crying because they can’t let go
They carry seeds that cannot grow
They’re lonely

Download: River/Lonely (mp3)

Background

I wrote this song in early 2007 on a feeling, rather than as a story. The first two lines were scribbled down one day when I was at work, and then I came home and fiddled around with melodies, chords and lyrics.

The lyrics, as I said, weren’t meant to be particularly narrative. It was only a couple of months after I recorded this that I realised I was singing about Dean in the earlier episodes of season 2 Supernatural. Classy! I think the bridge (I wish the things I wanted / Were less impossible to get / I wish the things my arms sought / Were easier for me to hold) was also a response to, or a riffing off, iOTA’s “Everyone Wants Someone They Can’t Have” on Beauty Queen of the Sea.

The melody was written as a kind of gymnastics/training for my voice – I hadn’t been singing very much, and I knew that I was going to start on testosterone sooner rather than later, so I wanted to have some record of what I could do. I had also been conducting little songwriting experiments at the end of 2006 that included non-words in the vocal lines (i.e. “ooh” and “aahh” noises) – but that didn’t sound too separate from the lyrics. I wanted to get some of this stuff into the song.

Recording

As usual, everything was recorded on a little Mac laptop using GarageBand and the inbuilt microphone. Now, I love ProTools, but I don’t have the money to get properly set up with all the things I want, so I’m embracing lo-tech, lo-fi recording at the moment. There’s quite a bit of background hissing on the main vocal track, but I actually don’t mind it too much, as it adds a bit of airy atmosphere.

This was one of the first songs I recorded using the software instruments in GarageBand – the organ and piano. And I think there are issues with what I’ve done: it sounds quite amateurish in places.

Things I Like

I recorded this when I knew I was going to start on testosterone within a couple of months, so I made sure to get some high notes in there. I like those. I really enjoy the non-wordy bits, and I still really fancy the harmonies (at the bridge [1:47] and 3:10 to the end, especially). I also like the half-yodel as I change into my upper register and back (I’ve got a > scar > that doesn’t show, at about 1:18). Why yes, I was heavily influenced by The Cranberries in my youth!

I quite like the church organ. I don’t care how tacky it is!

Things I Don’t Like

On a basic level, this song suffers from the classic issues associated with laziness – I only recorded the guitar track once, and it speeds up significantly throughout the song. I don’t mind that the tempo increases, but I think it gets too fast too suddenly. If I hasn’t been so “it’ll do” at the time I would have re-recorded that track before I put down the vocals. As it is, I didn’t, and now I can no longer sing the song in that key, so I’m left with a sub-standard version.

Likewise, I never got around to re-recording the vocal tracks, and I can’t sing that high any more, so there are bits out of tune or slipping off notes. As I said, I hadn’t been doing that much singing, so I lacked some vocal control. If I could still sing the notes, I’d definitely re-do the last bit to make a stronger ending.

One thing that I also notice now is the heavy-handed use of software instruments. Fortunately, this is something I can go back and fix up – lower the volume a bit on the organ, and blend the notes a bit more. It’s a tedious process, but it might be worth it. To do it properly, though, I would need to listen to the recording several times on different sets of speakers, rather than just through my headphones or the little laptop speakers. Laziness strikes again!

Conclusion

I quite like the lyrics, melody and general idea of this song, and I think it managed to do for me what I wanted it to do. Although I don’t have a perfect product to display, I have a decent song, an OK recording, and proof that once I had a voice that could do these things.

Not my best work, but nothing to be ashamed of!

I would love for you to pimp this to your friends, but please link to this post rather than directly to the download. Thank you.