please critique my song

[ksutterley]

This is a new song, just wrote it.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?a ... 426B510AF9

Here are the lyrics:

baby i don't know where i am or where i'm supposed to go
oh you caught me walking through the sand
trying to put this movie set on hold i don't know oh
i know i am but i'm trying not to let it go
let it go

am i riding through the fog on
a boat thats drowning?
sometimes you look back and you think why?
right now i have to look ahead, i wonder how?
so many questions from then to now.

i read my written words and it scares me
i didn't know i felt this way
until my pen bleeds what my heart has to say
sometimes i laugh sometimes i cry i'm always oh i'm on my side
through these beautiful goodbyes
these strings they hear my heart's disguise

am i riding through the fog on
a boat thats drowning?
sometimes you look back and you think why?
right now i have to look ahead, i wonder how?
so many questions from then to now.

oh now i'm following these maps to nowhere
but won't you follow me i'll take you anywhere
take these chains from my back i wish i could
but i can't no we can't i won't we have to stay in the black

am i riding through the fog on
a boat thats drowning?
sometimes you look back and you think why?
right now i have to look ahead, i wonder how?
so many questions from then to now.

yeeeeaaaah i know we don't know where we're going
can you take me where I need to go?
No you can't cause here I am on my own
I have to do it all alone

so many things that i want to say
i don't know how i can't find a way

[lyrics101]

It sounds like MxPx acoustic. I intend that as a compliment.

The lyrics have a very conversational calypso to them at times, which is something I admire. Are they great? No. Do they service the song? Yes, and that's what is most important.

I think that in terms of production, you could do more to service that. A song of this length has to have a payoff, and the solo, as much as I enjoyed the sound of it, doesn't do it.

Over the years I've begun to quit writing solos that stand alone in any way, and simply serve as a refrain with which I can return later. It keeps the moment in the song a bit interesting, and helps me add a layer later on.

A song's instrumentation has to function in the same way as a story (one of the problems with my last track, The Anniversary Party, was that it failed in this way). Build it up, give us the climax, and then resolve it.

As for what you have now, very well done. High marks.

[justanotherfan]

Thanks for sharing.....great song, great voice.

[RunsWithBuffalo]

You have a good acoustic shell of a song here with distinct parts. All you need now is to flush it out with some more instrumentation and you will have a great song.

I agree with lyrics that the solo needs something, however my suggestion is take what you did from 3:10 to 3:19 and just use that over and over with some variation thrown in because that segment is really really something special.

The voice is good overall but there are some pitch problems and sometimes it gets a little monotone. Just sing this song a lot and it will become more cemented in your head and the vocals will improve.

Also, this runs a little long, maybe cut it down to somewhere around three or four minutes long. Unless you get nuts with the instrumentation and vary it a lot, 5:16 is just too long.

Good song, i'm glad i listened to it

Ryan

[ksutterley]

thanks for the tips. yeah i know what you mean about the length, i feel like in a lot of parts I expect the song to change and it doesn't, which could be bad. I added one or two bars too many just because that's what I had done in different parts of the song. I feel like if I cut those out it would make the song a lot shorter, but maybe it would get too overloaded with too many words or something...ya know? I don't know if that made sense. anyway, thanks again

[lyrics101]

Always remember -- singing of this style isn't opera. You've got a mic there, and as Frank Sinatra said, "The mic is an instrument all its own, and you've gotta learn how to play it."

Darryl of the band Glassjaw is one of my favourite vocalists these days because he understands what different volumes applied at different distances from the microphone can do. This understanding what gave Orson Welles, as Arthur Miller once put it, the ability "to crawl inside the microphone, to sound personal even when he was five-thousand miles away."

Once you capture this ability and start recognizing the different tonalities your voice will take when applied differently to the microphone, there's a lot you can do even when singing the same notes a hundred times over. My problem is that I don't have a microphone -- I'm singing into a Macbook keyboard. Hopefully you don't have to deal with that.

[Raif2032]

I liked it, but don't have really anything to add that hasn't been said. Sounds kinda like something that...vertical horizon? Is that them? beats me...sounds kind of like early 90s pop alt-rock I guess... Third eye blind, reminds me of that. Guess that's a compliment or an insult depending on your opinion...toad the wet sprocket, yeah, them too...