SSG - Week 44 - Moving forward - by manontheside

I really didn't think that the explanation was neccessary for me. You really showed what the song was about. Great job! I thought the chorus was awsome, but the last verses seemed choppy. It probably sounds fine when its to music, but while reading it some of the rhyme schemes looked odd. Either way, keep it up!

Hey MOTS,

Just a few quick comments:
Sweet sunday sun, tell me noone remembers my yesterdays

Love the way that one sounds when I speak it. Good stuff.
Remorseful memory, why do I keep you so close to me

This was good, but to give it more of a feel like the first line of the first verse you could try:

Remorseful memory, more fully you submerse me
Brand new day, brand new chances,
I could be moving forward

Brilliant stuff. Much stronger than the first half of the chorus. This line really captures your feeling of defeat.

The rest sort of falls flat for me. Sorry I can't quite put my finger on it. It isn't bad, but I like the first half so much more.

All in all, good song.

Hey MOTS,
Waking up with a smile is hard to do
when you're always searching for something
that troubles you
Brand new day, brand new chances,
I could be moving forward
This is great.

I tend to agree with peirson and slowplay about the last half, it doesnt have the same imperative as the first half. I think for me what it is, is that the 2nd to last verse tells me that youve decided what to do about your past and the the last one slips back into the "dark side".

Id like to see the last line of v3 changed to
"And then Ill be content"
and then v4 rewritten as an exorcism of the past. Just an idea. Overall I like this song :D .

cheers
pb

Slowplay suggested:
Remorseful memory, more fully you submerse me
I don't know, sometimes in songwriting simpler is better. Nice fancy words might sound great in poems but I still think songs are different from poems, and chances are, the average person who listens to music (particularly if it's rock or pop) is not gonna be that intellectual. In fact, I'm scratching my head wondering if submerse is even a word. I could be wrong, but I figure if I'm wondering about it, and I know what, "A coelo usque ad centrum" means, then maybe you shouldn't use the word submerse in a song. I thought the original way was fine. If you wanna fancy it up, maybe try submerge or immerse. I think those words would be more commonly used and known. Good job.

Joe

Hey Joe,

You're right, submerse isn't an every day word (though, for the record, it is roughly equivalent to submerge). However, my point wasn't about changing to more poetic, larger words, it was to try to capture the same sound as the inline rhyme in the first line of the first verse:
Sweet sunday sun, tell me noone remembers my yesterdays

My line does something similar:
Remorseful memory, more fully you submerse me
or you look at it like
Remorseful memory, more fully you submerse me

Again, it was all about the sound, rather than specific words. Sorry, I should have made that more clear.

Hi manon,

I liked both the theme of trying to break that kind of mindset, and the way you treated it. :)

Against all my expectations I didn't find it hard to sing, and enjoyed doing so. :wink:

My only suggestion is that verses 3 and 4 seem to be basically re-writes of verse 2. So it might work to make verse 4 (or maybe add 5 if you can't bear to ditch one) finish by looking at it from a future angle - i.e give us a glimpse of how it might look when you do move forward.

Good work. :D

Hey all!

Thanks for all the feedback, I really was unsure of how well I put light on the subject here.

I really like your suggestion for the second verse, SlowPlay. I'm trying to work it in now as I'm editing. Not sure if I'll use immerse or submerse yet, though. Funny thing is, I really wasn't going for a rhyme there, I'm trying to stop using rhymes, I always force them :)

pbee and pierson, I saw that myself, but I think if the two last verses change place it comes out a lot better. I'm trying to improve them as well, they didn't really float all that well for me to begin with, but I'm trying to only change the words and not the meaning of the verse. Any suggestions there are warmly welcome.

Chris_C, it really wasn't my intention of writing how I got through this particular problem, but to shed light that I knew about it and wanted out. But the last line in the chorus flows well sung as "moving forward". I don't know, take a look at the edited version above and tell me if I should add another or change a verse to a future angle where I've learned. Hopefully, I've changed the "rewrites" enough also ;)

The edited song uses the first two verses to uncover the problem, the third verse is meant to even further define the "condition" and decide to do someting about it and the fourth is a possible solution.

Thanks again for all the replies, I'm hoping you all respond to the edited version as well, I feel I need the replies or suggestions to make the last two verses strong enough.