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Music ideas update
18 years ago
General
The trouble with finally finding a place to submit music was that I was going to completely run out of submissions eventually. Getting into this community has remotivated me incredibly, though, and as much to sort things out in my own head as tell people what I've been up to, this is what I'm thinking of for my next set of songs...
After some playing around with ideas, I decided I was fed up of writing "concept albums" and decided to make this one a little looser in theme, with the songs not necessarily related - therefore, it doesn't have a title yet and will probably be named after one of the songs.
Songs that are some way into completion and will probably see the light of day
Welcome to the Machine - Now, at the time I started writing this I wasn't aware that Pink Floyd already had a song called that. Instead, I got the title and main guitar part from the terrifying level at the end of Ecco the Dolphin, which I later learned was itself inspired by Pink Floyd. I've got three minutes of it done so far, and it includes heavier drums near the beginning, leading into a slightly Nightwish-inspired harpsichord part that I really like.
Be More Than Just a Number - About the race for money and status in a computer-driven society, but I haven't got it all worked out yet. This is quite pop-like and positive, with a chorus in a major key and a chiptune-inspired beginning. I wasn't too sure about that at first, but I think it might have worked out!
Unnamed song #94 - I hadn't actually tried a storytelling song that was based on an existing plot for ages (I think the last one was "Heart of the Beast" from Dreamscape) and this is a return to that idea for me. I don't want to reveal what it's about until it's ready, because again it's a pretty unusual choice - don't challenge me to turn anything into a power metal epic, because chances are I'll do it! Quite a lot of the parts in this are rather lighter - I've found a pretty great acoustic guitar instrument and I'm experimenting with it a lot here. Six and a half minutes are done... which is a lot more than I thought, actually, so I'll have to be careful of the length of this one.
Two Souls, One Mind - In the same theme as "My Kingdom", about the feeling of not wanting to be yourself and lead two separate lives. I have a reasonable amount of this done, but a lot of the length is made up of different variations on the theme of the chorus - it needs much more variety. I'm going to attempt having both major and minor versions of the chorus here.
Half-formed ideas
Memoria - An idea that I quite like about loss of memory. Only the chorus is done, and it needs a lot of work to be worked up into a full song.
Earthkeepers - Another single chorus file, about the people who really control the world. Again, very happy-sounding so far, and needs more of an idea before I can flesh it out.
Fool's Errand - That won't be the subject of the song, I just named the file after the game I was playing too much of at the time. This evolved directly out of my cover of "Kingdom for a Heart" after changing around some ideas in it, so it has a Sonata Arctica feel to it. If I ever find a decent subject to fit the chorus I have so far, it might turn out quite well...
The Last Day - About the eventual end of the world, and whether humanity will survive it. I find this idea so absolutely overwhelming, as it's completely unimaginable to us what will happen in billions of years' time. It has an acoustic intro that I've had saved up for a while, but I really need to spend more time on the chords to get it to work. The chorus is thought up but not done - I have a lot of writing on the subject collected up, and I'll have to sift through it and decide what to include in the lyrics...
Scraps
Temple of Rust - Another mind-related song, about storing your negative emotions and being afraid to show them.
Wonder - So much metal music (including my earlier pieces) is very pessimistic (see The Last Day, above), and it's depressing to view yourself as a race that can only kill and harm... I want to put something together to remind me that there is good in this world, and despite the world's problems, we have achieved so much as a species.
Master of Chaos - Generic power song with a daft power metal title. You've got to have at least one!
That was rather longer than I thought... it looks like I have enough ideas to be getting on with after all. I've also got a cover of Sonata Arctica's "Weballergy" started, but it hasn't got beyond the chorus yet, and another cover called "When the Machine Stops" by a Tibetian musician calls Atlantis, but I can't get its chords to sound right at all.
After some playing around with ideas, I decided I was fed up of writing "concept albums" and decided to make this one a little looser in theme, with the songs not necessarily related - therefore, it doesn't have a title yet and will probably be named after one of the songs.
Songs that are some way into completion and will probably see the light of day
Welcome to the Machine - Now, at the time I started writing this I wasn't aware that Pink Floyd already had a song called that. Instead, I got the title and main guitar part from the terrifying level at the end of Ecco the Dolphin, which I later learned was itself inspired by Pink Floyd. I've got three minutes of it done so far, and it includes heavier drums near the beginning, leading into a slightly Nightwish-inspired harpsichord part that I really like.
Be More Than Just a Number - About the race for money and status in a computer-driven society, but I haven't got it all worked out yet. This is quite pop-like and positive, with a chorus in a major key and a chiptune-inspired beginning. I wasn't too sure about that at first, but I think it might have worked out!
Unnamed song #94 - I hadn't actually tried a storytelling song that was based on an existing plot for ages (I think the last one was "Heart of the Beast" from Dreamscape) and this is a return to that idea for me. I don't want to reveal what it's about until it's ready, because again it's a pretty unusual choice - don't challenge me to turn anything into a power metal epic, because chances are I'll do it! Quite a lot of the parts in this are rather lighter - I've found a pretty great acoustic guitar instrument and I'm experimenting with it a lot here. Six and a half minutes are done... which is a lot more than I thought, actually, so I'll have to be careful of the length of this one.
Two Souls, One Mind - In the same theme as "My Kingdom", about the feeling of not wanting to be yourself and lead two separate lives. I have a reasonable amount of this done, but a lot of the length is made up of different variations on the theme of the chorus - it needs much more variety. I'm going to attempt having both major and minor versions of the chorus here.
Half-formed ideas
Memoria - An idea that I quite like about loss of memory. Only the chorus is done, and it needs a lot of work to be worked up into a full song.
Earthkeepers - Another single chorus file, about the people who really control the world. Again, very happy-sounding so far, and needs more of an idea before I can flesh it out.
Fool's Errand - That won't be the subject of the song, I just named the file after the game I was playing too much of at the time. This evolved directly out of my cover of "Kingdom for a Heart" after changing around some ideas in it, so it has a Sonata Arctica feel to it. If I ever find a decent subject to fit the chorus I have so far, it might turn out quite well...
The Last Day - About the eventual end of the world, and whether humanity will survive it. I find this idea so absolutely overwhelming, as it's completely unimaginable to us what will happen in billions of years' time. It has an acoustic intro that I've had saved up for a while, but I really need to spend more time on the chords to get it to work. The chorus is thought up but not done - I have a lot of writing on the subject collected up, and I'll have to sift through it and decide what to include in the lyrics...
Scraps
Temple of Rust - Another mind-related song, about storing your negative emotions and being afraid to show them.
Wonder - So much metal music (including my earlier pieces) is very pessimistic (see The Last Day, above), and it's depressing to view yourself as a race that can only kill and harm... I want to put something together to remind me that there is good in this world, and despite the world's problems, we have achieved so much as a species.
Master of Chaos - Generic power song with a daft power metal title. You've got to have at least one!
That was rather longer than I thought... it looks like I have enough ideas to be getting on with after all. I've also got a cover of Sonata Arctica's "Weballergy" started, but it hasn't got beyond the chorus yet, and another cover called "When the Machine Stops" by a Tibetian musician calls Atlantis, but I can't get its chords to sound right at all.
BTW, if humanity ever survives to the natural end of the world, we would have breaked the record of survival for any known species of vertebrate. I don't think that's very likely.