The Imperfect Song

Subject: The Imperfect Song
From: Cluin
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 12:19 AM

Now, those songs you just fell in love with and thought you'd like to do but, try as you might, they just don't click with you when you play and sing them... they never seem to sound the way you hear them in your head.

Too high expectations? Hyper-critical? Maybe it's just not your song?

Do you keep slogging away at it?

How long?

Or should you give it up as a bad idea and just enjoy others' performance of it vicariously?

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: GUEST,highlandman
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 12:26 AM

I have some favorites that just don't seem to suit me. I can give them up in all good conscience -- sometimes. Sometimes I just can't, and they will pop up in my noodling sessions now and again.
Just this week I hit on the "feel" for a particular song -- a "contemporary" Christian song from the 80s you probably wouldn't remember -- that has haunted me for years. The original recording was heavily piano-oriented, and the original singer had a totally different sort of voice to mine, and I just couldn't make it work. Yet suddenly I found the right way to attack it, with slight rhythmic changes and phrasing, that allowed me to make it fit my fingerstyle guitar and voice.
A delightful thing, when it happens. :-)
-Glenn

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Vixen
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 09:48 AM

Especially frustrating when I've written it...

I have more "imperfect songs" than ones I can do passably. I figure it's because I don't "know my instrument" well enough to sing them. Consequently, the only solutions I see are 1) decide a given tune isn't worth my time 'n' energy, or 2) keep working on the skills that the tune demands until I can do it. Sometimes I get lucky, and find, after I've given up on a particular song, that I've mastered the necessary skills in some other context, and the song is "suddenly" within my ability.

My $0.02, fwiw,

V

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Mr Happy
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 10:38 AM

For me, its most stuff originating in Qamerics.

A lot've stuff doesn't sound believable with a northwest english accent.

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Scorpio
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 11:19 AM

Qamerics?

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Alaska Mike
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 05:07 PM

Every song I've written has been imperfect. I am constantly revising lyrics, tweeking the melody, or changing inflections in order to strive toward perfection which I never expect to achieve. Others who have learned and performed my songs routinely change things to fit their own sense of the meaning and flavor of the songs. This is the nature of the type of music we share. I will not lose any sleep over never having written the perfect song.

Mike

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: MartinRyan
Date: 13 Sep 07 - 05:08 PM

Note the proximity of Q A and S on a keyboard!

Regards

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: GUEST,Young Buchan
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 03:26 AM

I could never get away with Lakes of Killin until I heard one of the Lings sing it, beginning Early one morning Bill Leonard arose. It was the Bill instead of Willie which gave me the point of contact. He was clearly singing not about some mediaeval Lord's son, but about old Bil who drowned in the duck pond.

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Ythanside
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 04:37 AM

When an artist completes a sculpture, portrait or landscape the work is locked 'as is' in time and space. Singers have the luxury of varying their work any number of times in search of the 'perfect' delivery.   
Ain't we lucky? :-)

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 06:04 AM

I don't think the name "Bill Nelson" would sound any more contemporary than "Willie Nelson" does...

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 06:18 AM

If it's someone else's or a folk song, speed it up, slow it down, raise it, lower it, try a different tuning.

If it's your own, try a folk song in stead!

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Bryn Pugh
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 09:28 AM

With me, it was 'Paddy's Green |Shamrock Shore'. I wanted desperately to sing this - I think it was the tune which appealed. Then I found the lyric, and, having read this, the thought was 'Two's up on the honk bag'.

Subject: RE: The Imperfect Song
From: Mr Happy
Date: 14 Sep 07 - 09:58 AM

Qamerics?

Oops!

Should say America