So many things to respond to in this thread and it's not been very easy lately to get in and answer. But here goes.

Dave and Peter T(T for two?) I can't add very much to what you have pointed out about the move between the colloquial and the "heightened", as you say, now you have pointed it out it seems very obvious..... Lyle Lovett's 'If I Had Pony' is one of my very favourite songs and for a 'simple' song works so well on a number of levels.....a good song?

Roger Thanks. There is nothing to add to that.

Seed Good luck with your course. When you get them together for ensemble playing and singing, I hope you can get to what Roger described. "The harmony and oneness" when "it's just right". Something to aim for.

Barbara I liked the song, please just carry on singing it. There is just one thing and it's not in any way to critisise the song but as point for disscussion.

Your song is about death, or your feelings about a death but you do not mention the word? I wrote a song about life/death and in the song I used the word dead. My wife, who also writes said that she "would not use the word dead in a song". She felt that the word was too stark and detracted from the song as a whole. Is this a 'woman' thing do you think? *Ducks down with hands protecting head*

Bojangles I do agree about the ammount of songs it takes to come up with a good song and that the folk process, eventually sorting the wheat from the chaff, is probably the only way to find out if you have come up with one. Let's just hope that we are still around to see it.

I don't think that Woody was the best example to give though. True he did write a lot of songs but he used and re-used the same music for many of them, thus lessening the impact they may have made if they could have stood alone. It was always my one disapointment with Woody that he did use this apparent 'lazy' approach to song-writing. To me, it was almost like him writing a parody of his own songs. I don't know if he felt that the music was less important than the words and certainly his genius lay with words. Maybe he was just reflecting the low opinion that people in general have, of these types of tune, then and now.

I think that the good songs are a delicate balance between words and music. I don't think that the music is interchangable. I remember well my disgust at school when favorite hymns were presented with different tunes, it didn't work..... Interestingly I later found out that most of the tunes I liked the best were actually 'stolen' from the English folk tradition and credited to famous composers like Vaughan Williams etc. Some things never change do they?

"I Believe" etc