7s7d: D4
“In Your Arms”
Prompt: bring me your easy lovin’ tonight
Submission of Member: Bonnie G
Downloads:
Another VERY laborious and time-intensive song for you for Day 4.
The prompt was massaged a bit to become "bring me your easy love tonight." My Beloved is out of town for a week so I liked the idea of using that as fodder for this sweet little swing tune.
Lyric Process Notes:
I spent a good chunk of time trying to come up with phrases that meant, basically "I love you more with each passing day" to include after “they say absence makes the heart grow fonder” without actually SAYING that - mostly because I needed to save the word "love" for wherever I was going to use the prompt, and I try really hard not to use the same word more than once in a song, especially a big one like that. An easy out would have been "they say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but I don't know/ whether you are near or yonder, my love for you grows"... I mean, barf. Firstly, I would never ever use "grows" in one line and then "grows" in the next, but also that phrase there is sloppy and cheap IMO. But I guess if I had less time or if I cared even a little less and just wanted to turn something in I might have considered it? I suppose there's always the possibility that I can come back to these songs and rework them, but I've probably *actually* done that fewer times than I can count on one hand. I try to always write whatever I'm going to write in one sitting, because the more likely scenario is I will never ever dig back into it. Again- a few exceptions, but rare.
Back to "I love you more with each passing day": I really mulled over this for a considerable amount of time, reworking things that came before and after, etc until I could get something that I liked. I landed on "whether you are near or yonder, you're my guiding star, although..." ("You're my guiding star" is not the most excellent choice I could have picked, but it worked with what I was trying to say, and, while still a little cheap, something I could live with there.)
To reiterate, getting to "whether you are near or yonder" really took a while of moving word puzzle pieces around, and about 20 minutes after getting to it, I realized that almost-that-exact phrase is used in a 1929 standard called More Than You Know. "Whether you are here or yonder, whether you are false or true, whether you remain or wander, I'm growing fonder of you." Oh well. Either that was really just the best combination I could come up with or it was buried somewhere in my subconscious. (Of course I know the song but it's not one that's currently on my songlist, although I suppose it could be - I used it during my college voice auditions, I think.)
Melody/Harmony/Misc Notes:
The first vocal melody lick I thought of happened to be in C Major so I just started there. I probably ought to have brought it down to Bb so that the bridge isn't quite so unwieldy at least, but didn't have time for that. Unfortunately, as it is it stands dangerously close in style and execution to some of the other medium-swing love songs I've written over the last few years: We'll Find a Way, Love Me Always, Safe and Sound (ones I could immediately think of, though I'm sure there are more), and there are some moments that are reminiscent of My Prize and Just a Dreamer in this song as well.
I wish I could have spent a little more time fine-tuning some of the melody lines, particularly in the bridge, but the chordal structure of the bridge alone was enough to drive me nuts and took at least an hour or more of messing around with it to land on something I could stand. Similar to yesterday, I felt like there was something I was hearing in my head that I couldn't quite execute in practice, but I think melody-aside I'm okay with it now.
There's also a IV to iv chord change in this that I keep using and am getting sick of, but apparently that's what my brain keeps hearing. This is when I think it's a good thing that I have multiple projects so I don't end up just writing the same songs over and over which is something I'm worried about long-term. I try my best to learn or incorporate something new if I have time, like a different chord voicing or a substitution, just to help keep things fresher for me, and, hopefully, for you as the listener.
I had to rush through the recording again today because the writing process took a few hours longer than I was anticipating and I have to prepare for tonight's One Big Dark Room livestream event still 😩 Fortunately the chart for this was fairly easy. Nice to have a new sweet C Major song for the Lex Land project! ❤️
Thanks for listening/reading, and I hope you enjoy.
Come on over to the One Big Dark Room channel on Twitch tonight at about 9PM ET to check out some of the darker folk tunes live!
Thank you so much for your support!
Don’t be shy, there are still three more chances (just for this week of course, but one a month always) for one of your ideas to be used in a song here at The Vault!
Submit some here.
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