Question:
Well, here's another one for you guys...I'm kinda stuck on it right now and it feels like it needs something more to it.
The darkness falls
Is there anybody there?
I fall apart
but No one even stops to stare
I drive alone
This is all I've come to know
I walk this road
Passing rows and rows of homes
The miles of these happy dreams
Shining as they're passing me
They're lighting up reflectors in the road
It's running out, it's running free
The dotted lines are beckoning me
It's rolling out, it's leading me to roam, lead to roam
The stars of old
now Dipping far below the trees
Once up close
they Seem so far away from me
The darkness falls
Is there anybody there?
The silence calls
Hanging in the tepid air
Answer:
You took the title from Caedmon's Call's "Where I Began"? Or did you just happen to come up with the same play on words? Either way, it's a great line... and a cool title.
Originally Posted by Twain's Mystery The miles of these happy dreams
Shining as they're passing me
They're lighting up reflectors in the road
It's running out, it's running free
The dotted lines are beckoning me
It's rolling out, it's leading me to roam, lead to roam
To me, this is the best part of the song... which is probably a good thing considering the fact that it looks like you're treating it as the chorus. A few of your subject/verb relationships don't make much sense. Is it the "miles" that are "shining", or the "happy dreams"? Grammar would say "miles", but it seems to make more sense if it's "dreams". Also, you switch between "they" and "it" quite a bit, making me even more uncertain what exactly it is that you're talking about. Maybe you could do something like this:
"These mile-long happy dreams
Are shining as they're passing me;
And they're lighting up reflectors in the road.
They're running out, they're running free,
These dotted lines that beckon me,
They're rolling out and leading me to roam."
Just some thoughts.
Come to think of it, the chorus also bears a resemblance to the theme of "Faith My Eyes" from the same Caedmon's Call album (actually, the song comes immediately before "Where I Began" in the track listing). It's like you've mixed the two songs here in this chorus. Pretty nifty, whether it was intentional or not.
The rest of the song, to me, is simply mediocre. Nothing special really, just filling up space between choruses. That's what I would recommend that you work on the most.
In His love,
Nate
Answer:
Gah, I knew it was too clever to actually be original ): ...I didn't really mean to make it sound like the other song too, but now that I think about it, it references Faith My Eyes too. I'm just hoping I can beg a John Lennon "My Sweet Lord." Thanks for the input!
Answer:
Originally Posted by Twain's Mystery Gah, I knew it was too clever to actually be original ): ...I didn't really mean to make it sound like the other song too, but now that I think about it, it references Faith My Eyes too. I'm just hoping I can beg a John Lennon "My Sweet Lord."
So long as you don't just copy the entirety of another work, I don't think the use of other people's ideas is really a bad thing at all.
One of the greatest things about both Aaron Tate ("Where I Began") and Derek Webb ("Faith My Eyes") is their mastery of allusion (referring to a previously-existing literary or musical work). It's a wonderfully effective technique when done well, because it packs so much meaning into such a concise block of text. Consider the line "caught a boat to anywhere but Ninevah, and, well, you know, I got spit back on dry land" from "Where I Began," for example. It references the story of Jonah (a pre-existing literary/historical/allegorical/etc work), and so the ideas themselves are not original. This isn't bad, though, because Aaron Tate's use of the allusion here is a much more creative and descriptive way of expressing those ideas than simply saying "I tried to run away from You, but it didn't work" would be.
What you've got going in the chorus of your song here is a wonderful allusion to both Derek Webb and Aaron Tate's works, and I think it's pretty well done for the most part. It is not a bad thing at all to take ideas from other artists, writers, or composers and treat them in a slightly varied way. That's one of the things, in my opinion, that marks a lot of the greatest songs and music ever composed. The cliche "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" holds true.
In His love,
Nate