Four for the Rook

My new song now has a complete set of lyrics. I've decided that what I called the chorus is actually the verse and vice versa! It's fitting that the chorus should be the “Four for the Rook” section as it appears three times in the song with the same lyrics. The “Oh but that one seed” has different lyrics each time it occurs.

I don't usually get confused with naming the parts of my songs - it's just that the “But that one seed” section has the ear-worm quality of a chorus. So here are the complete lyrics - although I might still change some of them depending on how well they sing when I begin practising the song:

Intro 1: 
Ten seeds are in a row
Lying in the earth below
Which of them will start to show
And which of them will fail to grow

Chorus 1: 
‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s sure to grow
And though it seems a shame
It’s such a wasteful game
When you start with all those seeds you’re sowin’
And finish up with one seed growin’

Verse 1
Oh, but that one seed. 
Is all the earth needs
Before those winter winds and spring showers
Bring along the summer flowers
And that one seed knows
There’ll always be those
Who’ll say it’s all a waste of time you trying
Just a little like pigs and flying

Mm… Mm… Mm…

Intro 2: 
Seeds grow like spoken words
Some are silent; some are heard
Some are sweet and some are sour
And some, like seeds, may never flower

Semi-chorus 2:
‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s bound to grow

Instrumental semi-chorus

Verse 2:
Oh but that one word
That’s soft and seldom heard
May be the spark that fires a revolution
Or a New Year’s Resolution
And that one word knows
As it is heard and grows
That there will come a time in all its glory
It’ll flower like a fairy story

Coda chorus
‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s sure to grow

I've now starting to think about the arrangement. It feels like a very laid-back smooth summer song so I'm using acoustic guitar arpeggios and piano chords - much the same as I used in Hampshire Born. I haven't decided yet whether to use drums or not. If I do they are likely to be subdued brush drums. I'm planning to use an array of shakers and other percussion instruments so the actual drums may be redundant. I've already written a solo for also sax for the instrumental semi-chorus. This will be a virtual sax as I don't play any wind instruments! Once I have the arrangement complete I will export the midi files from Sibelius into ProTools.  

I often use a click-track where a song is driven by the drums but on songs like Childish Dream, where the song has no drum track, the tempo of the song needs to be more flexible. So I will rehearse singing the song to my guitar accompaniment and record it into ProTools which will give me a tempo map which will be my flexible-tempo click-track.

That's all for now. More next week.

Wake Up

The video for Wake Up! is now published so give it a watch and, if you like it, don't forget to like and subscribe:

Four for the Rook

The new song has passed what I call the “critical point” where I have enough of a tune with accompanying chords and sufficient lyrics which sing well and I don't squirm when I read back the lyrics as poetry - or prose.

I have been on several fruitful long walks in the countryside near my home when I have made notes on my iPhone after I have mulled over them in my head as I walk. Here are some recent fragments:

But just that one word still waiting to be heard
May be the spark that fires a revolution

Words are just like seeds that grow

Some are sweet and some are sour
And some like seeds may never flower

But that one seed knows 
There'll always be those
Who'lll say it's all a waste of time you trying
Just a little like pigs and flying

The section which I have tentatively called a chorus is now twice as long as it was because on playing the arrangement back in the score-writing software Sibelius, I realised it needed more time to put across the “earworm” tune. So here is the current state of the lyrics:

Intro 1: 
Ten seeds are in a row
Lying in the earth below
Which of them will start to show?
And which of them will fail to grow?

Verse 1: 
‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s sure to grow

Verse 2:
And though it seems a shame
It’s such a wasteful game
When you start with all those seeds you’re sowin’
And ending up with one seed growin’

Chorus:
Oh, but that one seed. 
Is all the earth needs
Before those winter winds and spring showers
Bring along the summer flowers
And that one seed knows
There’ll always be those
Who’ll say it’s all a waste of time you trying
Just a little like pigs and flying

Mm… Mm… Mm…

Intro 2: 
Seeds grow like spoken words
Some are silent; some are heard
Some are sweet and some are sour
And some, like seeds, may never flower

Verse 3:
‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s bound to grow

Instrumental verse

Chorus 2:
But just that one word
Soft and seldom heard
May be the spark that fires a revolution
Or a New Year Resolution

The last line was originally Or the one that's a real solution and I kidded myself that I was paying homage to John Lennon here but I felt it was me being lazy again (as I had done with "March winds and April showers")

Although I like the line “Just a little like pigs and flying” it might end up as “Ten to one you'll end up dying”. The jury's still out on that one - however the "pigs flying" line sings well.

For the arrangement I have put the chorus in a different key from the verses: the verses are in E major and the chorus is in G major. This gave me a huge problem when I added the second part of the chorus as this part of the song modulates from G major to C major so I neederd to quickly switch back to G major for the repeat. Whatever I tried it didn't seem to work. I eventually solved the problem with a “stop” where the acompaniment drops out for a bar and the vocal continues. I think it works but technically I'm on dodgy ground with the chord progressions here. I remember I had a similar problem returning to the verse section of “Up on the Downs” which had a similar (though not identical) key change between verse and chorus.  

Weekly Newsletter #3 (11.04.2025)

Four for the Rook

The new song is progressing well; the lyrics I have assembled so far are:

Intro: Ten seeds are in a row
Lying in the earth below
Which of them will start to grow
And which of them will fail to show

Verse 1: ‘Cause there’s four for the rook
And there’s three for the crow
Then there’s two that’ll wither in the heat of the sun
Leaving one that’s sure to grow

Verse 2:
And though it seems a shame
It’s such a wasteful game
To start with all those seeds there in a row
To finish with just one that grows

Oh, but that one seed. 
Is all the earth needs
Before those winter winds and spring showers
Bring along those summer flowers

Mm… Mm… Mm…
 

Although I have labelled the sections above as verse 1, verse 2 etc I don't feel that this is a song which conveniently fits into the verse/chorus structures which usually underpin my songs. Of course, it may do - I'm not ruling anything out at this stage. The “Oh but that one seed” line is already starting to feel like a chorus.

I originally had “Before those March winds and April showers bring along those May flowers” but I felt this was lazy lyric writing and strayed perilously close to Disney prettiness. I often feel that song ideas are like people knocking on my door. Some ideas I will instantly slam the door on with a firm “Not today, thank you!” but some I will welcome in for a cup of tea and a biscuit. The "March winds" idea fell between those two extremes; I knew that something was wrong but was prepared to accept the line for want of anything better. Once I had “winter winds and spring showers” this ticked all the boxes and was welcomed over the threshold. Apart from anything else it contains some nice alliteration and onomatopoeia; you can almost hear the wind whistling in the tree-tops in “winter wind” and the gentle splash of raindrops in “spring showers”.

I originally ran straight on from “one that's gonna grow” to “Oh, but that one seed” but listening back to my transcription (using the score-writing software Sibelius) I realised that the "one seed" line needs to be placed a little later in the song and that inserting another verse here would do that job. Incidentally the tune for “Oh, but that one seed is all the earth needs” is quite an earworm and one which I plan to capitalise on in the arrangement.

I am often asked which comes first in my songs: the tune or the lyrics. The simple answer is that I work on them both simultaneously. As lyric ideas arrive I listen to the tune inherent in the words so that when I have a complete set of lyrics I also have the tune. I also have a pretty good idea of the arrangement with vocal hamonies, changes of instrumentation and other tricks I have learned over the years. For instance an idea that occurs to me for the intro is to have a solo voice singing the first line then gradually add an extra harmony voice for each line so that  “And which of them will fail to show” will be in four part harmony. This intro is rather like those in a few early songs by the Beatles such as “If I Fell”, “Do You Want to Know a Secret” and “Here There and Everywhere” - a trick they learned from songwriters of the 1930s and 1940s.

Wake Up!

I am not good at multitasking with creativity. So while “Four for the Rook” is in my mind I am merely doing mundane but essential work on “Wake Up!”. I am steadily accumulating a wealth of AI-generated images and have laid down markers for every word of the song so that images can be synced more easily and exactly.

Weekly Newsletter #2 (04.04.2025)

When I used to sing vocal harmonies in the band, and later at open-mike nights, I developed the good practice of watching the lips of the others who were singing so that I could synchronise my parts with theirs. However, when I record harmonies to my own lead vocals this, of course, is not possible so I use the time-edit features of ProTools to tidy up the beginings and endings of each word in the vocal parts.

I don't see this as "cheating". My father was a carpenter and joiner (and a very good one too!) and he would use every trick at his disposal, including veneers, varnish and polish, to ensure that the final product was of the highest possible standard.

During the past week I have edited the following parts:

Saturday: the six vocal parts in the first chorus
Sunday: the six vocal parts of the first verse and the same number for the second chorus and the second verse.
Monday: the six vocal parts of the first and second middle 8 sections ("Why on earth…")
Tuesday: the six parts of the remainder of the song and some edits to the brass parts
Wednesday: tidying up the brass parts and bouncing down to a mix
Thursday: Imported the audio into Adobe After Effects and created markers at each significant point of the song

Also on Wednesday I began thinking about the video for the song (although I had already had a few nebulous ideas).

Incidentally, I went for a long country walk in the sunshine on Sunday and as I walked I sketched out in my head some verses and a middle eight section for a new song. It's a development of an idea I had back in August 2020 which was based on the traditional gardeners' rhyme:

Four seeds in a row
One for the rook
And one for the crow
One to wither
And one to grow

I took some liberties with the song turning it into:

Four for the rook and three for the crow
Two are gonna die but one it might grow

as I liked the counting-down lyric trope here and the implication that it takes ten seeds to produce one flower is- more dramatic than the original four to one. However, it never developed any further until now.

A possible later verse could be:

Some seeds freeze and some seeds boil
But not many fall into perfect soil
You gotta sow way more than you'll ever need
If you wanna grow a flower from a packet of seed

and a more reflective middle eight could be:

But the words that you say and the seeds that you sow
Have more in common than you'll ever know
'cos sometimes you gotta say things again and again
Like the only seed growing from a packet of ten

These are just rough jottings at present. I am quite pleased with them although they might, or might not, develop into a finished song. If they do, I see it as a folk-style song with a finger-picking acoustic guitar for accompaniment - possibly a banjo and an unright double bass could fit in there.

New song update:
By Tuesday I had made a radical change to the song by pacing the lyrics better and inserting a couple of bars in between each half line.  I also slowed down the jaunty tempo I had in my head. So now the lyrics are:

Well it's four for the rook [pause]
And it's three for the crow [pause]
Two are gonna wither in the heat of the sun [pause]
And one is sure to grow

Watch this space!

Welcome to the first in a series of weekly newsletters documenting my progress with the song I am currently working on.

This is "Wake Up!" my song written in 2018 as part of my "Big Issues" album. In the week since I started re-editing the song I have modified all the instruments on the track and given them a more laid-back feel.

I use ProTools as my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and, by default, each beat of the bar is subdivided into 960 parts. "Wake Up" has a triplet feel rather than a straight rhythm. In theory this means that each of the notes of the triplet should arrive at 0, 320 and 640 parts (divide 960 by 3). However, these figures are unusable in practice as they give a mechanical inhuman feel to the music so when I originally recorded the song I used the figures 0, 300 and 600 to the notes of the triplet which I now think is still too machine-like. More recently I have been giving figures of 0, 288 and 576 to the triplet notes as I have found these values give a more natural feel. The first track I used with these settings was my remake of "Easy Peasy" (see my Song of the Week #4)

I have applied this more laid back feel to all the instruments on the track which include:

* drums (virtual set of 1980s drums recorded in Abbey Road)
* bass guitar (recorded live on my Variax bass guitar emulating a Fender Precision Bass)
* two electric guitars, both of them recorded on my Variax 6-string on its Fender Telecaster setting. One part is used for the off-beat stabs and the other plays the guitar solo  
* a virtual Wurlitzer electric piano
* a virtual Vox Continental organ using its "House of the Rising Sun" setting
* assorted percussion including a cowbell and a tambourine

I have now started working on the vocals, going back to my original recordings from 2018 but editing them more sensitively than I did on the original version - I have learned a lot in the past seven years! As with some of my recent re-makes I have used an AI plug-in on the vocals.

When I've finished the remake of the audio I intend to make an accompanying video but more about that in my next newsletter.