Originally Posted By: David Snyder

Hey Man,

I think there is some really cool stuff going on here.

As the leader of a songwriting organization's NC chapter, I have an idea:

I think you should try an alternate version. Don't even think about this one--just say it is done, as part of this experiment. BUT, go into BIAB and type in praise and worship and look at styles that have "power push" drums. Try just the 4/4 time signature, don't use this bridge, and give yourself 3:15 or 3:20 max. Only use your best lines. Don't do 2 verses to get to the chorus, get there fast, and limit it to V PC, C, x2 a new 4 bar bridge and Chorus out. In the pre chorus, start building the energy, so when you hit the Em (which is functioning like a V) we can really feel it. Make sure to hit the green button on the chord sheet in BIAB so we get a real dramatic chorus drum feel and uplift.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with this version, but try a faster, "push" version that keeps the momentum driving hard, and does it in half the time.

Again, don't throw this one away, just experiment with a whole different take and see what you come up with, just for fun.

Also, when you are in the P&W section, check out the chord progressions in some of the demos.

You could simplify it a bit I think to make a version that has more sing along potential in the chorus.

If you are in BIAB, try going to edit menu (top of GUI), song form, and reduce duration of chords by one half. Try singing along with two chords per measure instead of one. I think you will have fun.

Does that make sense?

I am just suggesting this is an experiment if you feel like tinkering.

But again, there is some really nice stuff going on here. I love the idea.

David, to start off my second reply to your comment, I want to thank you for the suggestion you gave me to shorten my song by cutting out some of the sections and rewriting the bridge (so that it's 4 bars instead of 8) and to try out some of the P&W styles with "power push" drums on this shorter version in order to create an alternate version of my song because I was able to accomplish nearly all of these things over the last few days and have a new short "rock version" demo to share with you and others here. But first I want to say that, before I saw your comment last week, I had concluded that I was essentially finished with the "country folk" version of this song when I created my 9th demo---until a few days later when I started to make some changes to the chords in the chorus that my producer had recommended to me in a session the previous week when he had agreed to produce this song for my album. Prior to that, I had not even considered the possibility that the chords in the chorus may need to be refined because my focus with this song has been exclusively on finding the best way to make the melody and lyrics in the bridge sound their best in relation to the melody and lyrics in the rest of the song.

So, when I discovered that the chord changes my producer had recommended for the chorus were having an adverse effect on the mood and feel of the song when I listened to them in addition to what the increased tempo of 120 bpm had done, I was compelled to ask him if those chord changes were really necessary. This resulted in us having another two-hour "wrangling" session that concluded with him agreeing to keep my chords mostly intact for the first chorus and to only make some chord changes in the second chorus. However, the last chorus in his arrangement will have all of the chord changes that he recommended. Plus, depending on how his arrangement turns out, he still has the option to make the same changes to the second chorus and even the first chorus. Unfortunately, when I tried this past weekend to make gradual chord changes to the choruses in my 100 bpm demo versions that I've been sharing here and elsewhere, I still wasn't pleased with the results. So, now I'm trying to figure out an alternative solution that will work my original demo version.

But getting back to the suggestions you made in your comment above, I wasn't able to find a single P&W style with or without "power push" drums that appealed to me when I tested them on this song after I cut out the sections you mentioned, changed the tempo to 120 bpm, and wrote a new melody and lyrics for the bridge that was as close to 4 bars as possible. So, I decided to sample ALL of the ballad, country, folk, light pop, and medium rock styles to see if any of those would be suitable instead and that would accomplish the objectives that you mentioned. The only style I found that immediately caught my attention because of how well it meshed with this song is the one described as "Pushy Ac Bass Medium Pop Push." I should mention that my producer's chord recommendations also worked really well on this song with this particular style. However, I don't think I was able to create the "energy building" effect within BiaB that you had in mind for the "pre-chorus" transition, which you said required the green button in the chord sheet---aka, "part marker"---because I had already set this up in my previous demos. What I was able to do, though, is use post-processing on some of the tracks in a DAW to create an "energy build-up" transition from the second chorus into the bridge. To me, this makes more sense than the one you suggested because of the 4-bar transition that exists between the second chorus and the bridge vs. the 1-bar or 2-bar transitions that exist between each verse and the subsequent chorus.

Lastly, I should tell you that the only way I could reduce the length of this song to your max target length of 3:15 is by cutting the 4-bar intro, increasing the tempo to 124, and shortening the fade at the end of the song. But because none of these changes will do this song any justice, IMO, I decided to stick with what I have even though the total length is 3:30 instead of 3:15. I think you'll agree when you listen to the demo, which can be done at the following link:

https://youtu.be/Gjo52QrT9XA

Tom Levan (pronounced La-VAN)
BiaB 2024 Win UltraPAK Build 1109, Xtra Style PAKs 1-11, RB 2024, Windows 10 Pro 64-bit, Intel Q9650 3 GHz, 16 GB RAM, 500 GB SSD & 2 TB HDD, Tracktion 6 & 7 (freebies), Cakewalk, Audacity, MuseScore 2.1 & 3.4, Synthesizer V