The Freshman Experiment

hey here’s my response to kait’s “my heart post” from yesterday.

small things: i like “songs and details” better than just “details,” and I can make it work musically. thanks for the change to “somewhat impermanent,” though. that’s much easier to set.

I don’t buy not having the hook at the top of the second chorus - you’ll have to give me a good reason why it’s not helpful. also, what about having more of a rhyme there? something like: “of my present life now flying past.” if you really want that phrase to push ahead we could also change the second line to rhyme with heart and having the 4th line push into the chorus.

in terms of the end and structure, we definitely need to come back to the prechorus again at some point in the song. i think you said we couldn’t get to it after the second verse, thought-wise, and so we’ve ended up w/ this structure: V, P, C, V, C, P, C, (C). It’s actually pretty common, having your pre-chorus then function as your bridge. so i think after this second chorus we would have a short instrumental section (possibly w/ spoken text overtop), and then go into the prechorus again into a final chorus, extended chorus or double chorus. i think we should wait on talking about extensions work - i want to think about that musically.

But wait. Here’s a completely different, possibly simpler option, if we can’t get on the same page about the transition into the second chorus, is to revisit the idea of the simple pop structure: VPCVPCC. It just occurred to me that there’s a way to incorporate your list idea into the second prechorus. Something like:

Back home
With my dog Angelina
Back home
With my stuffed Eskimo
Back home with books about jesus
And cheetos and board games and pictures of Reno
My heart is split…

Which means the end of the song would then be just as you described it – just a double or extended chorus. I don’t know how I feel about it – it certainly seems like the best way to do what you’d like to do. I hadn’t considered it before because changing the lyrics in the second prechorus isn’t a very pop-like thing to do, but a) we’re in a musical theatre place as well and b) who gives a shit anyway and c) if it’s simpler then that sounds great to me.

Thoughts?

Here’s my newest attempt. I took out the list cuz it makes Brian nervous and I respect and understand this and I tried in earnest to get from verse to chorus w/o pre-chorus. I think it works if you do extend the last line an extra syllable or two and cut into the chorus - thereby sort of eliding the hook. Changes in italics:

It happens every now and then.
I hear the words I need to hear
Coming from the tiny speakers
That I’ve shoved into my ears.

The crickets setting the tempo,
The wind dancing across my skin,
Reminding me of conversations,
Summer nights when I stayed in.

Back home, before I moved.
Back home, before I got here.
Back home with the people who loved me
my eighteen years.

My heart is split
between home and here.

I’m cut in half

Two beds, two lives, and I live in between

My porch back at home and this strange new world I knit.

My heart is split.

As sudden as the onset of winter,

As nat’ral as the trail mix they all eat

This somewhat impermanent place I live

swept me off my size-five feet.

I read non-stop to quell the absence.

I drink too much. I fall in love too fast.

Obsessively collecting the details

Of my present life now passing… I’m split
between home and here.

I’m cut in half

Two beds, two lives, and I live in between

My porch back at home and this strange new world I knit.

My heart is split.

Now, since I think we probably need a double chorus at the end (is that true, B?) and probably an extension, I think we might be able to use the idea of a list somewhere in there if we’re interested.

The thing I thought of doing was splitting up “my porch back at home” and “the strange new world I knit” - to include a sort of list in the middle bookended by what had previously been in the chorus. Example with semi-dummy lyrics:

my porch back at home with my neice on the stair and the dark chilly air in the strange new world i knit.

1. I envisioned this as more of a list of things than 2 things described in more detail but perhaps this is more realistic in the sentence construction?

2. I can’t really figure out the rhythm and scansion of this… so I’m thinking that it would need to - in part - come from you, B.

What do you think?