Original Lyrics

Glory2Hypnotoad

Glory2Hypnotoad

Trooper
For any of you who consider yourselves songwriters, post here to share original lyrics and comment on each other's.
I'll start with a song I wrote for my sort-of-band (under the working name Shrapnyl, i'm the rhythm guitarist.)

The Road Back

Faces frigid, sullen scared,
From the battlements they stare
At brothers left behind and doomed
Who found their peace a day too soon.

The bugle trills, the firing quells.
They start the long road out of Hell.
Marching homeward through scorched hills,
Soldiers no more, soldiers still.

Chorus:
On the road back from death
Death follows you home.
Friends' fates unforgotten
Though their graves marked unknown.
On the road back from death,
Alive but not well,
Their innocence lost
And a grim tale to tell.

Years ago they stormed these sands
Young and eager, full of plans.
The lucky few now make their way
While comrades in the sand still lay.

Burdens lost and burdens gained;
No easy way to ease the pain.
Free to live their lives once more
‘Till once again the bullets soar.

Chorus

Ten years later old men shout
And send young men to die.
And the cycle starts anew
Beneath a burning sky.
Faces frigid, sullen, scared.
Mothers left to mourn.
A sadder but not wiser world
Awakes the morrow morn.
 
Not bad at all, Helphyre.

But "Shrapnyl"? That 'y' reminds me of "Wyld Stallyns" from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.

Ah, who am I to talk? After all, I took my band's name from a Bugs Bunny cartoon...

Anyway, here's "Dance In Fire". Note that the lyrics are intentionally written in a way that obscures the rhythm. They might look like free verse, but they're not - musical line divisions are in different places than the lyrical line divisions.

Night
The patterns there in the stars
Their light is all i see
They invite illumined dreams from afar
With rites and liturgies
Mysteries becoming tangible
Words believed and still unheard
Symphonies of esoteric reserve
They leave me on the verge

CHORUS:
Dance in fire, step in flame
With a smile for the game we played alone
Dance in fire without pain
We aspire to attain the great unknown

Days that passed uncounted like years
Replayed without the fears
We delayed the onset of the unclear
The cages we revered disappeared without a trace
The old slate was cleared
And in its place atmospheres of shadow
Memory laced with tears and bitter taste

CHORUS

GUITAR SOLO

Time is nothing more than illusion hiding deeper truth
There it lies beyond the haze of confusion
Lightly moving through all we are
Traversing silently through the stars
The inner space of our quarks
It is the sound you hear when you step out of the dark

CHORUS
 
"In the first song is the intro sung slow or fast or fast out of interest."

I'm not entirely sure myslef, I'm putting it to music as we speak. My inclination is that it's sung like the verse to The Aftermath, maybe just a little faster.

Impressive lyrics SMX, though i can't quite make out the melody in some parts. I think I'd have to hear it sung to get the tune.

I know the name Shrapnyl isn't great, that's why it's just a working title. It's the fourth or fifth name we've gone through in only two months. I prefer the name Steel Seraph (cheesy but effective I think, plus I came up with a cool symbol with two S's as angel wings) but my bandmates don't like it.
 
Helphyre said:
Impressive lyrics SMX, though i can't quite make out the melody in some parts. I think I'd have to hear it sung to get the tune.
Click to expand...

Here's an old demo of "Dance In Fire".

How about some zombie rock?

Straight Back To Hell

"Father Dear, can I get you some tea?"
My daughter asked with a smile for me
"Bring it here where I sit in my chair"
She brought it quick and I did not beware
Poison cup, I was dead as a rock
They laid me down in a cheap old pine box
So this much I can darkly foretell
I'm gonna take 'em all straight back to hell

Daughter Dear, why do you look surprised?
Is that terror I see in your eyes?
You didn't think I'd come back from the grave
I'm gonna show you your soul can't be saved
You killed your father for money and land
But when I'm dead I got the power in my hands
I might be a zombie, but I know this quite well
I'm gonna drag your ass straight back to hell

Sonny Boy, why do you look so shocked?
Did you think I didn't know you were in on the plot?
Oh that's funny, you think you can run away
But you're damned and I shall not delay
You got a gun hidden under your bed?
You can't kill me, I'm already dead!
Now there's only one thing I can tell
I'm gonna drag your ass straight back to hell
 
I really enjoy Dance in Fire, it has kind of a Blue Oyster Cult quality to it. I love the vocals and bass. That's high praise from me because I usually don't really notice or care much about bass.

This next song is at the moment my favourite of the songs I've written.

Psi

The search to find some peace of mind
Has torn my mind to pieces.
Trapped inside a dream unending.
When will I awake?

So many lonely hours on end
Spent searching for a reason.
The questions left unanswered still
Have left me cold inside.

Were am I? I cannot see.
And all my strength can’t set me free.
Is this really as it seems
Or figments of a dream?

Chorus:
Can you hear me
Screaming into endless ether?
The sands of time are slipping through my hands
To bury me.
My memories,
My one and only fading solace.
The sands of time are slipping through my hands.

The spectres of a world unseen
Have robbed me of my senses.
Lost somewhere if even somewhere
Out of space and time.

Growing darker, stranger still
My thoughts come back to haunt me.
Screaming at the shadows in vain,
Sometimes they scream back.

Where am I? I cannot feel.
Will this madness ever heal?
Is this really as it seems
Or figments of a dream?

Chorus

Guitar Solo

In my mind’s dying hours I pray,
To whom or why I don’t know.
Walls of padded white surround me.
Was I here all along?

The sands of time
Are slipping through my hands.
 
I quite like dance in fire.
I think SMX is vocals and bass which Helphyre said were good.
SMX'S other song lyrics are good.
Helphyre other song has a very Iron Maiden feel to it.
Peace of mind
The sands of time
 
SD93 said:
I quite like dance in fire.
I think SMX is vocals and bass which Helphyre said were good.
SMX'S other song lyrics are good.
Helphyre other song has a very Iron Maiden feel to it.
Peace of mind
The sands of time
Click to expand...

Thank you much. And on that song, I'm all instruments - although everything but the vocal was generated from a MIDI file I wrote. (In other words, I wrote every bit, but no-one "played" anything.)
 
SMX, what program do you use and how hard is it to use. My bandmates and I are at different colleges now so can rarely get together and play. I'm looking for a good program for PC to make music.
 
According to the book I keep my lyrics in, these are the most recent ones:

Ghosts of Dachau

A hundred souls waiting in the winter night
Mothers holding their children ever so tight
The air is cold and frost lies all around
All those people don't make the slightest sound
Their eyes are empty, their spirits flying
Their earthly bodies not afraid of dying
Yet shaking with terror, no relief for their minds
Not wanting to see, what they leave behind

Will we go to heaven when we're out of this hell
Why we have to walk this road nobody can tell
Will we leave our trace in this forsaken world
Will we tell a story and will it be heard
Not to be forgotten

To the fires of hell they're going in
Wondering if they committed an unholy sin
No relief, they believe it all a lie
They're being watched by the sinner's eye
Their screams are loud, but they are not heard
Ears are shut, don't hear a word
Their eyes don't see what happened here that day
Nobody can say, how many souls flew away

Will we go to heaven when we're out of this hell
Why we have to walk this road nobody can tell
Will we leave our trace in this forsaken world
Will we tell a story and will it be heard
Not to be forgotten

The past is sealed and it lies so far away
The tales bygone cannot happen today
They rest in peace, we'd better not wake them now
We see the shadows and are left wondering how
But their ghosts are always observing
Telling their story to those who're deserving
Their greatest gift is knowing, no-one will play with death
And that precious we hold, a final breath

Will we go to heaven when we're out of this hell
Why we have to walk this road nobody can tell
Will we leave our trace in this forsaken world
Will we tell a story and will it be heard
Not to be forgotten
Not to be forgotten

---

I know I wrote some other ones afterwards, but I didn't copy them into that book yet (and now they're probably lost). This one actually steals its melody -if it should ever be played, which I doubt- from a propaganda song of South Tyrolian nationalists. No joke.
 
Very emotinal lyrics, Perun. I'm quite impressed by the talent on this board. Just wondering, what insipres you guys to write songs? Any particular bands, events, works of literature, etc.?
 
First of all - not too bad, Perun. I think it needs music, though. I'm not a big fan of history-based lyrics unless there's Paschendale-quality music with it. But that's just me.

Helphyre said:
SMX, what program do you use and how hard is it to use. My bandmates and I are at different colleges now so can rarely get together and play. I'm looking for a good program for PC to make music.
Click to expand...

My method of creating demos is designed for a single composer (me), not collaboration. Here's what I do:

1. I enter the guitar and bass parts into PowerTab (that link goes to the download page, it's a free but excellent program).

2. I then use PowerTab to export a MIDI file containing those parts.

Note: that's as far as I can go with software links. All other programs mentioned below are no longer available without great effort.

3. I open the MIDI file in MidiStuido 2.0. (That program is still available, but it's up to version 6 or something like that now, and costs a fortune.) In MidiStudio, I add the drums (and any other instruments I want). I also apply a few effects which PowerTab doesn't do nicely, like fading a song out at the end.

4. I then open that MIDI with a program called TiMIDIty. You can scour the web for this one, but it's very old and very hard to find - and even harder to install and get running. It took me a few days to figure it out, a few years ago. It renders the MIDI into a wav file. What's nice about this program is that it uses "sound fonts" - actual samples of recorded instruments to generate the sounds. Sadly, the guitar and bass samples aren't very good - but at least the drums are reasonable. I can put up with bad guitar, but not bad drums.

5. I then load the wav into MultiTrack Studio. This program used to be freeware, easily findable on the web - but current versions require you to pay. I use that to record my vocal track and mix the master. Then I just convert that wav to an mp3.

And after all that, maybe I should post some lyrics too...
This one, "Trainwreck", was inspired by two events. Its vagueness and ambiguity are therefore intentional. Anyone who can guess either of the events which this song describes wins an Internet Cookie (TM).

the omens were there but you always ignored the signs
your lazy excuses caught up with you this time
you knew what was coming but waited till it was too late
and now mother nature won't quit till the price has been paid

your life is a trainwreck
a disaster zone for miles around
your life is a lost bet
final curtains coming down

you finally asked for assistance when all hope was lost
you got yourself into this, now others must bear the cost
your reliance on kindness of strangers is your only hope
you're lucky that everyone doesn't respond with a "no"

your life is a trainwreck
like armageddon fell on you
your life is a lost bet
now there's only hell for you

you know that eventually this pain will come to an end
but you're in so deep you've got no idea just when
all you can do is attempt to survive and endure
and pray that the ills that you're living will someday be cured

your life is a trainwreck
twisted damage everywhere
your life is a lost bet
misery almost beyond compare
it's too late for regret
now you've got to pay your dues
your life is a trainwreck
now you're back to singing the blues
your life is a trainwreck
 
Helphyre said:
Very emotinal lyrics, Perun. I'm quite impressed by the talent on this board. Just wondering, what insipres you guys to write songs? Any particular bands, events, works of literature, etc.?
Click to expand...

Thanks :)
I don't write lyrics often, only when I really feel that type of thing is the best or only way I can express my feelings. Usually it's something happening around me, certain experiences I made, or, as in this case, just something I've been occupying myself with intensely (I read a lot about the Holocaust and current neo-nazi movements in Germany when I wrote those words).

I'm still waiting for that week off when I can try and write the music to all those lyrics of mine. ;)
 
As I promised a week ago, here are the lyrics to a song about itself.
(That concept is either brilliantly post-modern or entirely silly - I'm not sure which.)
The title of this song is "Title Of This Song".
Demo recording: Click here.

This is the first verse of this song
There's only four lines, it's not too long
And when this verse reaches the end
The drums and bass will begin

This is the second verse of this jam
Using Yoda-style grammar, I am
Now I'll sing another word: 'time'
Because it lets me make an easy rhyme

Baby, this is the refrain
Maybe we'll play it again
Yeah, this is the chorus
It's real short so it won't bore us

This is the third verse of this song
We kept it simple so we won't play it wrong
And coming up after this part
The guitar solo's about to start

This is another verse of this number
Gotta make a rhyme, so I sing: 'cucumber'
These lyrics are written in the present tense
Although they don't make very much sense

Baby, this is the refrain
Maybe we'll play it again
Yeah, this is the chorus
It's real short so it won't bore us

This is the bridge
It's got a different riff
The last chord is F
But now it's over

Baby, this is the refrain
We're not gonna play it again
Yeah, this is the chorus
It's real short so it won't bore us

This is the last verse of this tune
That means it will be over soon
Just a few more beats until it's done
I'll count them down: four three two one
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top