Valentine's Day
For Valentine's day this year, I sang Sara a song I wrote:
(and here's a direct link.)
Back last October, while walking to the bus, I was inspired, and came up with the basic 'I want you to know' motif and tune, and wrote the middle chorus (about the PhD.) I had been listening to Jonathan Coulton at the time, and if you know him, I think you can probably tell I was inspired by that (Sara in particular was reminded of 'Code Monkey'--the melody is different, but some of the chord progression is the same.) In fact, I wasn't entirely sure if I hadn't heard the "I want you to know" line from some other song, so I googled the lyric and didn't find it anywhere. (Now if I could google the melody, I'd be all set.) Over the next couple days in spare moments I wrote what would become the first chorus, and noodled around various melodies in my head to try to come up with the main melody. Nothing particularly stuck, and I filed it away, thinking, "I should sing this for Sara for Valentine's day at the thing the youth group does."
Eventually, January rolled around, and my sister Miriam emailed me and asked if I'd be willing to sing for the thing the youth group does. I said I would, and pulled out the song again. I wrote the first verse as I finalized the melody (which sounds a lot like the opening line of the theme from 'Friends', oddly enough), and wrote the final chorus. I also knew I wasn't going to be able to sing it a capella, though, so I asked Miriam for a guitarist (the tune had a guitar with it in my head), and she sent me to Pete Montemayor. He was great. I recorded myself singing what I had so far, including me basically inventing a bridge on the spot as I recorded it, then recorded myself singing a sort of bass line for it, and emailed him the result. Over the next week or so, I finished up the second verse, came up with the final form of the bridge, and had myself a working song!
Pete and I found a time we could rehearse together, I took a couple printed copies of the lyrics with me, and we hashed out the accompaniment. This was a particularly interesting process for me, since I basically know nothing about guitar chords, but had definite ideas in my head for what the guitar should sound like in a couple places. Mostly we went with what Pete had come up with from my recorded version, but there was one bit in particular in the chorus where after a couple sing-throughs I just knew it should be different, but didn't have the vocabulary to say *how* it should be different. (This was the bit at the end of the first and third lines in the chorus: 'stronger every day' and 'since the day we wed' in the first one.) I knew I wanted three chords for those lines, and Pete tried a few options, but nothing quite sounded right. Finally, he picked out the particular notes I was singing, then played a series of three chords. "That's it!" I shouted, and if it was a Peanut's cartoon, that's the point where he'd have ended up tumbling backwards like Schroeder. Then we tried it, and we both agreed it worked great.
After that, the biggest challenge was to not sing it in front of Sara, since the song was basically constantly in my head at that point. Fortunately, the week passed relatively quickly, and, well, then I got to sing it to her! It was pretty cool.
And while I pretty much was singing it to an audience of one, there were a few other people there, too. You can hear them laughing in the video, and their response was basically everything I could have hoped for. They even laughed at the references to things Sara and I had shared that I didn't know if anyone else would find amusing like 'fermented ketchup'. My hope was that the in-jokes would sound like in-jokes, and could be appreciated as a sort of window into our shared history. You can imagine a story about fermented ketchup, and the story you make up in your head is probably pretty close to reality.
At any rate, it all came together perfectly, lots of people told me they liked it, and most importantly, one person in particular told me she loved it, so I'm happy ;-)
I love you, babe! I think you're wonderful.
Edit: There was a request for the lyrics, so here they are:
I still remember the first time I saw your face,
Making you laugh as you tried to eat.
And half a year later on Chicago's windy streets,
We talked for fifteen hours straight.
Who could have guessed that sharing
Fermented ketchup, wearing
That bright pink jacket was the start?
And I want you to know
My love for you gets stronger every day.
Well, I guess that's not literally true,
I just couldn't resist that old cliche.
But it's certainly grown
Much deeper ever since the day we wed.
So I guess that the next time
I'll just say that instead.
I've learned so much from you: some problems don't need my help,
They just need a sympathetic ear,
When people depend on you, you owe them all your heart.
If you don't make time, time disappears.
Have an opinion sometimes.
Embrace the good and bad times.
It's never too late to buy ice cream.
And I want you to know
I love you even though my PhD
Took a little bit longer than we thought,
And I know that it made you quite distraught,
But you know in the end
I made it; got to wear that goofy hat.
Don't you think it was worth it?
Don't bother answering that.
And now there's three of us,
Together in our home,
Though way too many of the walls are cream.
The seals on all the windows leak,
The carpet's old; the shed's antique.
But I don't care, I'm living in my dream.
And I want you to know
My love for you's grown deeper o'er the years.
We've shared each other's joys.
We've quelled each other's fears.
And through it all, you've kept me warm
My outpost in the snow
So I though that I'd tell you
[spoken:] I love you.
And I thought you should know.
(and here's a direct link.)
Back last October, while walking to the bus, I was inspired, and came up with the basic 'I want you to know' motif and tune, and wrote the middle chorus (about the PhD.) I had been listening to Jonathan Coulton at the time, and if you know him, I think you can probably tell I was inspired by that (Sara in particular was reminded of 'Code Monkey'--the melody is different, but some of the chord progression is the same.) In fact, I wasn't entirely sure if I hadn't heard the "I want you to know" line from some other song, so I googled the lyric and didn't find it anywhere. (Now if I could google the melody, I'd be all set.) Over the next couple days in spare moments I wrote what would become the first chorus, and noodled around various melodies in my head to try to come up with the main melody. Nothing particularly stuck, and I filed it away, thinking, "I should sing this for Sara for Valentine's day at the thing the youth group does."
Eventually, January rolled around, and my sister Miriam emailed me and asked if I'd be willing to sing for the thing the youth group does. I said I would, and pulled out the song again. I wrote the first verse as I finalized the melody (which sounds a lot like the opening line of the theme from 'Friends', oddly enough), and wrote the final chorus. I also knew I wasn't going to be able to sing it a capella, though, so I asked Miriam for a guitarist (the tune had a guitar with it in my head), and she sent me to Pete Montemayor. He was great. I recorded myself singing what I had so far, including me basically inventing a bridge on the spot as I recorded it, then recorded myself singing a sort of bass line for it, and emailed him the result. Over the next week or so, I finished up the second verse, came up with the final form of the bridge, and had myself a working song!
Pete and I found a time we could rehearse together, I took a couple printed copies of the lyrics with me, and we hashed out the accompaniment. This was a particularly interesting process for me, since I basically know nothing about guitar chords, but had definite ideas in my head for what the guitar should sound like in a couple places. Mostly we went with what Pete had come up with from my recorded version, but there was one bit in particular in the chorus where after a couple sing-throughs I just knew it should be different, but didn't have the vocabulary to say *how* it should be different. (This was the bit at the end of the first and third lines in the chorus: 'stronger every day' and 'since the day we wed' in the first one.) I knew I wanted three chords for those lines, and Pete tried a few options, but nothing quite sounded right. Finally, he picked out the particular notes I was singing, then played a series of three chords. "That's it!" I shouted, and if it was a Peanut's cartoon, that's the point where he'd have ended up tumbling backwards like Schroeder. Then we tried it, and we both agreed it worked great.
After that, the biggest challenge was to not sing it in front of Sara, since the song was basically constantly in my head at that point. Fortunately, the week passed relatively quickly, and, well, then I got to sing it to her! It was pretty cool.
And while I pretty much was singing it to an audience of one, there were a few other people there, too. You can hear them laughing in the video, and their response was basically everything I could have hoped for. They even laughed at the references to things Sara and I had shared that I didn't know if anyone else would find amusing like 'fermented ketchup'. My hope was that the in-jokes would sound like in-jokes, and could be appreciated as a sort of window into our shared history. You can imagine a story about fermented ketchup, and the story you make up in your head is probably pretty close to reality.
At any rate, it all came together perfectly, lots of people told me they liked it, and most importantly, one person in particular told me she loved it, so I'm happy ;-)
I love you, babe! I think you're wonderful.
Edit: There was a request for the lyrics, so here they are:
I still remember the first time I saw your face,
Making you laugh as you tried to eat.
And half a year later on Chicago's windy streets,
We talked for fifteen hours straight.
Who could have guessed that sharing
Fermented ketchup, wearing
That bright pink jacket was the start?
And I want you to know
My love for you gets stronger every day.
Well, I guess that's not literally true,
I just couldn't resist that old cliche.
But it's certainly grown
Much deeper ever since the day we wed.
So I guess that the next time
I'll just say that instead.
I've learned so much from you: some problems don't need my help,
They just need a sympathetic ear,
When people depend on you, you owe them all your heart.
If you don't make time, time disappears.
Have an opinion sometimes.
Embrace the good and bad times.
It's never too late to buy ice cream.
And I want you to know
I love you even though my PhD
Took a little bit longer than we thought,
And I know that it made you quite distraught,
But you know in the end
I made it; got to wear that goofy hat.
Don't you think it was worth it?
Don't bother answering that.
And now there's three of us,
Together in our home,
Though way too many of the walls are cream.
The seals on all the windows leak,
The carpet's old; the shed's antique.
But I don't care, I'm living in my dream.
And I want you to know
My love for you's grown deeper o'er the years.
We've shared each other's joys.
We've quelled each other's fears.
And through it all, you've kept me warm
My outpost in the snow
So I though that I'd tell you
[spoken:] I love you.
And I thought you should know.