Podcast: Love On A Train (and Songcraft Session #5 recap)

[UPDATES:
24 Sept '07: Thanks to Jeremy for posting a comprehensive recap of the session; sound-clips included.
25 Sept '07: The photographer discovers my post!]

For the last meet-up, Jeremy emailed us this photo and suggested we make an attempt to write music and/ or lyrics, based on our interpretation of the picture. So I came up with this:

powered by ODEO
[Higher-quality MP3 at www.archive.org/details/LoveOnATrain]

I was inspired by this photo, by Doug Stremel (flickr page | blog)

thinker - Originally uploaded by blamfoto

Here are the lyrics, along with notes on how they were eventually written as such (initially it wasn't about a man falling in love with a woman, but a man thinking about himself as a young boy meeting this young girl on a train).

And here's the Minus-One version (i.e. without my vocals):
* MP3 file - Love On A Train - 'Minus One' (2.7 MB)
[www.archive.org/details/LoveOnATrainminus-one]

Feel free to record your own vocals. Also, feel free to re-publish it (see CC license). I'm sure many of you out there can do a better job. I needed a rocker's voice for it.

It was nice to see new and old faces:

• Carrie (check out her songs; we emailed after she left this comment) and her friend, Min.
• Mart Ilagan (he's more than an amateur! Mart has released a song in the Philippines, recorded and sung by none other than the first Philippine Idol Mau Marcelo! Listen to the song at YouTube - 'Hangga't Kaya Ko Pa' [Until I Can]. Woot!)
• L.F., aka tromperie (Surprise, surprise! Turned out she's my colleague, who found out about Songcraft from my blog posts. Heh, plenty of musically-inclined librarians it seems.)
• The usual suspects - Betty, Chris, Firdaus, Jeremy, Jerron, and Hui Leng (yet more collaborative songs from some of them, all done via emails prior to showcasing it at the session!)
  

I'll say this about Songcraft -- besides getting loads of positive vibes from attending the meet-ups, it also provides me with a purpose to compose, and an audience.

Doesn't matter if your songs are good or otherwise (although most I've heard are really good stuff). Nevermind if most don't share your musical preferences. The Songcraft folks are all very supportive towards whoever is sharing their songs. Comments are always constructive (although sometimes I feel everyone's much too polite and should just share what worked and what didn't, heh).

I feel that's what Songcraft is at heart -- a support group.

Speaking from experience, one tends to give up composing songs when the only audience is yourself.



These works by Ivan Chew are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. For permissions beyond the scope of this license , please contact via RamblingLibrarian@gmail.com.

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