Original Song: One Man

original songI got the bulk of this month’s original song down in the first week of August. I played it to a couple of my “advisors” who both made the comment that I’m channeling my inner Nick Cave. It’s a reasonably common comment that is strange given I’ve never really been a Cave kind of guy and rarely have listened to his work. Maybe I should! They also made a couple of great suggestions about things I could do to improve the track, but sadly I just haven’t had the chance to act on their advise – so what you get here is pretty much the original take with a couple of tweaks I made over the weekend.

It’s a pretty straightforward piece that is more about the lyrics (that were fun to write) rather than the music – although it was nice to try something new with the trumpet sound! The guitar is the Taylor T5 (increasingly my go to instrument), bass is my homemade fretless and the rest is software instruments through Garageband. I continue to struggle with the mixing and mastering process in terms of given the different tracks spacing and getting their levels right.

So we’re now at 33 months in a row, and the 40th song in the streak – hope it works for you.

One Man
© 2014 Chuck Smeeton

G
One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor
C
Enter and exit through the same door
G
One man’s week is another man’s day
C
Where the passage of time is in disarray

One man’s jump is another man’s fall
One man’s stumble is another’s crawl
One man’s treasure is another man’s trash
Searching through the rubbish looking for a flash

(Chorus)
D
One man’s junk is another man’s prize
C
Just the same result but in another guise
D
One man’s miss is another man’s score
C
Another journey to explore

One man’s black is another man’s white
Shades of grey, a fire set alight
One man’s poison is another man’s meat
But every man, needs to eat

One man’s loss is another man’s gain
One man’s pleasure is another man’s pain
One man’s dark is another man’s light
Flick the switch it’ll be all right

(Chorus)

One man’s win is another man’s fight
One man’s weakness is another’s might
One man’s skill is another man’s flaw
Cooked one way, but sometimes raw

(Chorus)

About the original songs
In January 2012 I commenced a goal of trying to write and record at least one song from scratch each month – sometimes it comes easily, sometimes it’s a real challenge, but I love the discipline it creates. I managed to complete the year, but it was so much fun that I’ve decided to keep it rolling for as long as I can.

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