Thanks man, glad you liked it. You can take a listen to some more on soundcloud if you're interested.

http://soundcloud.com/midnight-down

So, now that my band has a bassist and me as frontman, we got offered to be managed by some guy from Alternative Press...

[i]Oh boy.[/i]

Good stuff Mare.

Do you have a band site, Lostman?

[quote]My guitar is an Epiphone Les Paul with Gibson 496R and 500T ceramic pickups wired for series/parallel and phase switching via push/pull pots.[/quote]

Now I remember. I think we argued about guitar pickups a few years ago.

I go through phases with my guitar playing. Sometimes I play a lot, sometimes just a little. I'm playing pretty often right now. I'm glad to say that I'm 100% content with my present guitar and have no real desire to buy any more stuff at the moment.

[quote="Sclone"]Do you have a band site, Lostman?[/quote]
No recordings up yet.
He was initially interested in my previous band, but he came to a show we played the other night and showed even more interest after he saw us.

Told you tossing that girl was a great idea. You're a good songwriter.

Hey guys, I just wanted to post a new song that I wrote and recorded.
Still needs bass and drums and possibly some strings in there somewhere. We threw this together really quick, so it's just a sample of what the final version will sound like. It'll be longer if I ever find someone to track me a bass line and some drums.

Let me know what you all think.
http://soundcloud.com/ricklee/sky-pirates-final

Lyrics can use some refining, and you might think about varying up the progression some more as well as adding some sort of ending to it (maybe take the arpeggiated stuff and play it a few times to outro). Pretty good though.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. It's a rough draft right now and I want some input to figure out what more I should do. I definitely do agree with you though, about the lyrics and an ending. You have any ideas on what would make this a solid song, besides the lyrics and ending?

Like, if this was your song, what would you change/add?

Thanks for the input though

Like I said, I'd probably vary the song up a bit more, in terms of chord progression. Adding harmony vocals is a good idea if you'd like to keep it sort of stripped down and not add a lot of instrumental layering, as well.

[quote="Marekenshin"]Lyrics can use some refining, and you might think about varying up the progression some more as well as adding some sort of ending to it (maybe take the arpeggiated stuff and play it a few times to outro). Pretty good though.[/quote]

I agree with this.

1) The two chords used (along with that acousticky tone) are very "Sky Pirates" to me, which is cool. But in the lyrics, try to stick to the whimsical nature of sky pirates. The word "badass" does not lineup with those dreamy maj7 chords used.
2) It's a very one-note song. The chord progression never changes, and the vocal melody never really changes either. It all hovers in the same area, repeats the same melodies, and repeats the same...elongated syllables. In a sense, the mood of the song sounds like it could be a good bridge to another song...but if you want to make this major-7 chord stuff the primary meat of the song, you're gonna need some [b]contrast[/b]. Let Kimi to Boku to Otsuki-sama be your guide. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_YzWg4o8E4 Check the contrast introduced at 1:06. As it is, it's like you're serving your listener cotton candy with a side of cotton candy, and letting em wash it down with cotton candy drank. You gotta balance the meal.
3) Are you okay with the idea that your lyrics don't really "say" anything? It's much more of a mood piece. Sort of like the lyrics in a trance song. By the end of 6 stanzas, you've communicated: You and I are sky pirates together. We're gonna reach our unnamed goal together, and the world is ending soon. Even though you've addressed the concern (moving to a new place when the world is falling apart) it doesn't really seem like this conflict is "introduced" given that you repeat the idea numerous times.

If I had my way, I think it'd be really cool to see...1) New chords for the chorus. 2) New vocal melodies. 3) Lyrics that don't follow a very precise, identical rhyme scheme. You don't have to rhyme "tight" with "light." Consider slant rhymes. "Tight" can rhyme with "mine," "line," "sky," "try," etc. I know Mare probably disagrees with me on this, but [b]unless you're a really talented writer, [/b] rhyming this closely can be incredibly destructive to your creative expression. If you feel the need to precisely rhyme the word "tight" then you MUST express an idea which has to do with "light," "fight," "flight," "right," "night," "site," etc. I would rather hear what you, as a songwriter, want to convey - I some how feel like you could do better if you expanded your possible rhyme choices. Loosen the rules and get both precise meaning and less awkward phrasing/syllables.

Hey now, just because I frequently employ straight rhymes doesn't mean it's all I like.

Here is a song I did myself. Tell me what you guys think!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTDTllJ7fIA

Here's a WIP with my roomates and I's band "32 below society". We finally got our recording working at home so we're working on our demo, but we put up some rough one-shots of two of our songs with a condenser mic in the room.

They're really rough, there's no vox, and we screw up a lot. But the general idea is there for the songs.

Oh Yeah, and Offbeat has a buncha goofing around at the beginning, thought it gave the track charm so I kept it.

http://soundcloud.com/32-below-society

That sounds pretty good under the recording circumstances. I'd like to hear what these songs would sound like in a legit studio.