A New Project

I thought I would share the lyrics to the song I wrote about a month ago which I am trying to polish enough to put on Spotify. I’m currently looking for someone to collab with who will sing the guy’s part I wrote over the bridge, so the progress has been stalled for the present moment, but here it is!

The title is under construction, but I’m currently calling it “i used 2 sleep with my phone”

 

(I thought I saw you last night)

I’m setting a reminder in my phone for early May (across the bar, yeah you caught my eye)
saying if I’m still talking to you it’s time to go our separate ways (I went home with another guy)
yeah it’s harsh, kinda cold (you were never mine)
but I best do what I’m told (you were never mine)
cause now you’ve got her to hold, hold you (you were never mine)

thinking back on everything that’s happened; I’m feeling kinda down
all those late nights that I stayed up hoping you would come around
I would sleep with my phone
ringer on, all alone
wondering if you took her home again

you’re not mine to lose
but if I could choose
the place that you’d have is by my side
I know that it’s wrong
to feel so in love
with someone who’ll never change his mind
but I can’t excuse my feelings for you tonight

we had a good long while of talking every day
and I’d hang up with a smile; you made colors out of gray
but pack it up, signing off
won’t wait around for your love
now you’ve got her and that’s enough for you

you’re not mine to lose
but if I could choose
the place that you’d have is by my side
I know that it’s wrong
to feel so in love
with someone who’ll never change his mind
but I can’t excuse my feelings for you tonight

wake up faster (I thought I saw you last night)
make it better (across the bar with some other guy)
move in closer (true you were never mine, but when he held you tight)
remember (I said “I’m fine;” I lied)
all those evenings (tell me girl, did I hurt you?)
I spent feeling (I know I did, but what did I do?)
things I thought you (and when you took him home, I called a girl I know)
were also feeling (couldn’t be alone, would’ve lost control)

but it’s okay (now I’m with her instead)
I know you better now (but you’re still in my head)
I won’t wait (I bite my tongue and try to say, anything except you’re name)
not gonna wait around (would you ever wait for me?)

you’re not mine to lose (all those evenings) (I thought I saw you last night)
but if I could choose (I spent feeling) (Cross the bar with some other guy)
the place that you’d have is by my side (things I thought you were also feeling) (true you were never mine, but when he held you tight, I said “I’m fine;” I lied, can’t you see I’m crying?)
I know that it’s wrong (but it’s okay) (tell me girl did I hurt you?)
to feel so in love (I know you better now) (I know I did but what did I do?)
with someone who’ll never change his mind (I won’t wait) (when you took him home, I called a girl I know, couldn’t be alone, would’ve lost control)
but I can’t excuse my feelings for you (I’m so confused; I know I used you)
no I can’t excuse these feelings for you (I never knew that I would lose you)
no I can’t excuse my feelings for you tonight (how can I prove I’ll always choose you?)

(can we go back to last night?)

TikTok Songwriting Trends

Yes, I know. TikTok is in my blog post title. How very Gen Z of me. However, I think there is something to be said about a trend I’ve been following on the app for the last few months. It’s been super cool to watch, and has taken off quickly in the TikTok community.

The first time I saw a TikTok of someone playing original music, I didn’t think all that much of it. Sure, it was cool, but people post original music on SoundCloud, Youtube, Instagram, etc. I didn’t see how TikTok could do anything more for creators than these other platforms. I think it’s safe to say now that I was wrong.

Since I joined the app in September, I have witnessed songwriters years younger than I am blow up for posting just 15-60 seconds of a song.

I remember scrolling through my For You Page and coming across a video of a blonde girl singing an original song into a microphone. It was a simple video. The lyrics started “I’m mad at Disney, Disney / They tricked me, tricked me / Had me wishing on a shooting star”

Chances are, if you have ever spent time on TikTok, you are familiar with those words. The song blew up big time, and now serves as the audio for over three MILLION videos.

“How can you miss someone you’ve never met / Cuz I need you now but I don’t know you yet” (IDK You Yet Alexander 23)

“Low key f*** 2020” (F2020 Avenue Beat)

“Don’t stay away for too long / don’t go to bed / I make a cup of coffee for your head” (Death Bed Powfu)

“Now I could write 10 songs about 9 ways you ****ed me over” (Never the 1 ROSIE)

“I would rather be distant with you / than feel distant with someone who / is standing in front of me” (Long Distance JORDY)

“Cuz I never meant to fall out of love with you” (Out of Love With You Avery Lynch)

I’m betting you’ve heard at least one of these lyrics before. Each and every one of these songs was written, posted, and born from the TikTok platform. This just goes to show that the world of music is changing RIGHT NOW. The artist ROSIE, for example, posted “Never the 1” on TikTok after her boyfriend broke up with her less than a year ago, dropped out of school a few weeks later, signed with a major record label, and is now recording music for a living. Social media has such power in all aspects of life–and songwriting is no different!

Other notable examples of TikTok music include Ratatouille the Musical–a full musical written/created by TikTok users, Bridgerton the Musical–a musical in progress being written and scored by @abigailbarlowww and @mlebear, song-a-day challenges like the one being undertaken by Vaultboy, and many more super cool projects. If you’re already a TikToker, I recommend checking all of these people out! If you’re not, I still recommend giving at least some of their content a listen! TikTok can be a time-sucking addictive mess, but there is definitely good to come out of the platform.

 

Do songs have to rhyme?

One thing I think I’ve grown at during my songwriting career is my appreciation for the different forms lyrics can take. Lyrics are in many ways just poems set to music, and when most people think of poems, they think of structures ending in rhyming parts. These parts are pleasing to the ears, but are not required to write a successful poem–or in that case, a successful song.

When I wrote my first song I was eight years old. It was called “Sun is Shining,” and was pretty much what you would expect an 8-year-old to write. It went:

“Sun is shining,
trees are swaying
wind is blowing
flowers waving”

etc. I was so proud of myself for the way the lines sounded when sung together since they all ended in the ‘ing’ format. To 8-year-old me, lyrics could be written in one way, and one way only.

As I grew up, my lyrics got a little more complicated than talking about what I could see in the prairie outside my living room window. In middle school I wrote “Juliet in Me,” a song which my mother swears will never be replaced as her favorite piece of mine.

It began:

“Sitting in the darkness
in a princess dress
I felt like a girl people would fight for
but how am I supposed to act my part
when the only love I’m in is through Juliet’s heart
and my Romeo doesn’t even know my name”

Based on my musical theatre endeavors, this song was a venture into the world of lyrics where not EVERY line had to rhyme. I also employed rhymes/similar sounds within single lines of text for the first time: I.e. RomeO doesn’t even KNOW my name.

In college I got into the groove of using near rhymes–words that weren’t identical in their patterns, but exhibited the same vowel sounds and therefore sounded like they did rhyme when sung. One of the latest songs I wrote uses this technique in its chorus:

“I am a kid again
chasing fairytales and booking flights to places I’ve never been
Because life Isn’t long and we don’t know when it will end
and sometimes you can’t wait around for your prince to step in
oh I am a kid again”

Every word at the end of a line in this chorus is a near rhyme. AgAIN, bEEN, ENd, IN, and agAIN. If you spoke this chorus aloud, odds are you would catch the discrepancies in sound, but when sung over a background of musical instruments, it’s less obvious. This is due to the fact that vocalists tend to linger on vowels instead of consonants while singing, Since the vowel sounds in all of these words are very similar, as the vocalist lingers on them, the vowel becomes the most important part of each of these words and the rhyme scheme works.

This is the same technique I use in the song I am currently writing. It is a duet–featuring a male voice speak/singing a part over the bridge. Part of his lyrics go:

“I thought I saw you last night
Across the bar with some other guy
True, you were never mine
But when he held you tight
I said “I’m fine”; I lied
Can’t you see I’m crying”

This goes even one step further than the song about being a kid again. Not only does it use the same vowel sound at the end of every line, but it also sneaks it into the middle of lines here and there. In this case the sound I was looking for was the long “I” sound.

I thought I saw you last night
Across the bar with some other guy
True, you were never mine
But when he held you tight
I said “I’m fine”; I lied
Can’t you see I’m crying”

So, do songs HAVE to rhyme? No, of course they don’t. Is rhyme a good tool to use to make your lyrics easy to remember? For sure! However, there’s no ONE way to use rhyme. You can go the simple way with perfect rhymes, or dive into something a little more complex. To each their own!

Hidden Gems: The Null Coalescence Operator

In a previous Hidden Gems post, I covered the artistic side of programming as expressed through the use of the ternary operator. Here is the original post if you’re interested, otherwise here’s a quick summary of the concept: programming relies on the use of conditional statements, where a certain path is taken depending on the value of a variable or expression, and a ternary operator is an elegant, shorthand way of writing these conditionals. In the example below, the function isItSnowing() will return a true or false value telling us if it is snowing. If it is snowing, then we’ll stay inside, and if it is not, then we’ll go outside. The ternary operator has unlimited potential, with the ability to string multiple conditions together, but must be used carefully; just because it improves readability and style in this scenario does not mean it always will.

The null coalescence operator is a slightly more nuanced version of the ternary operator, but even more interesting due to it’s use cases. Oftentimes in programming, you want to assign a value to a variable, but you don’t know for sure that the value exists. The value might come from another source and you can’t guarantee that it was received correctly or as expected. In most programming languages, trying to use a value that was never created causes a disaster (one can easily see why), and will usually crash the program. However, programmers would usually prefer to provide some default value instead, to prevent the program from crashing. Here is that exact situation presented in relatively simple, but verbose code:

This is a fairly straightforward conditional statement, which says in plain English, “if the value of temperature is known, the message will be that value, but if for some reason we don’t have the temperature, let the message be a default warning that we don’t have the temperature”. If you’ve been paying close attention, you might have noticed that this conditional is very similar to the one we explored when discussing ternary operators, and as a matter of fact, this conditional can be expressed using a ternary operator, as demonstrated here:

Notice again the power of the ternary operator in simplifying the conditional. It compacts the same logic into one statement, which reduces the number of lines and is more efficient to run. Now behold the same statement written using the null coalescence operator:

The differences may be subtle at first, but they are extremely important. Notice that there is no expression to test whether or not “temperature” exists, as it is built into the operator. Also see that it automatically assigns the value of “temperature” if it exists. Finally notice that the default message comes after the null coalescence operator, and is assigned when the value of “temperature” does not exist. A common way to read the operator in English is “reading from left to right, give me back the first thing that exists”. This use case is extremely common in programming, which is what ultimately led to the null coalescence operator being created. Personally, I was thrilled when I discovered this: after writing hundreds of the equivalent ternary versions, I had finally discovered a way to write less code while also improving the style of my code. Once a programmer is used to using this operator, it reads much more naturally than the ternary operator and saves valuable time when trying to understand the code. This operator can also be chained, similar to the ternary operator, as shown in this example, where the default string is used if both the “temperature” and “backupMessage” variables are null:

At the end of the day, the null coalescence operator may not seem like a revolutionary idea, and it isn’t. However, it is a testament to the ingenuity and artistry of programmers, motivated by a unique combination of laziness and empathy for the programmers who follow. It is the accumulation of these small improvements that evolve into the modern programming languages we have today, which are more powerful and easier to read than ever before.

A Box on the Bucket List

Hey guys!

This post is going to be short this week. I’ve been spending way too many hours in the past few days working on a project that I am currently super, super excited about. It’s my first full-length, fully mixed song that I am crossing my fingers will turn out professionally enough to put on Spotify!!! That’s a huge bucket list item for me, and if all goes according to plan, the track will be ready by the end of this month. So… keep a lookout for that!

I’m currently recording on my Yeti microphone with GarageBand and my Mac pro. It’s far from a professional set-up, but it’s also incredibly amazing to see just how much someone with zero (and I mean ZERO) experience recording can do with just a few tools. This has proved to me that literally anyone can be a recording artist if they so choose to be. As long as you put in the time to figure out how your software works, you’ll be able to produce some really awesome stuff.

This new song is called “i used 2 sleep with my phone” (I’ve been feeling the artsy lowercase titles lately) and is my attempt at a typical angsty pop song–which is something I do not ever write. It also is definitely influenced by my experience here at UMich with the a cappella scene. At this point I feel like I have a whole choir of my own voice singing behind me on the track.

I will update on here how everything is going every week until the track is released, but as for right now that’s all I’m going to say! Thanks for reading, and if anyone else is a GarageBand fanatic, let me know! I’d love to listen to some of your stuff.

-Josie