Aw, thanks a lot! Note to self: don't write songs from a horrible creepy POV that doesn't really break character for the whole song, especially as your first try, as people might consider them to be from the heart! But it is a good reminder that being creepy and horrible in isolation doesn't necessarily make for an interesting song all by itself. Funnily enough I've almost finished my next entry, and I'm pretty pleased with the tune at least. Words are going to be harder, but I've got my "one" word, and a couple of couplets for verses. And no creeps in sight!
So sorry about your arm. I hope you are feeling better - on decent painkillers or whatever. I imagine the inconvenience of it all is just as bad.

Thanks for the discord tip. I have a suspicion I won't be able to comment as when I tried to sign up to discord a year or so ago it point blank refused to have anything to do with me, but I will give it a go later. Sorry to hear about your arm! I hope it isn't too painful, but imagine that it is.

Your Spintunes entry sounded really nice - it smells of stately 1980s clever pop. I am listening on laptop speakers so I couldn't make out the words, but I just realised I can read them, and they are lovely, romantic, confessional. Well done!

ha ha, rereading I sounded quite grumpy in that last message, but I wasn't I promise - I am doing it (or trying to do it) because I quite fancied a different kind of culture. Although FAWM is brilliant, I do actually want to hear suggestions for improvement, and FAWM doesn't really encourage that. With suggestions for improvement you can decide whether to take them onboard or not, and hopefully learn something.

So that's a roundabout way of saying thanks for opening my eyes to this, I had never heard of it before. Oh, and thanks for commenting so assiduously on my songs - I will get to yours before the end, I just bit off rather more than I could chew with tit4tat, so I can't really justify listening to other stuff until that is out of the way.

Yes, that was purely down to you. I don't usually respond very well to competitive pressure, but for some reason I thought it sounded like fun. I haven't got very far though - I'm actually not sure I'm going to have something finished in time. I started writing a very po-faced "social media is bad" song after reading an article on social media being bad, and then I kind of recoiled for the sheer obviousness of it. But any port in a storm, eh?

Thanks for listening Mike, thanks too for getting me into this crazy community. I doubt I have anything left for next year (might take a sabbathical or do it another way?).

Hey! Thanks for stopping by to listen and comment. I really appreciate it. I am off to bed but will be returning the favor in the next couple of days. Cheers!

Thank you for all the inspiring work you produced this FAWM and for your comment on my recent song "Won’t Lose Finding You." Glad you're making music and that I was here to see it.

I appreciate the comments on "A Long Way Down" -- Thanks for listening!

Thanks for your comments on HPH!! Slainte!

thank you for your comments on peru 2023. yes, the final verse is about peru today. the last big attack by the shining path was in july 1992 when they exploded a bomb in the miraflores district, killing over a dozen people, but they are rumored to still exist even though their leaders are dead.

And we always hate it when people leave thank you messages on our wall but don't comment back, so we'll add comments on your songs... it might take us a while :)

We very much appreciate and value your feedback, thanks so much for taking the time and being so generous with your messages. We'll try and get some more done for you :)

Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments on my final 2 FAWM songs, @thedutchwidows - This month has been so much fun and such creative inspiration.

I wouldn't be where I am today if I didn't steal/borrow/solicit the advice of smarter people, I can tell you that!
That's a shame, but you can always squirrel it away for next year!

Thanks for your note on Too Many Strings. If you look up dulcimer in the dictionary, it's a bit box with strings strung across it, namely a hammered dulcimer. Yet, there is another instrument that comes from northern Europe that traveled to the Appalachians that has 3 or 4 strings, and is basically a lap zither, but the common name is a mountain dulcimer or Appalachian dulcimer, so I say hammered dulcimer so as not to confuse them. And I have 56 string and 104 pitches to tune, so it's a lot.

As the joke goes "How long does it take to tune a hammered dulcimer?" Answer: "No one is quite sure yet." ;-)

Thanks, DW! There aren't many songs you get to reference Shakespeare and Gorey in. I have to admit I chuckled to myself.

I’m always astonished when anyone remembers anything I’ve done previously—thanks for remembering/revisiting ol’ Chuck. And thanks for all the comments! You are always such a thoughtful listener, I appreciate it.

Thanks for all your comments! I can say from experience that an annoying side character can become a lot more engaging when seen from the inside. I think the girl next door will work as a protagonist. She's not very mature right now, but what good protagonist is? She'll learn.

Tag me if your nostalgia song ends up here on FAWM!

We showed up late, but we got there in the end... Hope you're all good!

I'm really enjoying the comments from people who can connect to "Days of Kohl and Rosaries" -- glad you were one of them.

OMG, thanks for letting me know about the Flaco song by Scotttestmusic! I love it!

Thanks for checking in on "The End is Coming For Us" and leaving a comment. The aim is just to write 8 lines. They don't even have to be connected. But the first two days they were, so I kept going. Today's 8 lines were all completely disjointed (and actually way more than 8).

No, I 100% pants my way through these improvised stories. It's quite nerve-wracking at times.

Ah, Az is also one of those black-with-a-lot-of-dark-brown-in-strong-sunlight-he-looks-like-a-chocolate-gingers. And he can be a bit of an idiot, but he's very loving with it, so he gets away with it.

Thanks for all these great comments. "I'm Not Gay" - pretty sure the starting line was the first line of words for the song, I don't think I knew what it was going to be about until after. Sometimes you've just got to be obvious. Thanks for the autotune thoughts - I think I agree - more or less is probably what's needed, hadn't thought of it that way. And thanks for all the rest!

Och no. Hope that gets better soon and you've got time for a few more songs.

Thanks for all those comments last night, dude. Really appreciate you taking all that time out of your Friday evening.

I didn't even notice that was for the 14! Thanks!

Hi - address just been sent!

Happy to see you back! Thanks for the kind words on my tunes this FAWM :) Looking forward to catching up on yours!

I can’t believe you’re not a bunny fan! I suppose the bed full of poop could be pretty offputting, though. I’ve never owned one, the closest I’ve had is guinea pigs and rabbits are supposedly smarter and more cuddly.

Thank you for the listen, and knowledgeable comments on Winter’s Tale.

That is just where those notes live. The bass notes are found on the outside edges of the instrument. The bass strings crisscross the lower treble strings.

Thanks for reading "Haunted" and leaving your kind comment!

Re. the khaen: the notes sound when the holes are covered. Some of the long reeds are dummies, but others are presumably contributing to the sounds being higher or lower. All the holes CAN be covered; I just WASN'T covering them all because I wasn't using the whole scale. It's an interesting instrument.

Thanks for the very nice and detailed comment on Wobbie and my squirmish skirmish song. That was generous of you.

I was always partial to Filberts, Walnuts and Almonds. Brazil nuts should be banished to the 7th ring of hell.

haha what a great comment. yes... gogglebox for skirmishes is a great observation! thanks so much for such an in depth response :)

@thedutchwidows That was it - sorry it took me so long to get it your way!

@thedutchwidows yes that's me on the trumpet :)
and I will produce that very specific lyric for Petrol Rainbows by the end of the month :)

Trying to remember how to successfully send a sound clip. Let me see if it works with a share link. (Please let me know...!) https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Cw_hoeek8-wyAYTj8AnZI3lKFv00M7MB/view?usp=sharing

Wow, that’s quite something! Go Toby! (And well done supportive Dad!) 👏

Thanks for the well thought out responses to my songs. I really appreciate it, and you're getting pretty much what I want people to hear. I'm a child of a minister and the dichotomy between what is "Holy" and what is true life and love and respect tends to be a theme I fall back to. Thank you for listening!

Thank you! It’s just two guitars most of the way through, panned to about 3 and 9 o’clock if I remember right. There’s a third one that just comes in with some high arpeggios in the outro but you can barely hear it in the noise mush 😄

Yes, a migraine hangover is the weirdest bit of the migraine. Unfortunately, I get migraines way more frequently than once every six months. I can usually treat a migraine with a combination of Tylenol and caffeine, but yesterday, that wasn't working, and I had to pull a blanket over my head for a while. The migraine seems to be gone now; I'm just hoping it doesn't come back.

Really pleased to have made you laugh and glow! 😁 My son’s doing percussion now (hence the xylophone in our lives) though we shan’t ever fit the timpani drums that he so loved at home!

So glad I've inspired you to riot and take over, @thedutchwidows
Being originally from your part of the world, I would vote for you to lead the country.... but then I'd probably vote for a ham sandwich to lead the country, so don't read too much into my comment ;)

Toy pianos don't use strings. They have wooden or plastic hammers that strike metal rods. They're essentially glockenspiels in disguise.

Thanks my friend.It's always special when my works reaches attentive ears. Thanks for communicating what you hear. It means a lot. I'll be back. Hugs.

hey! digging your tunes! to answer your question about my roland spd pads, i’ve loaded my own layered samples into it. one pad has a kick with a hi hat, one has a snare with a hi hat. another pad is a kick and cymbal crash, and one is a snare and cymbal crash. so for verses i generally use the kick hat/snare hat and for choruses i switch to the kick crash/snare crash for some washing on the cymbals. i also have a pad that’s just the kick and one that’s just the snare which i use every once in a while. mainly i stay on those other four. it’s cheating the one man thing a little bit but it fills the sound and makes it sound more like a drummer is in the mix.

oh and the pads don’t seem to mind being stomped on but some shoes are better than others. which is why i wear those brown dress shoes a lot. the pointy toe helps to make the hits register

I always hope that folks will do strange things with my drums. Go nuts!

We should do a collab! You know, something good and weird maybe...? just a thought, email me if you wanna ezragale@gmail.com

Thanks for the note on "He's Hot For Her" FYI, since I couldn't get where I wanted to go in 60 minutes, I spent some time last night and this morning adding a sort of second layer that fills in the story more. No pressure to return to it, of course! :)

Thanks for the comment on 'What They Said'!

Thanks for your thoughts on Cry Baby Boo. I keep writing variations on this theme every FAWM and 50/90. I think it must be time for my hand-wringing "the environmental disaster is coming; what to do?" song next. I just get so angry when I think too much about the circularity of anyone in a position of authority using that authority - predicated ultimately on immorally accrued wealth - to lecture the destitute, or to make unflattering or patronising assumptions about them. But what more impotent way to express my dissatisfaction than a cute little song I suppose? But maybe it is better than doing absolutely nothing at all.

The levers are "sharping" levers. There's one per string. Generally, people tune their lever harps to Eb rather than C so they can access some "flat" keys as well as many "sharp" keys (you have to retune if you want to play in, say, Ab). When you flip the levers randomly, you don't get a regular key because every octave is different.

I do not want my characters to spend a relaxing month doing nothing. I am cruel that way.

Thanks for listening to those. Glad you liked them. Regarding that "grin" bit - it was essentially one of the prechorus bits, but I decided to just keep it the first time. Maybe I should have had it before the second chorus too, I got a bit fixated on getting it under four minutes.

That's odd, I'm getting an undelivered email error when I try to mail you. You okay to mail me? Mine is on my profile, Curiouser and curiouser

Yes, to tune the tongue drum, I would have to physically alter it. It's possible it has gone out of tune by being warped slightly. It's hard to tell.

You can feel free to play around with the music if you like!

Hello! Sent you a facebook message but you might not have recognised me. I've got a half-filled 4-track tape to send you, wanna DM me your address? I'm Balor Price on facebook.

Hmmm, should probably link that in my profile...

Thank you for your comments on Hey Minnesota, that was the first a capella track I've done so I was nervous. Glad you liked it!

Thank you for listening to “Flaming June.” I appreciate the encouragement. :)

Thanks for your comment on a Winter's Tale, glad you enjoyed it.

Yeah, well, nothing stopping you from fleshing that bear reference out now, I'd say!

I am such a dullard when it comes to Shakespeare-isms, I had to look up "Exit, pursued by a bear." Have now added it to my repertoire! Looking for somewhere to use it, lol.

Thank you for the comments! As far as process, I often go music plus words together, a chunk at a time, but I’ve found during FAWM I can usually work faster putting together music first, starting with drums (drums are my big bottleneck since I don’t play them, so finding the right beat tends to be a lot of trial and error), and then working in lyrics around the structure, instead of coming up with a skeleton of a song and adding instrumentation later. So that’s what I did for the two fully produced songs I’ve done so far. Blind Futurism started with an idea of the drums/synths and first couplet but once I added all the other sections I realized how many words I’d have to fill into the placeholders (a lot!)

re: signpost - sleeping birds were twittering elsewhere in the original version and mould was in the lungs?! I put the birds in there as it was weirder :)

Oh am I envious of you gigging. Haven't done that in waaaay too long. Hope it was a good one.
And on the backing vocals, I call them the oohs-n-ahhs, but actually for this song "moans" is perfectly valid. Need to redo them though - I like them loose and a bit rough, but not quite *that* loose and rough. :D

The balafon is a West African instrument. You can get smaller versions; I have an eight-note balafon as well as this much larger 21-note instrument. Mine's tuned diatonically, but there are also pentatonic balafons.

Thank you for your comment on Feline Fagin. I wish I could really send her stealing booze, nice drop of single malt! Glad you liked it.

You know what, I think there's room within my Secret Theme (TM) for a little bit of #liz_bashing.

And thank you for your comments too. I really wasn't feeling it until work finished tonight, so I'm finally feeling that things are moving - and it's nice to know I managed to get something decent down. Really appreciate the positive noises.

And dammit I forgot about the too many synonyms hash tag. I'll get it into the next one, for sure.

wow thank for the comment on Kleptomaniac! Fun stuff

Thanks for your comments! I think I play the slide guitar atypically because I don't really have any preconceptions about how it SHOULD be played, so I'm willing to experiment. It's tuned to open G (which is typical): G B D G B D.

Smooth and creamy? I think that's a first. Glad you liked it. My favourite bit is the chorus bass for what it's worth. I thought "this needs something more" and then I started picking a few bass notes on the piano roll and I thought "hmm, yes please" and I closed my eyes and I felt like Nile Rogers for a second, and then I got a grip of myself.

thanks for your comment about my song - agree re: introductions, they do help tell the story and give context! I will never visit Midsomer!! :D

Thanks! I'm a nerd - I have demo recordings going back to the 1990s... if we weren't poor growing up, I might have digitised recordings I made on the family tape recorder back in the late '80s, haha!

Thanks for commenting on my song. Have a great month.

If you like synth and heavy guitar combos, keep listening :) Thanks!

Thanks for the listening and the kind words. Yes, you have a great act name here - what should we expect? Elizabethan Kerouac? Just kidding - hope you feel inspired soon.

What a great handle! thedutchwidows! Now I can't wait to hear your songs! Thank you for your generous comments on The Movie In My Mind. So glad you liked it!

Hey thank you! Its some amp plugins from toontracks ezmix software.

Thanks for your comment glad to see you are doing fawm this year.

Thanks for commenting on my song! I don’t quite know why I wanted to make it a jaunty number musically, but I think in the end it worked out.

Thanks for commenting on my song. I'm not sure what tequila slappers is but count me in LOL

thanks @thedutchwidows we did this in just under two hours (no? it can't be true :) so smoothly produced), Alan had fun with his vocals and we'll do it again and take a bit more time later in the month

Thanks for giving YRU a thumbs up, appreciated. It's funny how you don't know where a song is going - I had no idea what that was going to be when I started. The pressure to finish and move on helped that one, I think it would have languished on my hard drive for 6+ months if not for FAWM.

Thanks a lot for your words on Princess! I'm happy you enjoyed :) No I didn't wreck my throat. It didn't hurt at all! I just had to drink a lot of water!

Oh I'd love to hear your potty mouth version of the writers block dilemma! :0)))
Thanks so much for taking a listen to "Voices" Much appreciated!

Aw thank you for your comment - it was my big aim this year to get some harp/xylo combo going on. Hoping to do more but need to watch for risk of being samey…

Thanks for your kind feedback on the Abyss

Thanks for the comments on Lotta Nothin. I look forward to returning the favor…

Wow thanks for your comment. I feel honoured and humbled to be compared to such wonderful artists. I hope you have a great fawm 2023

Thanks for the comment on my song!

Thanks so much, came to repay the listen. No pressure, but something yummy from you soon I hope. Hugs my friend.

Hey...nice to hear from you. I look forward to seeing what you come up with as well.

Thank you so much! Those sounds were experimental with my voice then I shifted the pitch some to create the sound I heard in my head. I appreciate your kind comment!!

Thanks for listening to Clissold Park - I have no idea why the words started to settle on to that in the chorus bit. It started off being something about love, or something. The spurious specificity of a weird place name like that seemed to work.

@thedutchwidows thanks for the feedback, I have apile of Alan's lyrics that I'm going to use as much as I can, to make the process a bit quicker.. at least until halfterm..

Why thank you kind Sir for your comment on my song! Always a pleasure to be listened to by you!

Hi @thedutchwidows here we go again, I can't remember how to message on here - is it here? or somewhere else?

Wow! You got the album and comic!! That makes me feel all warm inside, for reals. A thousand thank yous, sir....can't wait to see what you and we all get up to here this month also.

hey hey! it's almost February eve so I'd say your timing is impeccable. looking forward to teaming up via four-track cassette!

well the idea is floating in the universe now... :)

Yay! You're around, I couldn't find you. I'm doing great thanks. I've been cranking them out in January definitely. But I think I should have enough song-juice to get through Feb too, and then collapse into a song-hating heap in March...

Hello there, my friend. Great to see you here and thanks for the lovely greeting.
I'm doing well. New album LIfe Of Love realeased last monday (playlist on my youtube)
Looking forward very much to hearing your stuff through FabFeb.
Wishing you and yours many blessings this Sunday evening and for the week ahead.
Hugs.
PS: I still harbor some crazy distant daydream that one day we shall do a collab for the ages! :)

Hey there!! Welcome back - I can't wait to hear your fantastic creations. they are a highlight every year for me. And yes, I am going to put you on that tape and make it a 2X tape. Feel free to start another. I am sure we can fill it up. I'd love to hear that!

Hello! Can’t tell you how lovely it is to see that fine picture of a gentleman smoking a pipe again! Looking forward to hearing some more fabulous music from you :)

Ah that's lovely to hear. Glad you had fun with it. I think everyone's life would be improved by having a sylvan around!

Hey! Welcome back! Looking forward to hearing your music again this year.