Disclaimer: I had to throw this one together. I, thankfully, had a busy week. I’m finally getting some work here in Tokyo (playing jazz piano and doing voiceover/singing work for video games and commercials) and I’m still figuring out the balance. In addition, I had to sing this with everyone here in the house asleep, so the vocal is squashed to shit because I basically had to whisper the damn thing. I also recently completely rearranged and rewired my studio and my dumb ass forgot to wire the Kronos in stereo so my recording is mono except for a little reverb on the vocal. Oops.

------Structure------



I’m working on breaking free from my couplet/quatrain rhyme schemes. In this one I tried to rhyme the first two lines of each system of three, and then rhyme the last line of each pair of systems of three. I only found out upon writing this that the last lines are all at least pseudo rhymes or the same bloody word. Damnit. So, I was successful in getting away from quatrains, but failed miserably in the second half of my rhyme scheme goal. 

I’ve always been rather shady on rhythm/syllabic consistency. It’s definitely an area in which I need to work. I tend to start a tune one way and end up somewhere else once I get on a roll. You can see this in the varying between 8, 9, and 10 syllables in each line. This, of course, is wholly ignoring the inconsistencies in the accents. I readily admit that I suck at this. I vacillate between writing words first and writing chords/melody first, and I suspect my inconsistency in methodology contributes to this syllabic inconsistency.

The tune as a whole is structured in two verses, followed by a pre-chorus, then a chorus, the entire form repeated twice followed with a recapitulation of the first verse with a slight variance as the character’s attitude has evolved from accepting the juxtaposition of her sense of personal accountability with the cyclical nature of poverty and addiction. The character's conclusion in the second series of verses about the systemic nature of poverty is what results in the final verse's slight variation.

The lyrics of mine that I tend to like the best have a strong narrative/storytelling component, so that's something I'm beginning to lean into.

The tune was inspired by walking around Shibuya and Shinjuku at night and being accosted by strung out hookers and feeling sorry for them.