Acetio | Blogma

These are songs I've written over the years, either for kids, or their parents.

The Future Stinks - 596 KB
"When I was a kid my daddy once said to me, 'When you are grown, oh the things you will see.'"

Go to Bed - 1,447 KB
"Now it's time to go to bed. What else is there to do?"

Bubble Bath - 1,565 KB
"I love bubbles. I love bathtime."

Cleanup - 2,871 KB
"I love to color and I love to play"

Cowboy Robot Blues - 2,658 KB
"I had a job way out west..."

Are We There Yet? - 1,659 KB
"License plate bingo, it's a quarter to three"

The Pooping Song - 4,940 KB
"Pooping. Everybody's pooping."

All Songs

TakingTheLongerWayHome.mp3

C a C C C a C C
Taking the longer way home. Let's take the longer way home.

G C G C F a F G F d C a G G
It's been so long, let's make up lost time. I need you here; I can't let go, so please don't change my mind.

C a C C C a C C C a a F G C a C

I've done some research on what aspects of music make a song popular. I've become convinced that one aspect is the structure of the melodic line, specifically that it needs to advance stepwise as in a scale. Jumps greater than whole steps make the song more complicated, while repeating the same notes make a song more simple.

I intended to compose a number of songs based on this idea, and the one that embodies the theory best is the one called 'You Tonight'

Rudyard Kipling is an interesting poet to study these days. His notions of the White Man's Burden seem so outdated, yet his experiences in Colonial India have echoes in the actions of the U.S. in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I had some music snippets and thought it would be a good exercise to fill them out using an existing poem as the basis for rhythm and structure.

I chose Kipling's "Mandalay" because it had a structure that would work with what I already had melodically, and the verses are very visual.