So, cast your vote and let us know what you like best!

False alarm!  Neither Mark nor I actually fell today.

However, we did write this song.  We hope you enjoy it!

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download:I Fell in Love Today

In other news, I spent a large part of the day at a music store keeping a friend company while he shopped for amps. He ended up buying a 70-pound behemoth of an amp, a Mesa Boogie Rect-O-Verb 50, which sounded pretty awesome, especially for the more heavy songs he plays. Maybe Michael and I will have to write a metal song at some point =)

Last thing I’ll mention is that this blog reached and surpassed 500 views last week, and we’d like to thank everyone for actually visiting the blog and listening to our music. Pretty soon we’ll be posting some polls and things like that to try to get more feedback about which songs have the most potential or need the most work, so hopefully all of you regular readers will participate in those.

So, without further ado, here’s the new song…

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download: Don’t Say It

One nice songwriting community can be found at http://forums.songstuff.com/. I posted a link to Broken Up there a few days in this forum topic.

And there, Michael and I received our best review to date from Tom Hoffman (http://www.tune-smith.com). It’s not really a rave review of the song, but it is our best review in the sense that it was a well-balanced commentary that offered very specific feedback. And so I’m sharing it here (with Tom’s permission).

Nice job….I actually thought the song was pretty cool! You really didn’t give much guidance about what aspects of this you’d like critiqued, so I’ll just give some random thoughts….

- as a general rule, it’s really helpful to the reviewers if you post the lyrics up with the song link

- It really didn’t seem like the imagery presented by the first 2 lines of lyrics were a good fit for the musical feel of the song. Birds & plants brought things to mind for me that didn’t set me up very well for where you took the rest of the song. Those 2 lines come off a little weak, a little too popish and they are the first 2 things sung to the listener…..you know what they say about 1rst impressions

- I’m not sure how well the non-ryhme at the end of the last line of that verse worked….it sounded a little akward. If you decide to rewrite thoses first lines, it might be good to give some thought to meshing them somehow better with the final one.

- I thought the song was a cool mixing of styles. The verses come off kind of grungy-pop & the choruses reggae….I thought keeping the bridge reggae was a good choice, loved the harmony lead sections….very nicely done. This player format doesn’t give the listener a way to fast forward or rewind, so I’m not possitive, but I thought you changed the format of the 3rd verse to reggae also? If I’m remembering right, I thought that worked well also. Up to the point of that first lead, that verse-to-chorus format shifts twice on the listener….after that lead I liked the style maintaining a more consistant feel throught to the end….another good choice!

Overall I thought it was interesting & well done…..nice job guys! Welcome to the site!

The idea behind the song is pretty clear when you start listening to it — knowing someone well enough that you know all of their secrets and having the trust that you won’t divulge them to anyone else.

We’ve recorded various studio and live versions of I Know over the years. This most recent version features Michael’s piano skills and gives a different feel to the song — a bit more reflective than our previous guitar/rock versions.

As always, we’re experimenting with different recording techniques, so if you like something about this better or worse than Broken Up, please let us know — we’re happy to hear the feedback.

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download: I Know

This song has been written over the past couple of years, with minor tweaks here and there along the way. This is the first song we’re posting with a full band arrangement, so please comment on what parts of it you like or don’t like.

Check after the song links for a picture of me, Mark, in my Halloween costume =)

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download: Broken Up

This song, Girl Rock Band, was mostly finished lyrically a couple of years ago and was written in a single night. I had gone out to a coffee shop in San Francsico and seen an amateur girl rock band. They were just starting out, so their music wasn’t all that great, but they still had an adoring crowd of guy fans.

Inspired by that experience, I went home and wrote the lyrics to Girl Rock Band and recorded a rough version of it that night. A few months later, Michael took that version, shifted around some parts, created a bridge, and completed the song quite nicely.

Girl Rock Band isn’t quite as serious of a song as Please Come Home To Me, but it kind of reminds me of songs like Girl All The Bad Guys Want, by Bowling for Soup. So I don’t think it’s too silly to be considered a real (non-humor) song, but let us know what you think.

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download: Girl Rock Band

Michael’s been driving between Portland and California, trying to finish moving to California. And I’ve been practicing with a rapidly-formed work band to play at a company Diwali celebration this Friday (tomorrow).

The work band has been practicing every night, trying to master 11 songs for an hour-long performance. Tonight, we finally ran through the whole set twice without falling apart, so I think we’ll be ready to put on a decent show tomorrow.

The Indian music that we’re playing is pretty interesting… Several of the songs are male/female duets, and tricks are played with the chord structure so that the female verse is the same chord pattern as the male verse but just twice as stretched out. And there are interesting chord rhythms, etc. — maybe Michael and I will try to work some of these ideas into a future song.

Anyway, that’s what we’ve been up to. Thanks everyone for their comments. We also posted Please Come Home To Me for review at http://www.musicmarketing.net/forum/topics/song-review-please-come-home, so you can see what people have said about it there (just one review so far).

We hope to post another song to the blog this Saturday morning, so stay tuned =)

One approach we’ve been trying recently is Michael will play and sing the chorus to a song he’s been stuck writing for years, and I’ll try to improvise lyrics for minutes at a time while he plays verse chords on guitar. We’ll record the whole improv session and then listen to it afterwards for any clever or insightful lyrics that stick out from the jumble. The tricky thing is picking out good song lyrics that still get the point of the song across without just stringing together words that sound nice.

We just took a break from a songwriting session right now, where I improvised lyrics to songs tentatively called “Christine” and “Hey Down There.” So maybe you’ll see something about those in the near future.

While I’m using this break to write this blog entry, Michael’s using it to cook himself another 6-egg omelette — got to keep those guitar fingers fueled.

Anyway — we’ve gotten some good feedback on Please Come Home To Me so far from friends via email, but if you have any opinions on the first song we posted, please leave a comment and tell us.

Michael heard it, liked it, and started work on improving the melody, adding more musical sections… Recently Michael came down from Portland to visit, I took 2 days off work to song-write with him, and we came up with the 3rd verse and some of the bridge, and we realized the song was done.

So here’s a recording taken just a few days ago.

Right-click here and choose “Save” to download: Please Come Home To Me