ShortScale.org

For my 'Elements of Popular Songwriting' module at uni we have to write a song every two weeks, and each one has to fulfill certain criteria. I thought I'd make a thread in order to get some feedback (and potentially make any changes) before I hand in each song.

Week 1

- Write a 'Four Chord Song'
- Use a randomly selected song title (I was given 'Carbon Dating')
- Use four randomly selected rhymes (light, reply, cotton and gone)

The song (or at least an initial demo of it), along with a more detailed explanation, is available here.

Week 2

- Write a song called 'I Want You'
- That's it.

LANK.

As said in the Soundcloud description it's a bit caveman-like. When I came up with the riff it almost seemed kind of classic rock-esque to me, but in the context of the song it has ended up sounding like some bizarre combination of The Melvins and The Residents.

Quite like Carbon Dating. Kind of reminds me of early Cribs with the vocal delivery and the chord structure. Make of that what you will but it's meant as a compliment

Cheers! I like The Cribs, so that's definitely a compliment. Men's Needs, Women's Needs, Whatever is amazingly good.

Week 3
- Write a 'cento' (a song where all the lyrics are taken from other songs)
- Use 20 lines from 20 songs by 20 different song writers - I only ended up using 12, but meh...
- Use a randomly selected first line from another song

Soooooooooong.

I haven't updated this thread in ages, but this coming Wednesday I will be handing in the work which actually gets assessed for this module. I have to submit two songs that I've written since I've been at university, and at least one of those has have been written for the weekly challenges. So I have the three songs already listed to choose from, plus these and this one here.

Week 4
- Write a song using a hexatonic blues scale (everyone was given a randomly selected scale)
- The lyrics must be about a recent news story

LANK.

Week 5
- Write a song in a randomly selected time signature, 7/4 in my case
- The lyrics must be about a randomly selected emotion: 'acute embarrassment'

Linkypoo.

I've written a lot of other songs since I've been at university, but the only ones I've actually finished writing have been for NOSE, and our writing is mostly collaborative. The only NOSE songs I've written entirely myself are:
Intellectual Inbreeding
This Isn't Raven At All (unlike Intellectual Inbreeding, this demo is just me on my own)

My lecture also gave me an additional challenge to make a medley of two of the songs I had already written, so I came up with this:
Raven Dating (Carbon Dating + This Isn't Raven At All)

I'm 90% certain that I'll be submitting 'I Want You' and 'Raven Dating', but ShortScale's input would be just SMASHING.