This is the first track in my Composer’s Sketchbook dating way back around 1970. Since then, I’ve composed and recorded nearly twenty hours of original music including finished songs with lyrics, instrumentals, demos, riffs, and hooks.

I’m a terrible musician and a horrible singer but a pretty good composer. So, you may be hard pressed to hear the diamond in the rough. Even worse, these recordings were made on an old cassette recorder with no noise suppression and very low quality. All this means the sound is muddy and the performance unimpressive. Still, I think you’ll find the music itself is worth your while.

Try to listen past all those incidentals as I did when I originally recorded these tracks. Embrace the concept of the music and imagine it in your mind as it would sound as a proper studio recording with talented singers, skilled musicians and all the power and finesse of today’s studio technology.

I know, but do your best.

Getting down to specifics, the original tape where this initial song resides is actually labeled as Volume 2. Volume 1 may still exist, but it has been missing for years. I sure hope it turns up some day as I don’t even recall the songs I wrote and recorded on it.

This particular song is a melody/performance concept on electric guitar with voice. No words had been written for it at the time of the recording and I never went back to do anything else with it. Still, hearing it again now some fifty year later, I really think it has some potential.

Just because an idea for a song is simply scribbled out to save it for later development doesn’t mean it didn’t have the seeds of a really good piece. So, perhaps now that I’m finally organizing all my early material, I might just revisit this one and see where I can take it.

My Composer’s Sketchbook is available on Amazon
with downloadable mp3s of every song, demo, and riff

I wrote and recorded this one around 1970. I’ve never been suicidal myself, partly because I have seen horrible situations turn around so many times. I do understand that sometimes the pain can be so overwhelming that even if you absolutely knew that it would get better even in just a few days, it might still hurt so much that one has to end the pain rather than endure until the storm clears.

Still, I felt if one becomes wrapped up in such thoughts, it becomes almost an act of courage to take that step you can never undo. And is perhaps lifting oneself up to that point of courage that actually tips the balance toward suicide, and the pain is just the reason, not the trigger. One last defiant act.

Yet since that is so permanent, perhaps it is worth taking one more look at the possibilities before committing to that irrevocable action. And that’s what this song is about: if you find the courage rising to take your own life because you cannot endure, stand back for just one moment before you take that step and consider. Costs you nothing and may just save your life for better times.

Lyrics

Ten or twenty
ought to do the trick.
Guaranteed to make me sleep,
money back if I get sick.

What’s so wrong, with suicide?
We all must die sometime.
Why can’t I decide
when to end the rhyme?

Nothing left to live for.
Only clouds above.
Funny how I’d settle for a smile
and live on less than love.

Lonely, lonely,
a scraped out hole inside.
All my dreams
with reality collide.

Mood change, thoughts rearrange,
memory starts to move.
Just when I’ve made a choice
my mind will jump the groove.

Good times, good times…
you know I’ve had a few.
Rainy days and shades of grays
give way to shades of blue.

Holding hands, holding more;
long-lost friend is at the door.
Why don’t we reminisce
and make it like before?

Sunshine, sunshine:
riding on a ray.
Black out, back in,
please don’t take my sunshine away.

I see it now: oh what a fool.
What am I trying to prove?
I’ll reach the phone and call for help.
Oh, God, my arms won’t move…

Help me, help me.
Please won’t someone help me…
Help me, help me.
Oh, God, won’t someone help me.

Help me….

Help me….

I’ve been composing music for nearly sixty years now, recording quick demos, hooks, and riffs in my Composer’s Sketchbook on audio cassette and sometime video.

Here’s the tape beginning on April 2, 1987.

This recording is mostly music plus a few creative notes, and in the middle my eight year old son recites The Jabberwocky.

I’ve been composing music for nearly sixty years now, recording quick demos, hooks, and riffs in my Composer’s Sketchbook on audio cassette and sometime video.

Here’s the tape beginning on March 10, 1987.

This one has almost no talking – just original music on piano and guitar.

I’ve been composing music for nearly sixty years now, recording quick demos, hooks, and riffs in my Composer’s Sketchbook on audio cassette and sometime video.

Here’s the tape beginning on February 15, 1987.

This one is almost no talking – just original music on piano and guitar.

I’ve been composing music for nearly sixty years now, recording quick demos, hooks, and riffs in my Composer’s Sketchbook on audio cassette and sometime video.

Here’s the tape beginning on January 1, 1987.

Music starts at 1:37. Prior to that are a few really bad jokes I foolishly recorded. Later I experiment with a very old electric organ, followed by my two kids playing the organ and singing.

I’ve been composing music for nearly sixty years now, recording quick demos, hooks, and riffs in my Composer’s Sketchbook on audio cassette and sometime video.

Here’s the tape beginning on December 25, 1986.

Included part way in are a few dumb jokes I came up with and my kids playing in the background.

Wrote this one in the 1980s on my CZ 101 synthesizer.

Here’s one I wrote in the mid-1980s about the Jim Jones mass suicide, but have retitled it “Trump World,” which seems even more appropriate.

Wrote and recorded this one around 1980