Very nice, Jenny.   Small suggestions that may or may not make a difference:

Wow, this is a very difficult song to write! Almost anything you come up with is going to feel insufficient to you, somehow bland in the face of this evil. What you've got is good, but it's going to be a struggle.

Can you give it a specifically New Zealand slant? I don't know how. "A kiwi looks after its young?" I told you it was difficult!

Do you think you should maybe start with the image of the brown eyed-boy? Maybe another victim too. Then move to an image of a rescuer, then to a mourner and finally to faces of defiance, of those who choose love over hate?

I really am just throwing out ideas here.

Thank you both for your thoughts. Yes, I think that line about the wee boy needs to change. I was questioning the flow of that line when I posted it. Thank you for the suggestion, D. I think I will add a few more people to the song to illustrate how widely it affected the community. There's a father who was shot, leaving a wife and baby girl of one month. Maybe I could do one verse for a child, one for a father, and one for a mother. Thank you for the suggestion, Gavin.

We're thinking of calling it Brown-eyed Boy. Still a lot of work to do on it, but so far, how's this? Any more suggestions?

So Jen's lyrics have changed slightly from the above post and I wrote this music to fit. It's just a demo at this point. Some levels have to change, the bass line is boring and needs to be a bit more interesting, and at 1:40 there is a lot going on...probably too much, so I may need to ditch some of that. But overall I'm happy where this one is headed!

Sounding good!  There's nothing wrong with a simple bass line.  Sometimes that's all a song calls for.  I'd probably just do a short walk between notes.

I think this is going to be really good. Exactly the kind of feel that the music needs. Keep it simple would be my advice. Looking forward to this!

Thanks guys.  It seems to be coming together good so far.

So something happened with this song lyric that has never happened before (to me anyway). I blurted out these lyrics for the most part (not unusual for me) and then proceeded to refine the lyrics, shifting things around, changing words, and adding details, deleting lines. I then had some great feedback from Derek and Gavin so I revisited the lyrics and tried on their suggestions. I thought Gavin's idea for telling more stories from the tragedy was a great one. I wrote a couple new verses about some of the other people involved. Structurally, it was good, but somehow not quite right emotionally. SO, I tried having the boy be the central theme because I'm really drawn to the boy. I started with the boy and then revisited him in each verse. That was good, but the more I thought about it, the more I felt that it was better to build up to the little guy. Somehow, starting with him in line one seemed to detract from the emotional climax of the song. Even though, structurally, it made for a tighter lyric, it just didn't seem right in this context we now find ourselves in. So, I did what I've never done before, I went back to what I had originally wrote. That has never happened to me before.

CHRISTCHURCH

Amongst the clamor of who's to blame only confusion remains 

The smoke and screams drive you insane but one face remains... the same....   

Good lines, but not the story. The saving grace of this tragedy has been the nation's unity. There has been very little clamoring and blaming. Of course finding the why and the how have been important, but, for the most part, there has been very little bickering. We're united in grief.

Ultimately, that's what the song is about. The spoken word in the bridge will bring in that element more clearly.

This song is now finished. What a draining experience. If you'd like to hear the finished piece take a wander over to the Video Venue.   🙂

Thanks y'all

Is it still called sad or have you changed Da Title.

No, it's not Larry. We called it Christchurch. Thanks for the interest.