Butterfly Bush Part 2

In my last post about the song "Butterfly Bush", I had discussed the initial draft of the song. It was OK but needed some work. The first thing that needed improvement was the melody of the verse. Initially the melody was the same for each line and that made the song sound dull and boring. This is how the verse sounded originally

Butterfly Bush - Original Melody by tazthecat

Here is the final version of the song (you will need to refer back to this audio for changes I discuss later in this post)

Butterfly Bush by rdlipps

What I did was sing lower on the first line of the verse and the melody followed the chord progression and the second line I sung higher and the melody starts with a couple 3rd intervals and then a descending scale back down to the root (A). This pattern repeats once more in the verse. The melody change on the second line of the verse clashed with the original chord progression so I changed the rhythm so I would get back to the Am chord sooner. I also stay on the Am chord longer than in the original (mainly to allow a chance for a breath before going to the next line). This is what you here in the final version.

I don't remember making any significant changes to the chorus. Maybe some tweaks to make sure the notes in the melody were the chords that were being played.

The first part of the bridge is close to the original with maybe some clean-up of the melody. During the D and C9 chords the melody uses an interval from d to a (decending fourth) for the D chord and an interval from d to g (descending fifth) for the C9. The C9 chord is used because the d note is the 9th (2nd) note in the C scale. OK it was actually the other way around: the C9 chord was in the chord progressing and it allowed be to use those intervals in the melody but I liked the sound of it. I'm not sure if that was the original melody or if I worked it out later but that was the only potential change in the first part of the bridge.

Here is what the original bridge sounded like.

Butterfly Bush - Original Bridge by tazthecat

the line that starts out with "Filled with so many..." was meant to be a transition back to the verse but when I was playing it to my voice/songwriting coach, he suggested a change in the melody to what was closer to the final version of the song. I liked the change so much that I rewrote that part of the bridge and made it a whole separate part of the bridge instead of just a transition. This gave the second part of the bridge a somewhat dreamy feel allows for a better transition back to the verse.

The last thing the song needed was the last verse and I used a trick that is sometimes used and that was to modify the first verse and use it as the last. If I put on my songwriting theory hat, I will tell you that this ties the end of the song to the beginning and provides the song a repetition in theme that make the song desirable. Actually I had trouble coming up with lyrics for the last verse so I just used the first verse and changed a line. So whether you like the intellectual or the lazy explanation, that's how I finished the song.

If I think of anything else that is interesting in writing "Butterfly Bush", I will post that later but for now that is it for this song. I hope this discussion was enlightening or at least not completely boring.

Thanks,

-ron-