Thank you for your thoughts and comments on 'Regret'

Logically what you say makes sense, that is my thought too, but socially it is a different thing, the problem has skewed the sex ratio's in some states so terribly that there is a dearth of women for their marriageable age guys to marry so that has led to another horrific problem of trafficking. Girls/women from other states are kidnapped, trafficked and forcefully married and kept as slaves despite all this they still don't value girls and the abortions of the female fetuses continue.... Sometimes the social conventions make no sense at all.....

Thankyou for the comment you mentioned - I don't know the poet you mentioned I'm afraid. I shall look him up. But I am working on a demo. There a few WIP shorts on there.

I've got you on my list! You didn't tag me so I didn't see it till just now. And as far as hosting, people can have a SoundCloud account for free. People can put up private links so only people with the link can find it. You can do the same thing with YouTube. I will outline all of that when I email everyone.

Sorry I haven't "spoken" or listened to you much this year. Thank you for all your awesome encouraging words and music over the years. In case I don't get to listen in the morning. But just do you know I have not forgotten you.

Thank you for your thoughts and comments on 'Celebrate' and 'I Cut'. Thanks for making your work downloadable, I was really looking forward them.

Hi Berni, I sent you the backing track fro "Dawn Encounter" yesterday. Did you get the e-mail?

Definitely agree the many of the AI "female" vocals have very little to offer. Cold and metallic for the most part. There are some exceptions. I'd say out of 30 tries for one set of lyrics, I might get something quite decent. I've taken two ideas to the studio and then gone live, see where they go. Interesting times, eh? Just an old 1966 Star Trekkie here exploring new frontiers. :0)

What a nice history lesson on Walden! I appreciate your sharing. :)

Probably gonna buy the Go:Keys 5 at some point. Need to save up a bit, though. I may have bought a guitar first instead. 😜

Thanks for the suggestion. It really does seem like the right fit for me.

Wow, that’s amazing that Thompson heard and liked the song of yours and that John Kirkpatrick did it! What song is it? I’ve seen Richard Thompson about 15 or 20 times in concert. He’s always been amazing.

Thanks for such a wonderful vision of my song "Progress". It was a delightful review. 😊

Thanks, not only for the song listening and comments but also for the musical instrument education; good to know that I've just written my first song on a Baglama!

Looking at the manual, the Go Keys can store 256 scenes. Are "scenes" what you mean by "user saves"?

That would make sense. Didn't seem right for only 5 save slots on a modern keyboard. 256 sounds right-er.

If that's the case, the GK5 is back in contention!

Oooh, thanks you for the second verse of "A River Runs"! That's marvelous.

In the end, I decided against the Go Keys 5. One reason: I can only save 5 preset favourites. Ideally, I would want a lot more than that. Like, 40+ probably.

But it does seem like an incredible piece of gear, and I'm glad you love yours. It was very tempting.

bowing to your applause on Blue Eyes in the Rain. Thanks for your lovely comment.

Thank you for your kind comments and thoughts on 'Leave'

Hi Berni, I did warn you. Thank you for listening, I plan on having it up on Spotify and youtube soon. Under c.b. crosby. So if you wish to share it y can. I hope it will help people cope with their Los as well. My voice is a little horse from sinuses problems but I think it added to this song. As well as me choking up while singing it. So the lump in the thrones was real too. Thank you

whoops! my link was still on private: https://write.fawm.org/songs/304600 thanks for the suggestion to add cello!

Hi Berni, my wife has been after me to write this song. We lost our best friend. My dog of 17 years. Its taken me a while to be able to sing it, even with a lump in my throught I got through it. Let me know what you think. Have a cleanX next to you. https://write.fawm.org/songs/317097

hiii! thank you for your comments. im not despairing, from what i have seen 1-2 comments per song is average here.and im actually doing better than i thought. but thank you for your attention!!!!!!!! ❤️

Hey thanks for you comment on my song Plastic Lover from the skirmish, yes, the loss of shared objective reality is really the most consequential thing that is happening now I think, and it's mind boggling that it's been entirely engineered to benefit certain people...I'm still wrapping my head around it and don't know what to do about it. Besides write thinly veiled protest songs, that'll show them!! :)

Thank you Berni for your kind words. For us old guys it's nice to be appreciated. I hope to see you on the next fawm event.

Apologies, the time difference is no excuse for not checking mentions. Been trying to catch up on listening (and having dinner). Please go ahead and make if fully public and downloadable if you are ok with that. And thank you! The demo is everything I could have hoped for and you even gave chords! That means I can talk Phil into learning it. Oh, the year isn’t my choice; that’s direct from the book.. and very deliberate on the author’s part.

Bernie, Thanks for your wisdom on the Paleo Man collab. After begging for two years, I'm happy to have a little depth around the spoken word

Yes! I LOVE it! I wrote this in the liner notes this morning:

Liz says: As always, @berni1954 did a wonderful job bringing these words to life despite the detours and deadlines he speaks of! I love the flow of the melody with his uke backing! Perfectly captures the sentiment I was trying to express. Forever grateful for Berni’s gift of music!

Thank you so much for your positive comments on so many of my songs! Hoping to post one with a demo later today.

Yes I noticed that you did a lot of skirmishes! You're a great lyricist and I feel like this format works well for you.

I stopped doing skirmishes cause I can't keep the timeframe. I need 2 hours for a lyric and 4 hours for a MIDI draft. Can't speed it up as English is my second language (so I have to look up prepositions or rhymes) and because I can't nail full one takes on any instrument... when I did skirmish I ended up with half a lyric or a chord progression without melody...

Thank you so much Berni! So I finally ended up in a musical production. I never tried but its been fun!

@berni1954 never too late to learn… untill it’s really too late ofcourse 🤷‍♀️ but it isn’t! 70 is a beautiful age. Good luck and have fun playing. You have basics on another instrument so you’re not a total starter ;-)

Hahaha, how funny is that, ‘hard cheese’. I never heard that. @berni1954

Thank you for your comment on "CQ Is Anybody Out There" It was a fun one to write. I really like the Hard Cheese Blues. Had me singing along at the end.

Thanks for you comment on WoW. I see what you mean with the German Cabaret leanings. Welcome to add a ukulele part :)

Thanks for your comment on "End of Days." I try to keep up with the latest developments, at least on a lay basis. They're pretty fascinating,

YESSSSSSS!!! Please and thank you!!!

Would you by any chance like to compose music for one of my #needsmusic songs? Maybe Turning Dragon? I always enjoy your playing.

ive never been to the UK, but i used to watch the show That Was The Week That Was. he seagull feeding was a tourist attraction from the outside tables of a fish and chips joint on the Seattle Waterfront. the isle of macneil is not a reference to Scotland's isle of barra, which is home to clan macNeil, but ot macneil island, the sit of a washington state penitentiary. the garbage in the streets is a reference to lima peru, and the other side of the grave refers to a graveyard where confederate soldiers are buried,

Thank you for checking out my sunshine song. I struggle with the higher registers a lot and doubt I could pull them off in a live situation. I am trying to train though as I clearly can get up there so it must be a control issue. I am actually from the very north of Finland and english is definitely not my native language.

Haha! Now, that poses an interesting question. Anthropically speaking, the Earth needed to have intelligent beings on it to call day ‘day’, and night ‘night’, so it would depend upon when that first decision was made. Was it daytime, or at night? Haha! I like stuff that twists my melon! 😆

Thanks for the comment :)

Thank you so much for sharing your Hammerhead song with me! I loved it!!! The Hammerhead is my "spirit" animal. I've seen only two in all of the thousands of dives I have done around the world...but, each time, I cried with happiness. You captured your experiences through the song so well!

Catching up here on comments...thanks much for stopping by "Common" last week - glad to see so many people resonating with the protest song sentiment in response to the current world stage. Writing songs this month has really helped keep me from spiraling into despair about all of it, channeling brothers and sisters who were protesting Vietnam

the country did not prefer Nixon to McGovern. they preferred Nixon to Humphrey..just as they preferred to Trump to Clinton and again Trump to Harris. Sanders would have defeated Trump because more democrats would have voted in the election had he been the candidate, and his radical views would not have alienated the democrats. Trump only won because so many democrats refused to vote for Clinton. and he won again for the same reason, only this time his opposition was even weaker. Not to mention all the defeats the Democrats had with weak candidates during the Reagan/Bush years. The only reason Carter won was because of Nixons disgraceful resignation and his weak vice president having no chance.

Hi Bernie. I know, I'm late to the dance, but I got here yesterday and finally started my fawm'25. I'm trying to play catch up, so if it flits through my head it's going on paper - or computer, whichever is closest. I probably won't be able to do as much listening as I'd like until after March 1st, but as Arnold would say, I'll be Baaaaach! 😄

i would probably be accused of being a trumpster if i pointed out the similarity of dylans verse to the attitudes of the jan 6 protesters. regarding ochs, when i heard cops of the world, i misunderstood it, thinking of the cops as police, not the military...and i turned my hoodlum friends on to it, and it became out anti-police anthem. there was a lot of elvis-style delinquent attitude in those early sixties protesters. none of todays namby pambies would have the guts to sing something like heres to the state of mississippi. instead of ant-authoritarian confrontation, todays protestes are self-righteous conformists who walk the moral high ground without realize their heroes are as corrupt as their villains. we 70's protesters didnt spare johnson our barbs just because he was a democrat, and in that day we knew nixons victory was not due to his "deplorable" constituency, but to our own democrat party that insisted on nominating a sure loser (humphrey) to run against him. trump would never have defeated sanders had sanders been the nominee in 2016. and harris had about as much chance of defeating trump in 2024 as jerry lewis would have had had he challenged rocky marciano for the heavyweight title. america would had never suffered a trump presidency had the democratic nomination not been promised to hillary clinton in 2016,

phil ochs was and remains my songwriting hero. when i was fourteen years old. i knew nothing about politics or social issues. i learned about them from the first three phil ochs albums.i probably would have gone to vietnam were it not for his songs informing me that it was possible to dodge the draft. i knew little about the civil rights movement until hearing songs like heres to the state of mississippi and too many martyrs.i hav been writing protest songs all along and continue to do so...but the protest songs i hear today dont tell me anything i dont already know and are mostly paraphrases of the daily news.i have heard a few, but very few, protest songs with an original slant. and the sentimental view of the mainstream toward such singers as bob dylanin the 60's ignores the fact that if bob dylan had been dinging th times they are a changin at the capitol in 2020, he would have been jailed for inciting an insurrections. Come senators, congressmen Please heed the call Don't stand in the doorway Don't block up the hall For he that gets hurt Will be he who has stalled The battle outside ragin' Will soon shake your windows And rattle your walls For the times they are a-changin'

Thanks for your lovely comments on "Piscina Mirabilis". It's funny how Bohemian Rhapsody is so distinctive that you can evoke it with just a few notes... and yes I was aware when I did it, just thought why not 😆

Thank you for your delightful rhyme Sorry my response took so much time. I truly love to play kazoo And they're super cheap-you should too!

Hey Berni! I hope you're doing well. I will take a deep dive into your music on March. Been super busy in between work, health and writing songs.... Congrats for winning FAWM!

Thank you so much for your kind comments. It really helps!! I'm from The Netherlands originally. I suppose my accent is all over the place because I learn languages by copying words whoever I hear them from. I used to have quite a few Irish friends in the past so I guess that's where I picked up some of their pronunciation.