My father's eyes (song)

The morning after we finished sitting shiv'a, I took the dog for a walk and considered the fact that I ought to write a song somehow commemorating my father. Almost immediately, a phrase entered my mind, "If I could see through my father's eyes", along with a hint of a tune. When I got home, I made a very rough recording of the tune as it stood onto my mobile phone, so that I would have some form of reference.

The next day I made a demo sequence of the verse, figuring out what the tune should be, along with the accompanying chords. Early on, I established that the time signature would be 6/8 with two bars per chord (most of the time). Using the sequence Dm/Am/Bb/G, I developed a tune then extended the chords so that they would be more interesting (Dm add 9, Am add9, Bb maj7, Gsus4 to G). At times the Dm add9 is replaced by F6/9, Am add9 with C6/9 and Bb maj7 with Bb maj9. Over the past ten days, I've been working on the arrangement; at first, I knew that it was incomplete, but even when it did reach a state of being complete, I still found things to change. The song sounds very cool, due to the loping beat, subdued chords played by violins in the background and a guitar obligato, but now after two days of the same arrangement, I am having my doubts about the orchestration of the first verse. 

But no words! I was stuck on the second line - if the first line is "If I could see with my father's eyes", it would be extremely clumsy to have a second line like "I would see.....". I couldn't think of a synonym for 'see' that would make sense. Sitting in the kibbutz clinic this morning (waiting to arrange blood and urine tests, if you must know), I had a small breakthrough - "The world would seem to be a vast surprise". Once I had this couplet, it was as if the flood-gates had been opened and I quickly figured out what I thought were the words of the song. Being totally modern, I tapped the words into my mobile phone and saved them before I lost track.

After coming home, I looked at the lyrics and tried singing them to the music. Apart from noticing that there are problems with the accompaniment to the first verse (as noted above), I discovered that I had written precisely half a song - there should be three verses of eight lines each, but I had written three verses of only four lines each. Something similar happened before when I wrote four lines for a song's bridge, only to discover that the arrangement allowed for only two lines; that was easier to fix! What was the second verse became the second half of the first verse; I wrote a new, complete, second verse starting with "If I could hear through my father's ears", then extended what was the third verse to a complete verse. Then I started rewriting, changing words here and there. Here are the words as they stand at the moment:

If I could see through my father's eyes
The world would seem to be a vast surprise
Devices that he can't recognise
Communications transmogrified
He fought a war for democracy
Still half the world lives with tyranny
What was so clear is now ambiguous
All moral sense has deserted us leaving no fuss

If I could hear through my father's ears
There'd be the sound of suffering and of fear
The quiet Sundays of yesteryear
Have been replaced with shouting and with jeers
Politeness no longer means a thing
And courtesy has no sound, no ring
Now all the masses are wearing bling
Reducing standards thus losing grace and quality

He's tired now, he has lived too long
He barely hears and now his sight has gone
At least he knew what was right, what's wrong
He leaves this world with his descendants strong
One hundred years filled with so much change
What have we learnt? Tell me, what now remains?
I sing a slow and resigned refrain
Salute the man who taught me modesty, no private gain

I'm not convinced about the final line of each verse, especially the last.

And now the obligatory discussion about the scale of the song. The tune mainly runs on the notes D upto A, with the occasional C below the D, meaning  that the scale is probably D minor. The harmony doesn't help much: the Bb chord suggests the note Bb, meaning that the scale is  D minor, but the G chord suggests the note B, meaning that the scale is D dorian. Only once per verse does the tune escape the narrow range of D to A, when it goes up to C (an octave above middle C) then descends to B natural - so the scale is D dorian. Listening to a playback of the track with vocals, I think that I am going to lower the track by a tone, leaving it in C dorian. This will probably be easier for me to sing.