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man i know this feeling too well. staring at that blank page is the worst part of songwriting for me. sometimes i just start strumming random chords until something clicks, and then the words kinda follow the mood. your line about the pen being heavier than the guitar really hit home — thats exactly what it feels like. have you tried just recording yourself jamming and going back to listen later? sometimes i catch little melodic ideas that way that i wouldve forgotten otherwise.     

great picks so far. gotta throw in "Fortunate Son" by CCR - probably the most iconic anti-war song you can play on acoustic, and its only like 3 chords. also "The Green Fields of France" (Eric Bogle) if youre into the folk side of things, absolute gut punch of a song about WWI.

and yeah Graham that Colonel Clark track is killer, the march feel really comes through.     

man Jim, "poisonous beauty" is such a strong image. that verse about the mirror showing something different than the picture they used to see... that one stayed with me. there's something really honest about the way you wrote these two people who had everything on the surface but nothing underneath.

and yeah Peatle nailed it — it really does capture that narcissistic kind of love where both people are just performing for each other instead of actually connecting. the outgo wraps it up perfectly too, bringing it back around to that central idea that beauty without love is basically empty.

I gotta check out that book you mentioned, The Goldfinch right? if it inspired lyrics like these it must be a solid read. the songwriting on soundcloud sounds great too, you've got a real gift for turning a concept into something people can feel.     

hey jim, glad you pulled this one out of the closet. theres something about going back to old songs that hits different - you hear things in them you didn't notice when you first wrote them.

i've got a couple half-finished songs sitting in a notebook that i keep meaning to revisit. the conversation with brian must've been a good one to spark that.

the title alone has a nice ring to it - lost lover's lullaby. gonna give it a listen on soundcloud when i get a chance later tonight. kinda sad songs are usually the ones that stick with people the most anyway.     

jim, can't believe nobody replied to this yet. been listening to the soundcloud version a few times now and it really sticks with you.

the wabi-sabi concept is such a perfect foundation for a song like this. that idea of unfinished beauty ties right into the lyrics about imperfect souls. and the Am to C movement in the first verse has this gentle pull that matches the tone perfectly - it doesn't try too hard, just lets the words breathe.

the bridge is my favorite part honestly. "if we could see our lives through another's eyes" - that's the kind of line that hits different every time you hear it. and bringing it back to the chorus after that just works.

really solid writing man. you've been on a roll lately with these.     

yeah drop d is super easy once you get the hang of it - just tune your low E string down a whole step to D. i usually just match it to the 4th string (D string) but an octave lower, you can hear when it locks in.

one thing i noticed about string tension tho is it really depends on what gauge strings you're running. i switched from 12s to 11s on my dreadnought a while back and it made a huge difference for bending and general playability. felt like a completely different guitar honestly. 10s might even work if you have a lighter touch but i find they sound a bit thin on an acoustic.

also worth mentioning that some guys tune down a half step or a whole step (like Eb or D standard) which loosens everything up quite a bit. lots of older folk and blues players did that. makes bending way easier without changing strings.     

great thread. i've been playing a yamaha fg800 for about 3 years now and honestly for the money it's hard to beat. i know everyone talks about martins and taylors but when i was starting out i couldn't justify spending that much, and the yamaha has held up really well.

i did get to try a friend's d-28 last month though and yeah... the difference in projection is real. it just fills a room in a way my yamaha can't quite match. someday i'll probably save up for one but for now i'm happy with what i got.

totally agree with the point about trying before buying. i almost ordered a guitar online once without playing it and a guy at my local shop talked me out of it. ended up finding one that felt way better in my hands even though it was a cheaper model. specs on paper don't tell you everything     

hey Cenela, i know this post is a bit old but i wanted to chime in because i went through the exact same thing a couple years back. what really helped me was picking songs by artists i already loved listening to, even if they seemed hard at first. like someone above said, break it down bit by bit.

one thing that worked for me was browsing songs by decade or genre instead of just searching for specific titles. you end up finding stuff you never thought of trying. i use chordie obviously but also been checking out a site called ChordRoom which has like 260k songs sorted by genre, decade, language etc. nice for discovering stuff when you dont know what to look for. just google it.

also dont sleep on learning songs with barre chords even if they feel impossible at first. once you get F and Bm down, suddenly like 80% of songs become playable. it took me weeks of sore fingers but it was worth it haha.

good luck and keep at it!