Life is Simple When You're Five

Summer seems to last forever

I wrote this song as a Berklee Music assignment. I’ll leave the technical information at the bottom because it would bore most of you. The song is very much autobiographical.

Life was magical when I was 5 years old. We lived in Christchurch and I had lots of friends. This photo was taken at my 6th birthday party. I loved my school, New Brighton Primary and we lived less than 5 minutes walk from the sand dunes and beach, where I spent much of my time having adventures. I probably shouldn’t have been on the beach in the dunes on my own or with mates, but life was simple then. I might have been told off for being late for dinner on a summer evening, but life was good and nothing bad ever happened.

The radio had great songs like Sherry, although I wouldn’t have seen the video because we didn’t have TV yet. There was always music at home though. Records and the radio.

We never had a TV in our home in Christchurch, but I was allowed to go to a friend’s house often before dinner to watch Felix the Cat. It was one of the first programmes of the evening on CHTV3 at 5:15. I could watch that and then race home, a few houses away. I couldn’t find a 1962 program specifically but it was pretty much the same as this.

As you may have picked from other posts, things began to unravel. We moved from Christchurch to Birkenhead where I joined a new school. Sometime later, just as I was settling in we moved again, this time to Titirangi and another new school. It was OK, but unsettling.

At the age of 10 things were not good in our household. My father had moved out and was living in a batch. I had to help my mother with my siblings and a local girl who my mother had agreed to babysit. I was often on my own with kids aged 4, 3 and 2 aged 2.

My mother was working and trying to find her life and confidence, which meant dating and dancing, and sometimes meant I was on my own with the kids till late at night. We got burgled at one stage which made me feel even more insecure.

I remember one night when my mother had said she would be home by 10 pm, and I started worrying when that time came and went. There were no cellphones back then and I didn’t hear from her.

10:30 and I had cranked the stereo up to deter anyone from trying to get in. My siblings managed to sleep through that. The Beach Boys were singing Good Vibrations, but I wasn’t feeling them.

11 pm, still no sign of her. Cranked the stereo up louder.

12 am turned the stereo off and I’m listening to every noise of the trees, hoping to hear a taxi arrive.

1 am Silence is not Golden

2 am My mother arrives home all bubbly with some strange guy saying, “Hi Gino, say hello to Uncle John.” I didn’t have an uncle John and I had never met this guy before. I was relieved and angry and happy for her that she was happy and unhappy for me because I had been so stressed. It was a confusing and difficult time for this young boy.

I didn’t see uncle John again and my mother agreed not to have strange men over when we kids were at home. Such is life. My father was seeing other people too and I understood that, although I wasn’t cool with the concept of the family being split up, it was better than having them both at home shouting at each other.

We all have dreams and sometimes life gets in the way. It creates good material for songs.

Verse 1

Summer seems to last forever for a boy of five

Burning sand between his toes he runs into the tide

He jumps and he splashes, wipes the water from his eyes

Joy is something you can’t buy......... life is simple when you’re five.

Chorus

Life is simple when you’re five, it’s so good to be alive

No cares or worries, never in a hurry,

Life is simple when you’re five

Verse 2

Autumn passes in a blur for a boy of nine

Moving house from State to State, losing track of time

As soon as he has made new friends he’s leaving them behind

His mind goes back to summer skies......... life is simple when you’re five.

Chorus

Verse 3:

Winter seems to last forever for a boy of ten

Father’s left, spends nights alone, mothers out dancing again

When she’s back home with a new uncle it’s dark and 2 AM

Joy is something you can’t buy......... life is simple when you’re five.

Bridge:

A loving home where a boy can thrive, with fun and friends good times

If only life could stay that way, let innocence survive

Chorus

So once again, in case you don’t want to hit Ctrl Home and go to the top of the page, here is the song. This is raw, it was a Uni assignment, not produced. Slightly mastered because the bass levels were too high.

I looked at Verse - Chorus, Verse - Chorus, Bridge - Chorus formula, but felt I didn’t have enough verses to tell the full story, so ended up with ABABABCB. It finishes in 3 minutes which I think is a good song length.

It uses verse/refrain with a full cadence which builds and emphasizes the title, which is also the hook. The verse makes use of repetition between 1st and 3rd lines and follows the same chord progression model in the 2nd line starting from the IV chord. The verses in effect make use of the Major-Key I IV Power Progressions.

In the melody lines, I am making use of contrasting sections from one progression. I used harmonic variations of a melodic pedal in both the intro and the bridge, which you can hear in the backing guitar. I also used a tonic pedal for the bass line on the 1 and 3 lines of the verses.

The verses and chorus use full cadences from the IV chord to the 1 chord except at the end of the 3rd chorus where I make use of surprising parallel key modulation with a D minor instead of the D Major used in all other choruses. This allows me to lead to the bridge, which is in a different key and correctly placed between the choruses.

I used chord rhythm slightly speeding up the 4th line of each verse to help build power and progression to the chorus.

For colouring, the song is mostly in natural keys representing the happy times of the 5-year-old, but the Major 7ths allow me to introduce tension into the verse lines with the refrain going back to the natural chords, with the exception of the B minor a VI chord I use to help resolve to the full cadence. The verse chord progressions allow me to emphasize that I’m telling a story. The D minor mentioned above introduces irony into the song, the minor going into the bridge which expresses sadness that life can’t stay that way.

In the bridge, I started with a standard EMaj7 but replaced the G# minor with a G#5 and the A Major with A7Sus4 and A7. I finished the final chorus with a half-line repetition as a fade.