Captain Coulston (even more Folktronix)

I want to devote this column to the genesis and execution of another Folktronix track, "Captain Coulston". I learnt this song from Steeleye Span; their version appeared on a sampler called "Clogs" which I bought in 1971. This track was taken from their 1971 album "Ten man mop", but I never had a copy of this and was not really aware that it was an album track.

Anyway, it's a simple, winding tune which I've played for years on the guitar and so thought that it was suitable for the treatment. One evening a few weeks ago, I laid down the tune in the MIDI sequencer and promptly forgot about it. The tune is only eight bars long and doesn't have much variation.

In the mean time, I completed a few other tracks, including the amazing and weird "Famous Flower of Serving Men". This tune was used as the riff for the second half of the Liege and Lief version of "Matty Groves", but is a song in its own right (and come to think of it, Martin Carthy's version is also on that "Clogs" sampler, not that I've heard it in years [Correction: this was on a different sampler, "Collectively and Individually", all tracks by Steeleye, as opposed to the Various Artists on "Clogs"]). I worked out the riff, which seems to be 19 beats long, which is an asymmetric number however one looks at it. I'm not sure how Fairport play it - something like 4, 2, 4, 3, 6 - but decided to add an extra beat at the end to round the tune up to 20 beats and so occupy four bars of 5/4 rhythm. The result was something like free-form jazz with virtually no harmonic movement at all, something unusual for me.

Anyway, after this extravaganza, I was looking for more tunes and remembered "Captain Coulston". The tune basically goes up and down the scale of A minor, and so with a little stretching of the harmony, the chords go (one per bar) Am G F Em Dm C Dm (half bar) Em (half bar) Am. Of course, I couldn't leave things like that and so changed the C to Cm (which sounded very weird) and replaced the closing Am with D7/9. The second time round, the final chord was replaced by Bm7, and then I tacked on a little reprise: first a time buying chord (BbMaj9) and then F, G and A major.

I decided to start the track with two instruments on opposing sides of the stereo playing the first two bars of the tune, one after the other, as a form of introduction. Once this was done, the tune logically had to be played by a third instrument, placed in the centre. Sequencing the tune was fairly straightforward, solos and all, and the little reprise tickled my fancy. As always, I listened to the arrangement a day later and decided that it was slightly unbalanced and so added a pair of verses with the tune emphasized, thus delaying the solos until a bit later. Another day later and I decided to replace all the Cm chords (which sounded too strange) with C or CMaj7.

When I was satisfied with the arrangement, I imported the MIDI file into Reason. I have discovered lately how to make instruments played via the NN-XT sampler sound more ethereal and have longer sustain; as a result, the track has slightly unusual sounding flute and french horn. The work in Reason went reasonably quickly and soon I was able to export a wav file for listening. This was Saturday's work.

During Sunday, I decided that the track was too "polite" and even too amateurish, especially the percussion. The whole thing needed beefing up and made more professional/extravagant/confident (I don't how to express this exactly). So:

1. I changed the acoustic bass for a synthesized bass which has an 'edge'
2. I changed the slightly weird sounding synth playing the main tune for something more ethereal (actually a pad setting, but it sounds ok). I played around with dynamically modulating the synth's sound but this didn't seem to make much difference and so I dropped it.
3. I replaced most of the drums (which as usual were going through an NN-XT drum set) for three different Dr Rex drum loops, changing the loops at specific points during the song. But for a change, I decided to keep the percussion parts of the original drum work (which was very Phil Spector-ish); the tambourine adds depth (maybe width?) to the drum loops and makes the track come even more alive.

Now I have a much better track. I also noticed that the track sounds more alive when played via Winamp that it does when played via Goldwave. This seems to be due to eq settings on Winamp, which may mean that I should eq the finished master in order to get a better sound on cd. I'm going to check this out, because it's not something I've ever done before. Actually, the best place to do this would be in Reason but I haven't committed myself to anything yet.

So: four evenings of work on one tune have produced a good result.

All in all, I have about 37 minutes of music ready, which means at least one more tune has to be prepared. I am considering doing a very ambient version of "My Lagan Love", with little harmonic work, but the tune seems to be metrically odd. Sandy Denny did a beautiful acapella version of this on the "Sandy" album, where she set the tune to words written by Richard Farina ("Quiet joys of brotherhood"). I have noted that tunes have a fermentation period, during which nothing seems to happen, and then an implementation period, in which the tune gets finished quite quickly.

... Although not quickly enough - I was reading an article which describes how to arrange a piece of music, sequence it, realise it and master it all within 60 minutes! The steps are very similar to the ones which I take, but run at a pace which seems to allow no time for thought.