The last week has been very painful: hot weather (32ºC) with strong winds; this is exactly the kind of weather that triggers migraines. It's been so long since I last suffered from a migraine that I didn't recognise the feelings at first, and it was too late by the time I realised what was happening. Thankfully Friday and Saturday were migraine free, but this morning the pains started again. I checked that I had enough pills and that their 'use by' date has not passed (I've forgotten the English term).
It looks like we're going to have another song festival this December. I normally write tunes for other people, but the one set of lyrics which I was sent would have been very difficult to set to music; so I would write my own song, music and lyrics. I had decided in advance that the music would be in a major key and would start with a catchy chorus, not my usual cup of tea. A tune suggested itself for the chorus, and the verse tune followed on quite easily. I set the song in the key of C, not because it's particularly easy to play, but rather because it fits my vocal range.
I decided also to cut down on the harmonic tricks of which I am fond; this one has only one mild trick. The verse begins F G Am (so far, no surprises) then Fm which is the critical chord, allowing the tune to modulate from C to Eb. The second half of the verse has the chords Eb Fm Ab and then modulates back to C with a G chord. There isn't much melody: every bar of the verse generally contains several syllables set to the same note. I did want something which is easy to hear and sing along with.
After a long time with no words, except for the chorus, couplets have been entering my head over the past few days. I 'wrote' several while walking around the kibbutz and used my mobile phone as a notebook in which to note these couplets. When I sat down to put the words together, some of these couplets stayed and some were replaced. It was very interesting to note that there are no verbs in the lyrics (apart from the final two lines): the lyrics are basically a series of slogans strung together which describe our kibbutz. It's easier to do this in Hebrew than in English, although it was very hard technically with the stresses, emphases and grammar. There are still one or two lines which need improvement.
Once I had a complete set of lyrics, I thought it time to record a demo. Originally the song had only two verses but that made it very short, so while working on the arrangement I added another verse - for which I had to strain in order to write the words.
I then recorded a few vocal takes. This proved more problematic than usual as my computer seems to be suffering from old age and slows down every now and then. This caused the vocal to be out of time with the music. In the end, I had to resort to singing one verse at a time then stitching the whole thing together.
I have absolutely no intention of singing this one live! Apparently this year all the songs are going to be sung with playback with no live musicians, so I'll work a bit more on the arrangement. But I must remember that people are going to hear the song once and once only so subtlety is not called for. This isn't a song which requires a great deal of love or even attention.
After having written the above, I took another look at the lyrics and the lines which require improvement. Fortunately the order of the lines doesn't make much difference (apart from the final verse), so I switched a few lines around with slightly changed lyrics in order to fix the song. Now I'll have to rerecord parts of the song.
No comments:
Post a Comment