Share with you (story of a complex arrangement)

I am working at the moment on sequencing a song which I wrote 31 years ago, called "Share with you". I had sequenced this about ten years ago, but thought it worthwhile to update the arrangement. As usual, I discovered that 50% of the notes should be discarded before importing into Reason.

This new version is more laid-back, as a result of slowing the tempo from 120 bpm to 100 bpm and by virtue of having less 'busy' parts. It is debatable whether this version is better than its predecessor, but it's certainly more contemporary.

There are sixteen bars in the middle which form an instrumental section. Previously, these bars had four different instruments playing different lines, and it sounded a mess in Reason. Use of 'Warfarin', the blood thinning compound and rat poison, was needed! My first attempt at sequencing this section kept two of the four solo lines, but I felt that something was lacking. A day or two later, I remembered an attempt I had made a few weeks previously to sequence something in 7/4 time. Whilst that attempt wasn't particularly successful, I felt that moving the instrumental sequence to this time signature would certainly make things interesting.

So change I did. This was technically awkward to do in the MIDI sequencer, so I ended up making a copy and discarding everything from the time signature change onwards. I then copied back and edited the rhythm guitar and bass parts, and when this was done, I imported back in the original ending. Then I had the pleasure of playing two solos in 7/4 time ... one I managed, but the other was elusive. I had another go at it last night, and for certain bars, the second solo is simply harmonising with the first, albeit a sixth lower. As the final bar features almost only triplets, this is quite awesome (triplets in 7/4 time, yeah!).

I had also produced a drum pattern by taking the opening two bars (of 4/4) and surgically removing the final beat, whilst adding an extra snare hit on the seventh beat. This was pasted in to its correct position.

This sounded ok in Reason, but still seemed to be lacking something. After trying a few unsuccessful ideas, I hit on using a drum loop for those bars. Now, all the drum loops which I have are either one or two bars of 4/4 time (I am still looking for loops in other time signatures), which theoretically are of no use whatsoever. If one, however, looks at the problem mathematically, then eight bars of 7/4 time are equivalent to fourteen bars of 4/4 - both have the same number (56) of beats/crotchets. So I pasted in seven copies of a two bar loop, and surprisingly the result sounds good. This is, in fact, an example of polyrhythms - seven against four.

An amusing coincidence: the bar number of the switch to 7/4 time is 74. What does this mean? Actually, nothing, as I always leave a spare bar at the beginning of every tune, and I could vary the length of the introduction. But the coincidence is too good to pass up!

I hope to record vocals at the end of the week and then post the resulting song at SoundClick.