I like the sound of falling rain

Well, I don't really, but I'm prepared to do so for artistic purposes.

About a month ago, I wrote It also rained on and off on Saturday, and at one stage I found myself composing the beginning of a tune whose first line is "I like (love?) to listen to the rain" - I think this is going to be minimalistic as I couldn't develop the tune very much. At the moment it has a very big range - from G below middle C, a note which I can't reach in a dependable manner, to B above middle C, in other words an octave and a half. We'll see.....

I sketched the outline of the music quite fast, then every day I'd add a little bit to the music, fleshing out the arrangement. Instruments were added and taken away in order to match whatever I was hearing in my head at the time. A few days ago I thought that the arrangement was complete, but then I decided to remove two instruments which played only a few bars each and assign their parts to other instruments. I played this arrangement for my wife who said that the introduction was "very much you". Hmmm. I had to go somewhere after this and while I was walking to wherever it was, I thought about her words. It would be better if I could have some prosody - notes which sound like rain. I added some semi-random strokes on a log drum which then became doubled - this is the shower starting and getting heavier - followed by arpeggios on a marimba that lead into the song.

Then I had to concentrate on writing the lyrics. Over three weeks I had succeeded in writing only about six lines, as well as a few notes to myself. I find that I have great difficulty in starting to write lyrics, but the words begin to flow once I get over the initial hump. Of all the lines, I would say about 75% came from the last two days. There is still one little part which I'm not to pleased about: maybe one day I'll think of a better couplet. At the end, I discovered that the title of the song had mutated: instead of "I like to listen to the rain", it had somehow become "I like the sound of falling rain" - and these were the first words that I wrote.

I note that in recent years, I start writing lyrics with a song title: a phrase will catch my attention which serves as as starting point. I didn't write like this in "the old days" - frequently the title would not come directly from the lyrics.

I decided to dedicate yesterday morning to recording the vocals. After getting set up, I sang the song three times, each time improving. I then discovered that the microphone hadn't been defined correctly in the software and so had recorded nothing. I then sang (and recorded) the song a fourth time, which became the master take. I decided to have the vocal in mono with no apparent effects: I had to use slightly different EQ settings from the usual as there was no need for the vocal to cut through a dense instrumental track.

Once again, it's raining outside: I only like the sound when I don't have to go out. My early morning walk with the dog was cut short as it had started raining a few minutes before we went out. I waited an hour when there was no rain, set out, and then half way through it began raining once again. My wife says that there's no such thing as too much rain, but maybe she's reconsidering.....