As the weekend was free of children and grand-children (coincidentally, both of my children were in the north of Israel), I had plenty of time to complete a song which I had begun about a month ago. I am writing the following for myself whilst the memories are still fresh in my mind - I doubt that the nitty gritty details will be of much interest to anyone else.
Most of the music was written in the middle of July when I sat down at the piano and started playing something that sounded like a lullaby. I had been reading a music analysis of Nick Drake's songs, paying attention to the fact that the melodies in several of his songs start on the third beat of a 4/4 bar; this isn't an anacrusis (starting the tune a beat or half a beat before each bar). The original idea had an eight bar sequence in G which was first repeated then played three semitones higher (in Bb), followed by a final repetition in G. I sequenced this initial idea and played with it a bit, eventually realising that it was quite boring and would be better if there were one sequence in G followed by one in Bb. Further tinkering with the music led to an introduction which includes the sequence G F9 Em Cm7b5 - the final chord not being one that I normally use.
Shamelessly I pinched a few arrangement ideas from an alternative version of the arrangement which I created for my wife's masked song, but eventually the arrangement became autonomous. I also played around with the drumming, starting off with what sounds like a heart beat, then half time then normal time. A few evenings ago, I decided to change the instruments playing the introduction and coda, replacing them with real live electric guitar.
The words as usual were problematic. For a few weeks, there were no words or direction at all; one evening whilst walking the dog I hit on the idea of trying to convey the feeling that I had whilst sitting in a cafe in Gavrio after the last ferry had left for the day. I remember the same sort of feeling when we stayed at Yosemite national park in America before the birth of this blog: those that had come for the day had gone home, leaving the beautiful area to be explored by those spending the night there. It's an extension of something which we've been doing since that trip to America in 2005: instead of being day tourists, we've tried to travel to one location and become 'locals', seeing things that the day tripper wouldn't normally see.
Over a few days last week, I managed to write three enigmatic verses, but as usual I was lacking words for the bridge section. These came whilst showering on Friday night and getting into bed: every few minutes I would get up, race to the computer then add a couplet.
Yesterday I devoted my time to recording the song. After swimming, my first task was to play the guitar parts; this was fairly easy and only a few takes were required. Singing the song as usual wasn't quite so easy but again, not too many takes were required. I spent some time creating a harmony for the bridge from which I developed a choral sound, but this seemed inappropriate, although later on I would use a similar idea for the second bridge. Mixing, surprisingly, went very quickly; I remember doing this about ten times for an earlier song, trying to achieve an appropriate volume for my vocals with respect to the music, but yesterday the final mix was either the second or third attempt.
No comments:
Post a Comment