At the beginning of December, thinking that I had hardly touched the piano since my return to electric guitar, I sat down and shortly figured out an eight bar sequence, using only scalar chords (since you ask, I IV I IV iii ii V7sus4 V). In order to turn this into a song, I repeated that eight bar phrase then moved to a chromatic mediant for a contrasting eight bars; as the song is in D, this was a move to F, but as the chords finished on the 5 chord, A, there was a descent from A to F, also a chromatic mediant. As it happens, this move happens to be in one of the songs that the musical group was about to play on stage. I note that this chromatic mediant move is becoming a cliché for me; the same move occurs in The Great Escape. I shall try to find a new way of writing a contrasting section in a verse.
After a few days, I made a complete demo sequence of the song, including solos ... then immediately started work on a new version, as the first version was too demo-like. I took the best parts from the first version and used them as the basis for the second version, a version that has undergone several changes from the original, such as having instrumental breaks in D minor. The original version had a middle section but I didn't like this very much and probably would have had difficulty in finding a suitable tune, so this was replaced by something more viable but also unusual (if the the instrumental link prior to the bridge ended on Em, the bridge started on Bm).
Over the past few weeks I've been working on this second version, adding tweaks here and there (e.g. an extra bar between the end of the second verse and the instrumental that leads to the bridge). A great deal of time was spent on a six bar coda that changed in detail three times before I found something that approximates what I wanted.
Having recovered somewhat from my throat infection, I have resumed walking the dog in the late afternoon, and on one of the walks, I heard a not too well known song by Yoni Rechter entitled 'Dreams turned to dust'. I thought that this was an excellent title and that I could probably do something with it. The following evening I sat down and almost off the cuff wrote two complete verses (24 lines) for this song, about a woman who had dreams but they had all turned to dust. A following evening saw me complete the lyric as well as editing the odd word or line here and there. It occurs to me that the ease with which I wrote these lyrics stem from the fact that they mean absolutely nothing to me; it's all imagination about what could be.
My voice has been strengthening over the last few days so I thought that I would try and record vocals for the song. But first I thought that I would add some guitar playing; the box that takes guitar input and connects as a USB sound module didn't work so I was forced into playing into my practice amp then miking this. A few takes were successful; I tried to play a lead line for the final verse but couldn't get it together fast enough so in the end I simply sequenced this line. I did record myself playing chords for the final verse but in the end I dropped this.
Recording the vocals was fairly straight-forward although I had problems remembering the tune of the bridge. In the end, I recorded this whilst listening to a version of the music with the tune playing, then took the resulting vocal and laid it over the instrumental music. Mixing as always took a long time to get a good vocal sound then a good balance between the music and the voice.
| Title | Tags | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| 22 | Joseph Finder - Company Man | Joseph Finder | |
| 321 | All quiet on the blogging front | ERP, ITM | |
| 528 | Being a tourist in Israel: Ein Karem | Israel, Holiday | |
| 665 | Song festival review, part 2 | Kibbutz |
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