Thursday was the – for now – last day I worked on ‘The Tide’. I wrote some more bits for the string arrangement and added a great middle 8 that adds perfectly to the dramatic sound of the song. Then in the evening a good friend of mine who I hadn’t seen for some time came round to listen to my songs. He hadn’t heard much of the new songs, actually only knew the first two. So I bribed him with a nice dinner I cooked for the both of us. And he got pretty excited when I played him my songs. His favourites were ‘Webs’, ‘Unspoken’ and ‘The Tide’. We didn’t get around to all the songs since we got a bit drunk and then another friend came by who – believe it or not – doesn’t really like music.
In the last two days I started rearranging some of my new songs for a gig I’m playing next Wednesday. So far I’ve done ‘Webs’ and I’m on ‘Hearts first’ now. Pretty tricky what I want to pull off live, doing my One-Woman-Show. It takes a lot of preparation, rehearsing and thinking how each song works best because I definitely don’t want to do some sort of karaoke. Admittedly some parts will just be done by play back, but I’m trying to play as much live as possible. Since I’m writing and producing on Windows XP, but play live with my Macbook Pro, I have to find some work arounds for the VST instruments and plugins that only work on XP. Quite time consuming, but at least this time I’ve hopefully started early enough to be well prepared on stage.
That’s how ‘Webs’ as an instrumental originally looks. Quite something going on in there, right?!
Off to a little gig I was asked to come to tonight. I’ll try not to stay out too long nor get too drunk… fingers crossed!
After I last wrote, Tuesday night, I couldn’t sleep. I was quite worried what the music producer had done to my song. So after a chat with my best friend that lasted till five in the morning I decided just to stay up. I played on my keyboard with headphones and had a lot of new ideas that I instantly recorded in Live. Around midday I had a little break and fell asleep on my armchair, went to bed and slept for four hours. When I woke up I got right back to playing and came up with an idea for a song. I don’t know if I’d mentioned that I was asked to write a soul song for someone else. I’d been listening to soul a lot to research chord structures etc. The following day I continued fleshing out the idea and it’s not bad at all. The music producer really liked it and will probably use it. He also played me what he’d done with ‘Chaos & Order’ which is basically just a radio edit. Not sure if I like it. It’s got a fad in. Yuck! I’m starting to think I’d rather write two new songs only for this compilation. That way I can see the whole thing as something like a collaboration. My friends to whom I talked to about it agree. They even said that no one would want their children messed up by someone else after bringing them up all on one’s own. Funny they used this allegory. Spot on, I guess!
On Thursday I also went for a long cycling trip through a nearby park and an adjoining forest, offroading and all. Very enjoyable! I’d completely forgotten how exhiliarating it can be. On the way back I paused by a lake and started assembling ideas for lyrics. Basically jutting down everything that came into my mind, without any particular order. That seems to work best for me these days. Make sense of them later after collecting thoughts.
While working on the soul song I already came up with a little bass line that I thought has loads of potential. I sorta forgot about it until I was about to turn off the computer and go to bed. So I opened up Ableton Live again an quickly recorded it and all of a sudden all the arrangement ideas came flooding out of me and I ended up staying up till five in the morning. It’s the song I’m working on at the moment. It’s called ‘The Tide’, at least for now and it’s pretty dramatic with pizzicato strings, harpsichord, big drum sounds and in waltz time. I only have the lyrics for the first verse and the refrain so far, but since the weather’s supposed to be very summerly in the next couple of days I’m gonna go to the park and finish them in the sun. Maybe even write some more. The metaphor for the chorus came to me in the shower. Being relaxed seems to be the way to go to get in the mode. The vocal lines are there. When I sent a rough sketch to my dad today via Skype he said it rocked. Ha!
I got my new phone yesterday. Installing the stuff onto the computer took a bit, it kept cutting out, but it works now so I can upload pictures from now on. One of the first ones I took (my orchid):
Still on ‘Zero Tolerance’. Recorded the last missing vocals. My voice is still a bit rattled by allergies (darn birch trees), so I guess I’m gonna re-record them at some point. I started working on all the little details. Refined the beats and the brass arrangement. Put in some interesting effects in designated spots and some really weird noises as something like a short intro. And for the first time tried some excessive LFO filtering on the bass line which took me ages to get exactly right. Sounding good now though.
I think I’m gonna spend some more time on it tomorrow and then definitely move on to some other song. Either write a new one or get back to ‘Euphoria’ and see if I manage to come up with a great chorus this time around.
Also I did some rewiring in my studio after getting irritated for the umpteenth time tripping over some cables. Additionally, each time I wanted to set up some other piece of equipment I had to crawl under the desk and unplug something. Now there’s nothing to stumble on and lots of plug-in positions in reach. In the long run it’s gonna save me both time and hassle.
Phew… I did it. Finally finished the lyrics for ‘Zero Tolerance’. Feels pretty satisfying, probably because there’s been a lot of sweating involved over those darn words – figuratively speaking. So apart from laying down some brass that’s all I managed to do. Who’d think that 10 lines could be so much work. Not that I only wrote 10 lines, wrote about 100 I guess. But since the song is pretty fast and the vocal line is pretty tight and rhythmic I didn’t just have to find the right ones to express what I want to say. No, they also had to fit the melody like a glove. So I spend my day writing down something, trying to sing it, crossing out words, scribbling other ones in, testing a new version of a line and so on and so forth. Well, at least I already know the new verse by heart. By the time I’d finished it, it was a bit late to lay down the vocals (I don’t want to annoy my neighbours too much and so far they surprisingly haven’t complained, yet.). Tomorrow’s another day.
I must admit I also spent some time researching good camera mobiles phones. My old one is pretty close to biting the dust. Actually it already might have, but I’m trying to think positive, because otherwise how am I ever get all the phone numbers back trapped in there? So I’m hoping to be able to recharge it at least one last time to save all the numbers tomorrow. It’s been in bad shape for quite a while now. Should have seen it coming. It’s just that I really like gadgets and I didn’t want to spend loads of money on a new mobile… don’t like them too much, to be honest. The new ones have all those nice features though and I could get carried away. Nice little toys! So I felt I was in a pickle… ended up hunting down one supposedly good second hand Nokia 6670 on Ebay. That’s off the list then. Bla bla, sorry about the last part. Been rambling again.
