26 Feb 2008
by madeleinein In the Studio Tags: bass, beats, field recording, music, recording studio, rhodes
So I began the new song called ‘Webs’ today. Like a breath of fresh air. Back in the flow of things. No sign of writer’s block. Ha!
The lyrics are taken from a short story written by my best friend that he probably doesn’t even remember writing. I’m sure he wouldn’t mind anyway. Just nicked some very poetic sounding phrases, translated them and reworked everything. It’s about the time when you wake up and are kind of still caught up in a dream, but have to get into the hustle and bustle of everyday life again. Funny, now I’ve got a morning song and a good night song (‘Scaredy Cat’s Lullaby’). I wonder if it’ll affect the naming of the whole album and the order of the songs… we’ll see.
Some Rhodes playing and recording today, nice and simple sine wave bass line. I also had fun recording lots of stuff one does in the morning just after getting up… yawning, brushing of teeth, getting dressed (zipper sounded best), sipping coffee and so on. For beats. And some basic beat programming. Me likey! Some ah and uh vocals to use as fills, too. It’s a good song to play around with loads of sounds and just enjoy the whole recording process again. Really looking forward to more of this tomorrow.
Bed now. G’night!
11 Feb 2008
by madeleinein In the Studio Tags: field recording, glass harmonica, music, recording, song, string quartet
Okay then… I guess I’m just gonna pretend I’ve been doing this blogging all along. I will throw in bits of flashback info of what I’ve already recorded and so on when it seems appropriate. Otherwise I’d be sitting here till morning and my typing skills are already in pieces.
In the last couple of days I’ve been working on this song called ‘Unspoken’ which is sort of this epic fairytale where the heroine tries to save the world from silence, because all these important things are left, er, unspoken until the world becomes mute. So she’s the only one attempting to rescue sound.
I’ve been bickering with this song for ages. It’s been a real stubborn one. I finally came up with the musical sketch last April. It turned out quite different from what I imagined, but it’s the way it seemingly wants to be.
It started out with this sound of glass harmonica I recorded a while ago that is used for the main chords and this bouncing bassline. Most of the sounds you can hear in my songs I’ve recorded myself. And all of the sounds for the beats. For this one I used for example the creaking of my office chair and other noises that seem a bit scary. Today and on friday I’ve been working on the refinement and tweaking of the beats. They’re somehow tribal-style now… I really love them. My favourite part right now is the last verse (I’ll put up an intrumental bit of it tomorrow). ‘Unspoken’ builds up just like a story climaxes which means quite some heavy editing since every verse and chorus needs to be different from the others. In the last couple of days I also wrote and arranged parts for a string quartet for this song that nicely add to the mood of the theme.
I’ve decided to give ‘Unspoken’ a break now. I like to let my songs sit for a while and then come back to them to listen with fresh ears. After a while I always kind of become deaf and can’t say if any changes help the song or just make it worse.
Tonight I’ve listened to another song again called ‘Paperheart’, enhanced the overall sound somewhat and made a rough mix. The vocals are still missing, but I’ll do them sometime later (then I can also talk more about this song). At the moment I’m just itching to finally make sense of ‘Chaos and Order’ (demo version on myspace). A friend suggested that it sounds R’n'B- or HipHop-style which gave me the idea to actually really try this stylistic approach. We’ll see.
Enough written, I’m absolutely knackered. Gotta go to bed now so I’m fit tomorrow.
x
mads
