This was an unsusual song-writing project for me. I was experimenting with some guitar chords and came up with an interesting progression. I often start a song by messing around with the keyboards or guitar and work out an arrrangement as a scratch framework for drums and other instrumentation. Then I record just the basic raw instrument with all of it’s flaws, but keeping as much of the ‘vibe’ as I can.
From this track I figure out the tempo I am using and get an idea of the arrangement. With ‘The Feast’, I started with a really slow tempo at first. This allowed time for the chords to open up to harmonies and musical tension. Then I usually archive the original track, and start building the song. After I worked out the arangement and had the basic rhythm tracks finished, I started playing with a melody line for my lyrics.
Often, I will just sing as I walk throughout the house and do regular chores when no one’s around. For ‘The Feast’, I had some ideas but nothing stuck. I decided to use the keyboards and a flute sound to noodle around with the melody line. Later I decided it didn’t work and changed the sound to an acoustic bass guitar part and it seemed to fit!
But when I added all the MIDI tracks, guitar and vocals, it seemed pretty dull. Yes, it had melodic texture, but did not have the feel I was looking for. As an experiment, I changed the tempo to make it much faster and this is the version below:
The lyrics were a bit difficult to fit into the much shorter spaces, but I got used to it soon enough and it seemed to work well enough for rock and roll. So I had to re-recorded all the tracks after the tempo change. Not the most efficient way to record a song, but as I always say – ‘any port in a storm’!
I had my 70th birthday last week. I am not sure how many more songs there are waiting inside me. I just get fascinated by almost every aspect of writing, recording and producing music. There are enough people on the planet now that there is a fairly large audience for almost any style of music. The recording software of today is MIND BLOWING compared to when I first started recording when I was 15 years old.
It is too bad that the music industry intentionally crushes novel styles and creative talent while pushing the same vanilla – overproduced – cookie-cutter garbage that is easy to sell (when there aren’t many options available). It is like going to the grocery stores now and seeing fewer and fewer products that are not the ‘store brand’. You can’t buy your favorite bread there anymore (because it is not AS profitable for them to sell), so you settle for what is there.
Don’t settle.
MidiMike 