
So I have taken a break over the last 6 months and done very little musically. Over New Year I decided to try to orchestrate and record a song that I wrote some three years ago. It was one of those songs that comes very easily. An idea comes to you, a guitar riff, a chord sequence, a melody, a line or two of lyrics, and it just came. If I remember rightly this one was a three chord progression and the first line of the chorus.
Anyway it probably took twenty minute to complete the song. It isn’t terribly sophisticated, but a number of people have told me it has that magical “catchy” quality. The sort of song you can’t get out of your head and which ends up really annoying you!
I had been wondering for a while how I would arrange it, but again, once I had loaded up cubase and worked a basic rhythm it seemed to flow.
Then a really cool idea occurred to me. It’s called The Girl Who Runs Away. I know lot of people who run, so I thought it would be quite nice if one or two of my girl running friends would send me a picture of themselves running and I could make a little video composed of their running pictures. So I put a Facebook request out and was overwhelmed with the response. I have ended up with more than 30 people being included in the video!
The recording process started with recording a ‘live’ guitar and voice version alongside a basic drum beat at the right tempo. I then programmed the drums to give the right feel, added piano, bass, synth and organ. These parts were not already written, but flowed very easily. I added guitars after that (there are three – acoustic, a clean electric and a distorted electric, and finally backing vocals, which were ad lib’d.
That was the basic song finished, but I re-recorded most all of the guitar tracks and made adjustments all of the programmed tracks too to give the final feel.
After mixing I then left it for a couple of days so that I could come back to it with fresher ears. On returning, I re-recorded all guitar and the lead vocal track, and made further adjustments to the bass, piano, and organ parts, before mixing, adding some final effects and then mastering.
Overall I”m pretty happy with how it came out – not too far away from what I had in may head when I started the process, though before I sat down at New Year I had nothing fixed in mind. The thing I am most happy with, however, is the video. I used my Mac to video myself and then added the photos I had received from my lovely friends. I hope you enjoy the finished product. I had a lot of fun making it 🙂 At the end of the video you’ll see the list of my friends who sent in their pictures for the video.
Here’s a screen shot of the track listing:
And here’s the final video, on youtube