February - Stripe

One Day One Song Challenge kicks off with #15. Mondays I need something less challenging. Came up with this one and I find it came out well.

One more of those songs where I went into the basement at 9:00 p.m. without any preconception of what I wanted to achieve today. Only that I wanted to create something less production heavy. Guitar capodaster to 5th fret to bring good resonance in instrument and vocals. Some strumming. Song taking shape from that one chord. The version of the song that came out eventually is a quiet one. But at the same time “Stripe” could be a shuffle rocker.

9:20 p.m. - Started recording. Tried first without a cue track, gave up. Ran the cue in three attempts to complete. Added the guitar track and the vocals.

10:00 p.m. - Basic song is done. Threw out the accoustic guitar in favor of my good old sampled guitar. Added piano and outro synth soundscape.

10:45 p.m. - Mixing and mastering started. Added only a limiter this time. Equalized longer than normal on the vocals to bring out a better me. Added stereo-width for the vocal with two 10 second reverbs.

10:55 p.m. - Bouncing.

23:00 p.m. - Song done.

February - Fast Forward

Number 14 of 28. Midpoint. Man, the songs still keep on coming. This time a little upbeat. Production-wise I am quite happy, the lyrics are sloppy, though.

Late night dinner is waiting, so I won’t go too much into detail. As today is Sunday, I had a litte more time than usual for the song. Started writing it around 5:30 p.m., started recording at 6:00 p.m. and with interruptions layered the song until 9:30 p.m. Mixing was straightforward this time, gave it a little bit more headroom than usual. Done at 9:45.

Learnings: Balance better the quality of song and lyrics.

February - Imaginary Conversations

I am surely not superstitious, but number 13 was the most difficult so far. Tomorrow I need to simplify!

9:00 p.m. - Start writing the first bits of lyrics and music on my piano. Had this sort of unrequited love scenario in mind, the conversations you might have with someone unreachable in the imaginary circumstance that you are able to talk it out.

9:30 p.m. - Recording of piano and the drum sections. Adding the bass was fun, good sound, but messy. Vocals come quickly together, now that I know how to edit the second vocal track in pitch and timing. Made the cardinal mistake to make only shadow tracks instead of copying. Can’t do individual edits to the various track elements, some ugly timing issues are the consequence.

10:30 p.m. - Fine tuning starts. I play around with the layerings but are unable to create any tension for the refrain. Frustration! I end up by adding an ill-fitting drum loop from Apple’s repository. Added some vocal widenings. Worked fine but not really the best effect

11:30 p.m. - Started mixing. Tried to solve some of the timing issues but only got so far before time ran out.

12:05 a.m.- Mastering done. Another one in the can.

Learnings today:

• Copy instead of Alias for track regions! This will keep me in control of individual notes and errors, instead of the other way around.

• Simpler songs. Tomorrow I’ll go simplier from the get-go.

February - Burning Bridges

Ironically, though the song is called Burning Bridges, it has no bridge (Inside baseball singer songwriter joke).

9:30 p.m. - Studio time and no idea of a song in my head. But the chords come flowing quickly, as do the words.

10:00 p.m. - Piano track and rhythm loop are quickly done. I make the mistake to tinker with per-note editing, but without success. I have to simplify the piano part in the refrain to save time and nerves.

10:40 p.m. - double the vocals to make it more interesting, find some good bass layer

11:00 p.m. - Start getting creative with some other synth stuff to make the arrangement more interesting. But fail utterly, a lot of time lost in nothing Find one more layer synth and make it run through as simple as possible.

11:45 p.m. - Mixing

0:00 a.m. - Song is done.

Learnings:

Forget about arrangements, make simple songs and record them without bells and whistles

February - What Holds The World Together?

My wife asked me to compose a happier song. Done.

10:00 p.m. - Today I had my bi-weekly scifi writing group, so first contact with my One Day One Song challenge took until almost the end of the day. Scary: the whole song writing, including almost complete lyrics in one go took less than fifteen minutes.

10:15 p.m. - As it’s already late, I decided not to make this a band thing, just go for bare bones. The guitar track is a bit too playful and remains sketchy in many places. Good enough has its limits. The vocals had a bit of rehearsing to get the tone right. Third time runthrough was the good one.

10:45 p.m. - First listen with compressor, limiter and some EQ adjustments. There is something missing, some spice as both the guitar and the vocals are mono and centered (spell: boring). Did the piano tinkerings.

11:10 p.m - final mixing run. Final listen.

11:15 p.m. - Song done.

Today’s learnings:

Less itchy fingers when laying a base guitar track - it comes back to haunt you during mixing.

February - And Life Itself

Life indeed happens in the small things around you. And love, sun and life itself sounds like a good formula to me.

6:00 p.m. - No idea where my song ideas come from. It’s like pushing a button. Sitting down at six p.m. on my piano and the idea almost floats from the second my hands touch that initial A-Major chord. I had this conception of happiness in three everyday things. Love, for sure. The sun, makes me happy. And definitely life itself. Boom. And everything else I sing about in the verses is the life around us, the special, the mundane. But in the end, do you really need that? Happiness can be drawn from few items in life. No one will ask, but I tell it anyway, “the song that Joni sings” is of course any song by Joni Mitchell.

9:00 p.m. - Recording starts. Piano 8 bars for the verse, boom! Piano 10 bars for the chorus, done. The bridge,one take. Main recording was done by…

10:15 p.m. - The organ took a little longer to figure out but I could modulate with one of the keyboard wheels. Today a lot of vocal cleanup to eradicate clicks, hms, and hisses.

10:45 p.m. - First bounce. Background vocals to prominent. One more. Final listen.

11:00 p.m. - Song done.

Learnings today:

• Next song must a different key than A-Major. (But it fits my voice well)

• Better bass playing