In 2011, Peter Falconer - musician, songwriter and lazy bastard - will be writing and recording a song a week for the whole year to raise money for Parkinson's UK!
Wrote and recorded this in my father's studio on Sunday afternoon while we were visiting them up North.
Dad's studio, like mine, is what is politely termed a "project studio", which is a polite euphemism for saying no bugger else can get the thing to work, so I belted this out pretty sharpish to avoid prolonged arguments over the relative merits of Cubase and Logic.
There are some really lovely mics and pre-amps up there, and I'm very pleased with the sound of the (one take!) drums. If I'd had more time I could have (should have) spent longer on the bass and vocal sounds, but there you go. BVs were done sat in front of the computer with a hand-held SM57 for speed.
As far as the writing goes, I like the "across the ocean floor" line, but the mid 8 bored me so much I chopped a bunch of bars out of the middle of it and skipped to the end of an improvised rant about being sick of the sound of my own voice.
Song 42 coming as soon as possible, I promise. Thanks for all your donations and comments so far. Please keep them coming - these last few weeks are going to be really really tough!
Come on, now - it's time to put your money where my mouth is. I've been going at this for half a year now - not many people who start a song a week project get this far - surely that's worth a bob or two for Parkinson's UK? Please donate generously by visiting www.justgiving.com/songaweek or clicking on the widget on the top right there!
When you do something for a job that for most people would be a hobby - whether that's music, art or stripping - there are times when it feels too much like work. So this song was made for me to enjoy my music again after a pretty gruelling couple of weeks! And now, a long and tedious account of how it was made:
I wrote it yesterday at one of my student's houses, at her piano (thanks, Gill & Brian!). Writing somewhere neutral without any distractions (Internet be damned!) really helped a great deal. It was a beautiful, sunny day, which definitely influenced things. As ever, the main piano riff came first - a bubbling 5/8 thing, which I like to think avoids the stodginess of 6/8 without being too jerky (see Seven Daysby Sting or Take Fiveby the Dave Brubeck Quartet).
I wasn't sure what to write the song about, so I turned to my hosts' bookshelves for inspiration. With them being keen on sailing, there were plenty of nautical books, one of which was Gypsy Afloat by Ella K Maillart, an account of one of the 20th Century's most celebrated traveller's years as a sea-bound hitchhiker. One of the chapters was entitled "Escape on Amenartas", which grabbed me straight away. Using that as a starting point, it was a pretty straightforward job articulating the fantasy that just about all of us have had at some point, namely sticking two fingers up at the rat race and buggering off to sail around the world.
I'm going to be a
MIGHTY PIRATE!
This morning was spent recording the track. Basic piano track to map out the tempo changes in Logic; Drums; Bass... then before adding the main vocal line I started layering up the instruments in the mid sections such as the harp, guitar, sax and strings, as well as percussion (bongos; cabasa; maracas; clicks and other oral noises; and the back of an acoustic guitar in lieu of a cajon). Lead vocal came next, which I double tracked in places, followed by oohs and ahhs for backing vocals.
There's a line in there which initially I heard as a harmonic caused by something else (very quiet tremolo guitar part, I think), that sounded like a trombone... so I doubled it with a trombone sound. I always think if you hear a note or a rhythm or a harmony that you've not actually recorded, but that's implied by other sounds meshing together, it's nice to add another instrument to pick it out - I figure it's the song telling you what it wants to say. Ooh, that was a bit hippy of me. Anyway...
The swelling cymbal sound (right at the beginning) was created by recording a cymbal crash, reversing a copy of it, and sticking them both together. It takes a bit of tinkering to iron out the attacks and get a nice smooth sound, but it's worth it - half way between a mallet roll and a bowed cymbal effect. Totally studio-created, but it's very pretty and I use it quite a lot in ballads like this.
Anyways, that's about that. I like this one, and I hope you do too - please leave your comments here, on the Facebook page or even drop me a line through Twitter. It really means a lot when I hear from people about the project. I just can't believe it's been six months already! Here's to the next 26 songs!
After a very long few days, I barely had the energy to get this one done... and what happened? I accidentally deleted half the song, and Logic (being the most inappropriately named system in history) wouldn't let me get it back.
I'm tired, and I need to get cracking on with songs 22 and 23, so it's here, half naked.
The song was written after I caught myself being even more cynical than usual. There's a line in Yes, Minister which goes something like "A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist," which I think is probably true... but there's a point when too much cynicism drains you of your humanity. So I gave myself a kick up the arse.
"A clear conscience? Since when did you acquire
a taste for such luxuries?"
And it's a good thing, too - for this very afternoon I was interviewed by Rebecca O'Neill for TFM (Teesside FM). TFM, on my old school bus journey, is the reason why I can't hear Simply The Best by Tina Turner without singing the South Cleveland Garages advert along with it. People from that neck of the woods will know what I'm on about.
The interview will be broadcast this Saturday (11th June) on one of their morning news broadcasts - 96.6FM if you're in the area, or tfmradio.com if you're not!
