Monday, March 05, 2007
The Recording Process
In a somewhat stunning turn of events, I actually managed to get most of a song recorded this weekend - just like I said I was going to do. How about that? The song is called, as I mentioned in the previous post, “When All I Have Is You”, and it’s a song that i’ve done a considerable amount of work on considering how little exposure to the world outside my head it’s gotten. I wrote the lyrics a week or two into my junior year of college when I was feeling sort of lonely and like I had ceased to fit in amongst my friends at school. It seemed that my only remaining friend was God, and the song just kind of came out - I feel like it was a very appropriate emotional response. It has long been a goal of mine to get to where God is all I need. I still don’t know if I’m all the way there or not, so I guess this song is kind of the way I want to respond when God is all that’s left in my life. I mean, just imagine if you lost everything, your friends, family, possessions, everything. If you could, in that moment, “sing [your] loudest praise” to God, knowing that He is still there and that is enough, isn’t that the attitude we’re supposed to have? Isn’t that how it’s supposed to work? Anyway, this song has always had a lot of meaning for me, and I have always liked it a lot. Its sister song is called “How I Need You”, and it’s a lot simpler but has a similar emotional connection for me. I think I’ll work on that one next weekend. After I finish this one, that is.
Speaking of needing to finish this song, here are a few notes about the recording and the hijinks that ensued when I was trying to record it. First of all, when I was thinking through how this song should come together, I had a sort of slow, acoustic-and-piano type of song in mind. How, then, did it become a sort of John Mayer-ish blues kind of song? Well, pretty much by accident, since it just sort of worked itself out that way. After I recorded the electric rhythm part, the song had kind of morphed into a blues song, so I just went with that. You’ll notice that there is no piano in this version of the song; that’s because of the evolution into a blues song that I mentioned, which made the piano a much more supportive instrument rather than a main melody-carrying part. I’ll probably try to come back to it and get the piano in there, along with percussion. Speaking of percussion, I ran out of time this weekend or I would have put some sort of sampled drums onto the track. I actually did play around with one of the drum samplers for a while, but didn’t actually record anything. It’s kind of hard to use REAPER’s Virtual MIDI Keyboard for realistic drums. The other note would be that the lead track isn’t finished - it actually stops right before the big guitar solo break, mainly because that was pretty much the exact moment that I ran out of playing-around-with-music time on Saturday. Oh well, I’m sure I’ll get another chance to finish the track and wow everyone with my mad crazy guitar skillz. Oh yeah.
One final note - if you listen all the way to the end, you’ll hear my son Joel making noise - he kind of goes, “huh, huh, huh!” right as the track is fading. See, we were up at Sara’s mom and dad’s house, where the bedroom we use on the weekends doubles as my makeshift recording studio. As i was recording the lead vocal track, Joel became very interested in why Daddy was singing so loudly in the bedroom, and came to investigate. The door was shut, but that doesn’t stop him anymore. He opened the door and came in, his little face full of joy and excitement. He tried a few times to climb up on the bed, but i managed to prevent him while continuing to sing. Still, after the track had ended, he gave a little bit of input into the song, and I thought it was kind of cute and left it in there. So this song marks the beginning of Joel’s music career. Good for you, buddy.
