Songcrafters.org

This song has been sat on the marvellous mechanical mouse organ in the broom-cupboard for well over a year.

A few weeks ago I got a bit of a scare - the mouse organ nearly broke down (in the middle of sorting out Delta Dawn). While I was fixing it (we will, we will mend it...), I found this thing in a songwriting-demo form with a hip-hop beat, just two rather messy guitars, and a gorgeous but rather flawed vocal.

It got written at the same time as Cobwebs and I Like This Girl, and I felt just as inspired at the time... but I didn't know how to finish it.

When I found it the other week, I played it to Mrs R and she went "wow". I mixed the demo as tidily as I could and sent it to the muse who inspired it.

I very nearly posted it on here as well... But this is what I could hear in my head when I listened to it, and the demo doesn't sound like this at all.... So I fixed it up, replaced everything, and gave it some sparkles.

Very impressive, Andy!! This sounds so cool and you've done top job here on each way! Fantastic vocals and lyric, as well! WOW!!

braw tell yer maw, at start i almost thought you where gonna do "i'd rather go blind" stunning as per usual.

Wow is right!

So spare, and yet so rich as each part comes into its own. That's masterful. Also a powerful vocal - you've got the voice for power ballads, for sure. I'd like to hear the demo some time, too.

Wow! that's a fab song Andy, Tight playing, great guitars - a simple riff but so effective. I like the bit of top rergister bass in the intro, it just sings.

Magic

Very nicely done, excellent recording and brilliant vocal performance.
Great tune.
B

Oh this is a beaut !!

That's a really great arrangement with the simple, but effective guitar riffs. Vocal performance is (as usual) top notch !!

I'm a fan !!!!

Fabulous song and fantastic vocal.

Thanks folks. :)

It started out as a chord/melody single guitar part played on quite a dirty guitar through a bunch of stereo chorus.

Unfortunately, I can't play the thing as clean/accurately as I'd want to hear it. So that's why I put it on hold for so long.

When I restarted the other week I reckoned I could maybe build it from several guitars if I could figure out who played what...

But while I was doing it we ended up with lead melody lines jumping out at us. So I gave up on the original plan and followed my nose.

There's a bit of a first for me on this. Aside from the "harmonics" guitar part on the top (the one with the stereo delays), all the guitars are... played through a real valve amp and mic'd up with an SM57!!! This might be a bit of a watershed moment. I couldn't do it in the old place (too loud), and I didn't think the broom-cupboard was offering a decent enough "sound-room" here... but I had to get the amp out of the living room cos of some visitors, and it was just kind of sat behind me...

I'd have done the harmonics part with the amp as well... but I wanted the stereo cross-delays, and I know how to do those easily on my Vox Tonelab.

The bass part at the front was an interesting fluke, Harry - a fluke that cost me HOURS when we found it!!

I'd used the fretless Jazz for the main bass part. And then when I was building the guitar-hook parts, I'd put a low part where it was originally written, and one an octave higher. I was thinking about looking for a harmony when I suddenly thought "why not use texture instead of harmony? Get a lead bass playing it as well, instead?"

So I did (and the organ!!). Everywhere you hear those syrupy guitars playing the hook, a lot of the sound is the fretless playing it up in the high register as well. Early on the organ plays it low, later higher, so the texture changes on the last bit. I suspect you can't tell the bass is playing with the guitars (possibly because the "thump" bass part is so obvious and hefty) - but it all gets a bit weedy if you take it out.... I kind of liked the effect it created, but I wasn't sure...

ANYWAY - on the rough takes, the intro had the guitar signature there as well. But the intro wasn't doing it for me. Then I was demoing it to Mrs R last week to check whether I was drifting too far from the original songwriting demo (and to check the two leads plus lead bass worked), and I was muting tracks to show her what was there.

While doing it we discovered that the empty intro of thump-bass, drums, clean strum and chugging guitar (doubling the bass) was "IT".

But I hadn't muted the high-register bass track, and it just came in without warning... We looked at each other and decided that if it was played a lot better it would be perfect...

That's where the hours of work came in!! :D Could I play it convincingly? (Incidentally, the opening verse is equally hard to sing). I nearly cheated and cut and pasted the bass from one of the later bits - it was easier to play with the guitars in place, but that would have had other issues (minor vs major chords for starters).

In the end, I managed to get one I liked. All the while I was thinking Pino Palladino on Paul Young's version of Where Ever I Lay My Hat - but alas I have been practicing making a fretless sound like a fretted... I have not got on to lesson #2 yet where you make it sound like Pino :D (although, I travelled a fair bit down that particular road during the numerous takes... not as far as I would have liked, though!)

I loved the panned octave guitars. Such a great touch. The vox gets stronger as the song progresses and you really nail the title line about every single time through. I like the emotion in the vox quite a bit and that organ you've added in there is nearly perfect in places. It almost sounds like a chorus of angels in one spot.

Hi Andy, this is pure class from top to bottom. I could see this played as the first dance in a million weddings. Just supurb. Roscoe

Great guitars, great vocals, and the dynamics just make it all work so well! This song is a perfect example of how to make the space work for you. It shows that not every section of a song needs to be filled with something. It so spacious and yet so full.....I'm on my second listen because I was so caught up in the overall sound that I forgot to write anything, lol. Nice, nice, nice work Andy!

Farrell

Cheers folks :)

TC - there is a choir of angels there! They took ages to sort out! :D (not so much to sing/record them, but to get them into the mix right - the idea was to kind of morph them with the organ in the last "chorus"... sounds like it almost worked!)

Farrell, yeah, I actually learnt a lot about less-is-more while arranging this. I was stuck with it for well over a year. And part of that was "how on earth do I arrange this??". The structure, number of bars, verses/choruses, was obviously already right as I recorded it, but it just sort of "droned on" for my money.

The biggest improvement was dropping the "signature" guitars from the intro (the bass left in the intro was just a lucky break, I'd never have thought of that). It's weird, when I listen to it now, the intro hits me with "crumbs, that's not you, is it!?" - so dropping those guitars is still a bit "left-field" for me.

Quote from: cuthbert on November 10, 2013, 10:15:57 AMI'd like to hear the demo some time, too.

I thought long and hard about this, I was even listening to it today with a view to converting it to an mp3 small enough for posting it down here in the thread (rather than hosting it on alonetone - I don't want two versions there).

But in the end I decided not to. Sorry, but you're not really missing much :D

It's a silly reason really, but I think most of you will get it. This song really was a message to someone back in Aug 2012. The original vocal was where the lyrics were written and recorded in one take - I actually meant it while I was singing it, I was talking to her over the music. When I found the demo and finally sent it to her a few weeks back, that kind of sealed its fate in my mind - she's the only one who's got that version at the moment, and although she probably wouldn't view it in this light herself, I kind of want to keep it that way :)

In some ways the demo feels, to me, like a private conversation (it's not, obviously, the lyrics ain't changed), this one is just another AndyR recording. Another aspect is that the demo is like the piece of paper I usually write a song on (this one is unusual, I "wrote" it on the recording) - I'm quite "reverential" about these pieces of paper that were originally scribbled on when I was writing a song... I've got them all, going back years (except for the ones where the object of the song asked if they could have it!!)

Btw, happily, it turns out that the woman in question likes this version too... Otherwise, I would have been somewhat disappointed with myself!! (and possibly more tempted to post the demo version if she thought it was better - you're not really missing anything folks! :D)

Oh, this is a masterclass in production and performance. Really impressive, but most importantly, what a great tune. Love it when that organ sails in over the top. Did I hear you correctly saying you doubled the bass? Where as it sounds perfect? It does sound like Pino by the way.  I just got a cheapo fretless Squier, and I am amazed how good that thing sounds.  I thought it might sit there because I figured I couldn't play it in tune well enough, but I find it much more forgiving than slide guitar (I injure the neighborhood cats when I try that). It helps that mine still has the fret markers on it.

Really lovely vocal delivery as well. I have bookmarked this one to revisit later.

Blooby

Spectacular, your hours spent have certainly paid off. That vocal has so much emotion in it, very moving.
Rock on!

Blooby - the "bass part" itself isn't doubled, that plonks on all the way through. There's an extra bass line taking the place of a third harmony guitar.

Yep, work that fretless ;D. When I first got mine, all I could do with it was make slidey noises. Very satisfying, but didn't do much for any songs... Then I learnt somewhere that a good plan is to learn to play it so that it DOESN'T sound fretless. It took a bit of doing, but it was worth the effort.

Mine's a Mexican Fender, and yes, mine's got the fret-marks on it too. Although, they are more of a distraction than an aid now :D. The best advice seems to be to jam along with stuff, trying to play as in tune as possible, making it sound like a fretted instrument... Hitting the right notes (without a little initial slide up or down) starts to become second nature after a while. It seems that when you can do that, a deliberate slide or whatever sounds SO effective.