We Fall Down (Ring of Roses)

[andy casson]

I am so angry
First song in a long, long time I have tried to complete... still a crappy sound engineer though 

We Fall Down
Words/Music: Andy Casson 19/4/20

You can point your finger from your terraced rows
It's the end of the world but no-one knows
We can right our wrongs tomorrow
We can let our children play
When the guilty leave us bleeding
And the world has gone away
There's a ring of roses upon the ground
With no final word we fall down

Cross your fingers and cling to hope
And greet their words with a length of rope
Bring me roses that make me proud
Hold my hand while I fall down

We can right our wrongs tomorrow
We can make our children pay
When the guilty feel no sorrow
Just a number called each day
There's a ring of roses upon the ground
With no final word we fall down

[Hilary]

Stunning and I really love the ring of roses reference.

Welcome back 

[Farrell Jackson]

Wow Andy this is such a powerful song! The power comes from your words, vocals, and..... yes from your engineering/mix skills. Even with my aging ears I can hear how skillfully this song was done. It's great to hear a new song from you.

Farrell

[alfstone]

Just splendid.

Alfredo

[Mike_S]

Stunning and I really love the ring of roses reference.

Welcome back 

Brilliant Andy, sure is great to hear another track from you. Damn, that is a really hard hitting tune. Really well conceived and executed beautifully. Loved it.

Mike

[Oldrottenhead]

This is a belter Andy, fabulous.

[Redler]

I've always loved the powerful performances by you, too! Nicely written and arranged. Minimalistic / bigger production parts works fine. Brilliant job, Andy and welcome back!

[Greeny]

First of all, welcome back :-)

Secondly... Wow. Gave me tingles. There's real power in that acoustic first part - restrained, dark and moody. And then it takes off into epic territory. This is seriously fabulous. Reminds me of the theme tune from 'The Bridge' or other contemporary TV series - it just has the power and hooks to be something like that.

It's incredible!

[AndyR]

Love it.

I've been away so long I don't know who else has been away or not!

Sounds good to me.

On the "crappy sound engineer" - I'm not sure you are! But I imagine you were hoping the big sections would be bigger, have more impact? They actually work anyway, but one thing I've just been discovering that might help if that's what's bothering you... Actually, Henwrench always used to say this to me, and I only half believed it... Leave the reverb off. I think Henny leaves it off altogether, and you get this immediacy in the sounds... I'm not sure I'd be able to stick to that... but I've found that if I leave reverb off a part until I REALLY can't see how it fits without it - even the lead vocal - then I tend to get bigger recordings. I don't actually know why... it just seems to work out like that if reverb is either not used at all or just used deliberately on one or two parts for impact.

[Ferryman]

This is really good Andy. I love the way it builds and there's lot's of light and shade in this. It's powerful, effective, well composed and I think the vocal performance is excellent. It's a big stadium classic, I can see the lighters, sorry smartphones, waving to this one!

The mix sounds pretty good but it does get a little boomy to my ears in the loud sections. The good news is the vocals still cut through the mix nicely regardless of that. I think what might be happening is that you have too many things in the same frequency ranges as the song builds, so they are overlapping and don't have their own space in the mix. Like Andy says, if you are using reverb on a lot of things, that can cause it. However, it doesn't detract from a really powerful piece of work.