If We Should Sing Together - AndyR Original

[Kevin Mammoth]

on my third listen, blown away - what an epic track - this is like some long lost early 70's masterpiece!

[The Gobi Desert Canoe Club]

Thank God this got bumped, I would have hated to have missed a perfect piece of Songcrafting. I like everything about it. A definite download..............Willie

[Bluesberry]

Deserving of the

Golden Willie

[The Gobi Desert Canoe Club]

I was only joking really but you're right, this deserves a 24carat Golden Willie. It is sublime......Willie

[AndyR]

I'm honoured... I shall wear it with pride... 

I ought to listen to this one again myself, I guess... I seem to remember quite liking it at the time...

Trouble is, at the moment, I can only find time to get on here in my lunch breaks at work... and that means no audio or pictures 

[Krasi]

Well, I was totally shocked when I heard this - absolute perfection in every single detail. Read the post where the method was explained several times as well as listening to the song!!! Andy, your patience with this unit is beyond believe. I will start collecting your posts as a learning guides to help me understand more about the recording business. Your playing and especially singing is simply amazing.

[Jim1970]

WOW! This is Fantastic!!!
A real Gem for sure!!

JIM

[s.w.goatlips]

Big dirty BUMP!
Not just because I really like the song, (boy, do I like this song!) but also because I just happen to think that this is a really bloody good 'n edjacational thread. Thanks Andy and all contributors.

[lg]

WOW indeed!
Great Bump!

LG

[AndyR]

Well, I've just listened to it a few times meself, while reading all the way through the thread...

I've got a couple of observations-

1) I always tend to be surprised when this keeps getting bumped, lovely, but... er... why? Listening today, it's long enough ago now, so I can listen with a certain detachment... and umm... yep, I quite like it still - and I can no longer hear the "holes" that I know are in there. The big surprise this time was when I read me saying that the bass was only the guide bass. I'd actually forgotten that! I remember now being quite annoyed at the odd "wrong" bit in the bass part, but I just couldn't face having to relearn it and practice it for another few days... so I left it as was, fingers crossed. Listening now, I couldn't hear anything I don't like about the bass!!

2) Now I've read my own explanation of how I did this recording, I'm thinking "sheesssh!" did I really do all that?! . I've moved on to a BR1600 now, and I suppose that some of the things I was attempting achieve on the MBR on this song I still do automatically, they're just a lot easier to do with more concurrent tracks.

I'm quite interested that since recording this song and the next recording I did (Sooner or Later), I have moved towards approaching things a bit more loosely. On the MBR I was starting to find that if I was approaching needing this level of planning again... I'd give up. On the BR1600 I can do stuff without planning and mebbe end up with something I wasn't expecting but can use anyway. So I've got a slightly freer approach now. But they end up taking longer because I do a bit for my own benefit, get stuck and put it down, ignore it for weeks, then come back, ditch the original big plan because the raw take seems to work on its own!

If I can hear what I want before doing it, and I've enough time, I'll still put big layers of vocals or guitars on... but if it seems in any doubt that it will work, I'll leave them off and not waste the time attempting them...


I think the big thing about this recording is the song itself, and the fact I'd already been through arranging it for 2 guitars, bass and drums, years before. I knew the song was a goer before I started (even though my old band was expressing doubts about whether it was worth the effort of working it up to get it into the set - I'm not sure they could feel this one). And because I knew how valuable I thought the song was, I was prepared to put all that effort into rewriting it, re-arranging it, and figuring out a plan of how to do a 30-odd track recording on a 4-track!!

The song is not that difficult to play/arrange, it's just the need to get some sort of interest going. In this one it was all about playing the sections differently each time they came round.

I don't know what other people hear, but I personally think that the Aha-aha-aha-ah,ah,ahh parts are really important. They weren't in the original song I wrote on an acoustic. But when it was just "here's a new song" all those years ago, me and a friend who used to come round (he's a paranoid schizophrenic, lovely guy but sometimes weird) were chatting in the kitchen about the lights and colours you can see in the musical sounds you hear (as you do! we used to have a lot of chats like that) - so I played him the new song. He was SOLD immediately. We talked about what it was about, what the initial trigger had been (he'd actually been with us and experienced the same thing that caused the song, btw), and then what had caused all the lyrics as it developed. Then he wanted me to play it again for the umpteenth time that night, and we were exploring the "longing desperation" in it that time. He's not a musician, but he'd drum along on the table and occasionally make noises. This time, spontaneously, we both broke into manic Bee Gees falsettos, both singing that part, just out of nowhere... We knew that was what the song wanted. But the band I was rehearsing weren't convinced when I tried to explain this "avante-garde" idea, it was just a straight rock song to them, it didn't need any crazy artistic stuff in it.

If I hadn't known that the part was there before I started this recording, and deliberately made room for it in all the parts (in fact the whole arrangement was geared towards "how good will they aahs sound when they come in?") - if I hadn't been driven by that, I don't think this thing would have worked quite so well.

All the other stuff is quite important too - the lead vocal, the way the guitars and organ work, and I'm quite proud of that "guide" bass part, etc. However, I think they all gel so well because the producer/arranger had a sub-conscious fixed goal in his head - "those aahs have just gotta be right, they got to jump out but not be too loud, they've got to carry/express the rising emotion, but they musn't be obvious and give themselves away as artifice". And I spose I'd already learnt that the way you make that happen (assuming you can record the parts, obviously), is not so much messing with the "aahs" themselves, but arranging the other stuff out of it... the other instruments must appreciate that the "aahs" are the focus whenever they appear - the other parts mustn't do anything to take the spotlight in those areas on a first listen...

Anyway, his name was Mark - I don't even know if he's still with us anymore - I've realised while writing this out that I always think "this one is Mark's song"