Katie Marie Photo taken by Lisa (Indigo Blue Photography) and edited by Sandra (Soul Photography)
Last week I wrote a brand new song (horrah!). I had the idea for it in my head for bloomin’ ages and I’ve been waiting patiently for the right moment to actually make it into something, and finally after much waiting that moment came.
I tend to do pretty much all my writing on Tara (my lovely Takamine TAN16c acoustic), but this new song was written on Elmo who is a very old 1950s bass guitar.
The main riff for the song comes from a bass line that uses the D and G string. I had an idea for the Verse section, but wasn’t too sure what the Chorus would be. I dragged out my trusty Thesaurus and wrote lyrics and a melody line for the vocals which I really liked. I wrote some more lyrics for the Chorus and arranged the bass part, but when I played back the Verse and Chorus sections together it just didn’t sound right. Or rather the Verse sounded great, but the Chorus sounded rather… well… naff. Hmmm… back to the drawing board.
I then set about re-recording the Chorus part, really trying hard to find something that would fit in with my Verse but nothing seemed to work. After a few cups of tea and much head scratching I came to the conclusion that I was trying to be way to complicated just needed to keep things simple. The idea for the song musically was to keep it very raw and stripped back and let the bass lead the way. I then tried writing and simple but catchy Chorus part and thankfully it fitted in with my Verse section really well (yay!).
Once the song was finished I then spent the following evening recording it in my little studio. I had it all worked out in my head and couldn’t wait to get stuck in with recording.
As the bass was the main anchor of the song I recorded that first, followed by acoustic guitar.
I used Kartha (my lovely Schlagwerk CP404 cajon) to record the drum part. I decided to try using cajon brushes as I though it might work well with the acoustic vibes and it really worked a treat.
I added the vocals and left it at that. I wanted to add oodles more everything I tried just seemed to either be too much or changed the mood of the song.
And… if you fancy a listen, here it is
And to really make my perfect musical week complete – I had a really beautiful mention on the radio, which I only found out about the day before the show. I was tagged in a Twitter message from Alex Huskisson who presents a show on Severn FM called The Mystery Train. It was to say that one of my songs would be featured in this week’s show. I asked him when/where/how I could tune in and he told me his show was from 10pm. So I tuned in on my moby and an acoustic duo called Ethemia were the main act featured and were playing their music live in the studio. When asked who their musical influences were….well, this is what they said (MP3):
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Which certainly made my day (and week, and year!)
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