The Patio Furniture Sessions

So… I have no idea what I’m doing, but I’m doing it anyway.

That stuff about me making a song for my book trailer? Yeah, I’m crotch deep in it.

As of right now, I have a 10-track composition on the audacity timeline. I tried to learn how to use ACID but I know so little about music recording that even the tutorials made no sense to me. Same with SoundForge. But Audacity, that shit’s easy. I use it at work to edit narration sometimes, so it wasn’t a big leap to actually learn how to use it for music recording.

It’s going… okay. Did I mention I have no idea what I’m doing? LOL. I mean, what I have right now is 2 minutes of something that actually kind of sounds like a song. Very song-ish. It is basic. And it does the same thing all the way through. So I’m working on changing it up a little, making some things only happen here and there, you know, like a real song. But the chords all work together, and the beats and chord changes all mostly line up, haha. Hey, this shit’s kind of hard, eh?

With every track I’ve “laid down” (ooooh dat lingo), I’ve practiced the next one along with it and then recorded it while the previous one plays in my headphones, so that I can match up the little idiosyncracies. That’s how you’re supposed to do it, right? You can’t assume you got your timing exactly right in each layer… I’m a one-chick band, so I have to play along with each layer to make sure I’m lining up.

I’ve got a ukulele layer (recorded in STUDIO B, aka, the bathroom – it gave the chords a lovely echoing sound that makes me smile every time I listen to it).

After that I pianoed over top of it. I bought this little Casio keyboard that makes all kinds of sounds. I bought it mostly for compositional purposes but I’m loving all the sounds it can make and I’m using it tons. Piano was recorded in Studio A (my art/writing room).

Also recorded in Studio A:

3 separate bass tracks! They all kind of do something just slightly different. Two are bass guitarish sounding, one deeper than the other (yay Casio electronic keyboard thinger!) and one is kind of like a deep baritone trombone or tuba sound (let me be clear, the keyboard doesn’t name each sound, they just have groups and numbers. So I don’t know exactly what instrument each number refers to, I just know if they’re string bass, piano, organ, wind instruments or brass).

I have to say that the baritone trombone/tuba sound is probably my favourite thing about the song. There’s this one little part that just kills me every time. I’m amazed I made a part of a song that makes me feel the way some parts of actual real songs make me feel. How did I do that? I dunno.

Anyway, I added a drum track which I like tons, but it’s a bit repetitive so I think I’m gonna redo it to change it up a little, make it do some different things at different times.

I had a “wind” instrument in the mix (oooh more lingo) that kind of sounded like hollow voices, but I had to chuck it. It was nice, but ultimately it didn’t add anything, and I need to be a bit discerning about all this layering I’m doing. I think it’s a fine line between a nice full sound and a freight train of sound.

That wind track also taught me something about “gain” and how to use it properly so that all these pops and crackles don’t overtake the mix. I had a bit of a problem with that happening, but now I’ve reduced the gain on just about everything, and killing the wind track was a step in the right direction for that problem as well.

Back to Studio B.

Near the top of the mix, I’ve got a neat little cowbell-sounding instrument that adds a bit of a tropical vibe, and my other favourite bit, the bell. It’s actually the vibraphone on the casio, but the way I’m using it, it sounds like a bell, dinging throughout the song. I love that bell sound. You often hear it in things like Christmas songs, you know that bell sound I mean? A lot of Beach Boys songs have it too. Mona, for instance. And some others but that’s the one that comes to mind, because I’m pretty obsessed with that song at the moment. 

 

Mona - The Beach Boys (from Love You, 1977)

And at the very top, I’ve got a 5-part harmony of “aaaahhhhs” that is all me – my voice recorded 5 times doing different parts and then layered all together on top of the mix. I have a high voice so even the low parts are high, and it sounds a bit like a children’s choir, LOL. But whatever, that’s how I sound, so I’m keeping it.

And that’s where things currently sit.

I have an idea for an intro, I just have to do some playing around to nail it down.

But the hardest part, I find, is the melody. I spent quite a bit of time working on that last night, and I came up with two different melodic lines, but really, they don’t do what I want them to do. They’re both so locked down to the song’s structure, and I really want something that floats above everything rather than marching along to it. My brain seems to want to keep the structure so I’m struggling with that. Gotta find a way to loosen it up.

And then lyrics. I’m a writer, you’d think that would make it easy, but damn! I know what the song is about, but everything I’ve written sounds just kind of lame and stupid, LOL. Maybe I should just melodically list names of colours or something. Go full abstract. Pair up colour names with types of fruit or something, I dunno. I’m way worse at writing lyrics than I thought I would be.

Having said all of this… sometimes I cringe at what I’m hearing when I play it back, and I feel like there is no way I should ever make it public, let alone put it in my book trailer. But then sometimes, those little things about it that I do like just kind of shine through and make me smile, and I feel proud. Maybe not proud of the song exactly, but proud of myself for doing it. And happy about those little things that tell me at least I’m enjoying myself.

It remains to be seen if this will ever actually become something I put into the book trailer. But I’m not giving up on it. There are still a few weeks left until I pick Lifesicle up from the printer. I have to keep myself busy with something, right?

Because I love lists, here are the things I need to do to finish the song:

• Redo that drum track.
• The melody. JUST COME ON.
• Do something with the structured melody ideas? Make them dum bee doo background vocals?
• Intro. Maybe outro. But mostly intro.
• Little instrumental embellishments where the key changes, before and after the bridge.
• Sleighbells! Another type of bell that's not just for Christmas anymore!
• Dial back anything that’s getting in the way. Cowbell, that could be you.
• Lyrics. Hopefully not of the “red kiwi, purple grapefruit, blue orange, orange apple, green lemon” variety.

Green lemon. That’s a lime.