November 10, 2023  -  User Showcase Song - Time

This is a song I wrote over 30 years ago, semi-inspired by Tom Waits' Time. I made a couple recent attempts to record it, but my voice isn't up to the task.

Time

I decided to have a go at it with SynthV. I'd envisioned it with a male lead, but I auditioned all the voices I had, and Natalie sounds great.

After rendering out the song in BiaB, I imported it into SynthV and worked out the notes. I'd already had the lyrics, so that part was - for once - simple.

Once that was done, I decided to try out some harmonies, so I've got Kevin, Hayden and Weina on the background vocals. I ended up shuffling some of the sections around.

The piano part was very MIDI-ish, so I ended up redoing that myself on a sampled Rhades piano. There's a string pad already, but I thought it might be nice to have a string trio, so I played that using SWAM instruments my EWI.

The extra instruments are playing "gestures" more than melody, and my daughter complained that it needed more melody. So I added a SWAM english horn, also using the EWI.

There's a spot for an instrumental, which after trying various instruments went to the cornet... also played on the EWI.

The music box/celeste was a last minute addition, as the introduction wasn't really working that well. I'd gotten the Mister Rodger's Celeste some time ago, and it's got a lovely sound. I'm glad I finally got a chance to use it.

I added a bit of tremelo string swells, and thought I'd call it a day.

Then my daughter complained that the english horn after the instrumental didn't really fit... something I'd been hoping could slide by. So chopped out half the instrumental so it merged into the chorus, and repeated the chorus. It was something I'd arrived at by accident, but intended to do from the start. So after a bunch of cutting and pasting and making a general mess of things, I think I've got a final version of the song.

The mix might be a little hot, I've been playing around with various mastering effects.

And yeah... I really need to work on coming up with better song titles

Read the complete notes and song lyrics for this project here.

Posted on November 10, 2023 01:11 PM