I feel like I've hardly done anything today, but I have worked on finishing the production to a song called The Misery's Hard To Take, which, musically and lyrically, came to me in one go one night. It was little more than one-and-a-bit verses and it had an odd folk sort of arrangement (in my head). Here are the words:
The Misery's Hard To Take
The misery's hard to take,
keeps creeping up on me.
Every good choice feels like a mistake
my head is like lead and my ribs are a rake
every little shiver feels like an earthquake
The misery's hard to take.
Whale! White whale!
Heart I stab at thee
You'll not get the better of god or me
Death to you and my misery!
I put together the song a few weeks ago using acoustic guitar strums and a regular thumping beat, adding some odd, arpeggiated saw waves, but it wasn't complete. Today I re-did the guitar chords with my APX700II guitar, but they didn't sound nearly as good as Ernie, my name for my old and inexpensive F-310 guitar. This is superlative for sound quality, although as with any acoustic guitar there is a bit of awkwardness in recording due to using a mic and needing headphones.
So, then I went back to the original chords and added a few more tweaks to those. The sound is pretty much the raw guitar, but I've cut the bass and added some sparkle to the top. Then I recorded a couple of melodic solos on it for the intro, and ending. These are a bit bluesy because the notes are sad and slightly wrong. I also bent them so make them weep a little.
Then came the vocals. I decided to picture myself as some toothless old cowboy or something for these. Then I added some extra vocals for the held notes on 'earthquaaake' and 'god or meee'. I used my Choroleight effect which multiplies one voice up to sound like eight for these to make them sound wide. Listening back I thought that I needed more and found myself improvising some ranty cockney-like vocals over the top, so added those.
The ending though sounded gentle, not remotely ranty or angry like the words, so I added a mad electric guitar solo over the top, playing any old note in a rough response to the smooth sound of the bluesy acoustic, something like the ranty response of the vocals.
So, it's done.
