Resting Between Bars

This morning, I re-started a song from scratch. I'd overloaded it, and didn't know what to take away from it to make it work. 

I halved the BPMS (beats per minute) because the metronome was too busy for the picking part on the guitar. The song still seemed slow, but I'd slowed the tempo when I first recorded it to make the lyrics audible. It had speeded up because it's the song I play when I pick my guitar up for fun-playing when I'm waiting for something, and it's become faster and faster as a result.

The guitar is sounding lovely. I did loads of editing and copying-and-pasting. This one is firmly in the 'pop' category and I wanted the sections of song with the best feel and the most accurate playing. I was actually sitting counting 1-2-3-4 out loud because there are gaps that have to be in the right place.

I did a guide vocal that sounded OK, and I decided to abandon the quirky backing vocals of the previous version and just play it straight, although I might try something later today after the ears-rest. I have started to listen to my music differently- as responses to silence rather than as expressions of sound. This is a bit like teaching Derrida at work by drawing a tree without drawing the tree: you just draw all the things around it, and hey presto! There it is!

I will never be able to process sound like Sophie or Nimino but I can be inspired by their approach and I can adjust the way I hear things as a response to their music. This is an interesting track to feel that way about because it includes electronics by Steve Beresford.

I'd clogged up the other one with a bass line that was too powerful. The whole thing needed to be more delicate, like a leaf skeleton. It's about mycelium linking trees together as a communications network. Here is the outdoor version, played too fast of course. There were people walking in the woods and I was scared.