The Sun Will Rise Again
By Paisleyfrog on December 8, 2024 5:07 pm
This one has been in the idea bucket for a while, since about 2020. I was having a songwriting flood around then, and would usually sit on my living room floor before work and kick out song sketches. This one jumped out pretty much fully formed - chords, structure and even melody. It didn't have any words, though - that original scratch just has me singing the melody over the top with "na na na" sounds. I sent it to my wife, and she called it "Scarboroughish", because it made her think of Scarborough Fair. (It's lived in our unfinished song book since then under that name). The music made her think of traveling, so she wrote these lyrics. The entire track is actually built right over the top of that original scratch, using the original tempo (including the slowdown at the end).
When it came to turning it into a full song, we both had the same sort of idea, with strings and such. I initially had it overproduced with the additional instrumentation going through the entire song - which oddly made the guitar not work at all. She told me that it was that initial guitar arpeggio that made her think of the lyrics - sounding like a train. That gave me the idea of the slow build on the instrumentation, which I think worked pretty damn well 
Even though the track was built on it, I couldn't directly use the original scratch - it had my "na na was" baked into it. Took me a bit to remember how to properly finger pick my 12. I was going at it a little too hard at first, and it sounded twangy and awful. This guitar needs a light touch, and sitting further back from the mic.
Other than guitar and vocal, this track is all Session instruments. I took the opportunity to dig into the chord, type and range variations to break things up a bit. The strings are the Simple Pad keyboard player - after establishing the track, I swapped in a string ensemble sound and backed way off on the attack. The e piano plays arpeggios mostly, and then moves to "freely" during the solo. It got about 90% sounding right - I had to convert to MIDI and adjust a few notes. Also odd with the drummer - you can have the fill amount and complexity turned down to zero, and it will still throw in the odd kick drum fill. Fine, convert to MIDI and delete.
One more song to go for the album!
› Lyrics
Audio works licensed by author under:
CC Attribution Noncommercial No Derivative Works (BY-NC-ND)
