Felt bad about last week's song, so I retreated back to the QY-70 to make something tuneful :)
Would have liked to have polished this a lot better, but, this project is all about demos, after all.
Also, between moving on July 1st and 2nd, and work keeping me at the office all weekend, I don't exactly have the time to do anything more with this (not even to add vocals). My initial session making this week's song turned out to be my final one. So there you are: a snapshot of my creative process!
And, oh hey: did I mention that this marks the half-way point for this project? :D
My intent: introduce my Moog to my guitar, and see how they got along.
What went wrong: my Moog was feeling full of itself, and in two simple patches, tried taking over the whole damn song. What you hear are the two instruments having an awful, terrible fight.
Contributing factors: exhaustion. Even though I got an early start with the guitar track, I didn't start doing anything else for it until the night before this was 'due.' The lyrics, written at the same time, reflect this exhaustion in their "wtf?!"-itude.
Why it didn't mix better: I think the guitar and the bass patch just sounded so similar to each other that they bleed into one another. Panning and eq weren't doing anything for me (although mixing while being tired is supposed to be a big no-no).
My final word: lesson (hopefully!) learned. Use sounds that don't interfere with each other so much. Or, study eq better, its limitations, etc.
If you could: give me a tip or two on how to avoid results like these :) Is there something very basic I'm missing? Probably so.
"Try something that I said
Fly over to my head
Inside it's black and its dark red
Don't hide 'cus this time we shake dread"
And thus concludes the Moog Trilogy! (?! Yes, I'm making that up)
Used the Moog on everything for this tune, except for the drums. The results? Even though there's not that many different tracks happening, it sounds very buzzy and cluttered, to my ears. I did my best to sort of separate the tracks from each other, but in the end, I only want to spend so much time on these each week :)
Had to double the vocals to try and get them to stand out better.
I think this week's tune was more of a conscious effort to write two different sections of a song (my weakness has always been to just write a chorus, with little else!); a reaction to last week's tune, I think.
I think the reason I was hard on last week's song was that I tend to use the same sets of notes for most of my songs; I should do a bit more investigation into different scales to play in, and see how that affects my output.
"What if I could say
Time's not set in place
There's motion in the sway
If you could travel now
Would you wipe me out
Would you change today?
Came up with a melody on my way in to work earlier in the week, so I phoned home and sang it into my answering machine so I could remember it later. Happily, the result isn't as goofy as the answering machine message :)
Learned that with an analogue synth, tuning can be an issue, so I tried to keep that in mind this go-around. The QY-70 is providing drums, and the final two synth sounds that appear (one during the 2nd verse, and one during the outro). Roger is doing everything else.
If you wouldn't mind answering this question to help me out: what's missing from this song? What do you suggest changing to make it more - I don't know, relevant? Distinctive? To me, it sounds pretty generic, forgettable...but maybe it's only because I feel like I've written this song over and over already? I was really pleased with last week's song, but this doesn't really seem to do anything. Feedback please! :) Or slip me some suggestions I can try out in coming weeks?
"And I realize far too late - it doesn't matter
And these feelings I can't take - they're getting better
And it's shocking me awake - because I never
Tried to heal it all away"
