Yesterday was quite enlightening. I wanted to record the vocal melody on top of ‘Stop this Heartache’. After layering the different guitars, keyboards, drums, etc. I found that the original tune was slightly squiffy. It went to war with a few of the new ideas. So the thinking went on to quickly write a different tune with new lyrics. So wrote this below.

QUICK OBSERVATION. If you’ve heard this song before without the intro vocals, you can stop it after the vocal ends at the start. The rest is same old, same old you’ve heard before.

How many years did it take

To find your dream?

Crawling on your hands and knees,

Crazy days……indeed.

The memories, oh the memories

Are not what they seemed.

They were flowers on flowers on flowers

Blooming inside your mind.

Imagination, throws it’s spell over you

Soul’s Vibration finds

You’re not an empty room.

Song Above: Vocals, Guitars and Keyboards played by Gray Summers (That’ll be me). Guild D25 Cherry dreadnought acoustic, Falcon Tanglewood Stratocaster and Hohner L75 Les Paul six string electric guitars. Akai Professional MIDI keyboard. Drums from the GarageBand library choice.

The replaced intended tune? Not happy though! Tune wasn’t as melodic as the original one. Here it is sung with both vocal and guitar into the one MV5 microphone. The echo on voice is because I chose Echo Strum in the acoustic guitar sound library. Lyrics below.

STOP THIS HEARTACHE.

Once, I crashed out at a party

Emotions seemed forever to stand still

A broken sense of innocence

Hey! What’s going on!

I believe if looks could kill

I just think that they might.

Oh it’s awful real

But it just seems surreal

Some futuristic dream

Of something cold, unseen

And it’s looking down on me

It’s late, too late

The hours just seem to walk on by

I could not do anything more than

Say goodbye

Well boys it’s time to leave the show

And I hate to see us part like this

And I hate to think of what we

Might have missed.

Oh it’s awful real

But it just seems surreal

Some futuristic dream

Of something cold, unseen

And it’s looking down on me

Stop this heartache (woah oh oh)

Stop this heartache

Coz it doesn’t wanna show

That it came from out of nowhere

And it feels so all alone.

No it doesn’t wanna show

That it came from out of nowhere

And it don’t know where to go

If you fancy giving those lyrics above a go with the instrumental catch! You may see how difficult a marriage of vocal melody and instrumental can be when you get carried away in GarageBand.

Interestingly I wrote this below a few weeks back.

“Recently a few of my music uploads have been instrumental based only. Why do I do this is? It’s because the lyrics have been written to some larger or lesser degree. An effort to sing with conviction. The tune is there to some degree. But, again….The vocal key and the subsequent vocal presentation is amongst the ‘only an idea for the song’s direction’ scenario. And whilst singing you say to yourself..….’Nope! It is no where near where I want it to be’.

So you play the instrumental rendition and chuck anything at it that hopefully cements itself into a decent path to take. Both vocally strong or relevant enough to cope lyrically. Scenario. You go downstairs, put the kettle on and, waiting for it to boil, sing variations of possibilities to the base idea. Waiting for them to boil too. Go back upstairs and quickly trial the marriage of vocal melody and recorded instruments. If you leave the song only in the memory, and not actually heard? It can’t produce ideas unlooked for. You focus upon little intricacies subliminally that do not translate into the reality on hearing”.

Well, well, well.