AUDIO TRACKS ARE AT THE END OF THE BLOG.

I suppose you could listen and read at the same time. Or just skip the ‘progress up to now’ read. It’s good to provide a bit of choice.

Process! Over the next couple of weeks the focus is on the word ‘Build’. As a few of my good friends on here, who regularly visit to read already know, the project of writing songs to completion is going to be a presentation of layers and ongoings. A song with a bit by bit approach of development. Describing the journey of learning ‘How to….’ I suppose.

Stop this Heartache. First stage……..

Firstly, I chose a drum track from the GarageBand library. The Pop Rock drummer playing a Neo Soul beat. Tempo chosen at 130. Left it to it’s basic beat and kept adding the short example over and over for the same pattern equivalent of about 4 minutes playing. Nothing worse than playing your guitar over it whilst recording it and finding the drum pattern is at at end, suddenly stops… and the song isn’t. You can always remove excess drum length. But oh! For a real drummer to put down sound.

Next, the Shure MV5 microphone was attached into the Apple Mac Mini M2 Pro for recording. Chose the audio option for recording guitar on both microphone and GarageBand app choice. The ‘Echo Strum’ sound, found in the library of the ‘Acoustic’ guitar choice, was added as a track. I could have tweaked my guitar sound with the buttons, switches and dials showing Compressor, EQ, Echo, Ambience or Reverb changes. But my Guild dreadnought guitar is a beast of sound quality, so just left it how it is. This is a microphone recording an acoustic guitar….so is picking up on everything the ambience of the guitar offers.

I played the whole chord progression with a ‘chunky’ feel. My guitarist brother will be sent this result so he can put his own slant and style on it with his electric guitar choices. Maybe add riffs, solos, etc. I want to use the acoustic track as a firm solid base to add other ideas to. Also, something to sing along to once the song is near completion.

To separate the total utter monotony of my playing a ‘chugging’ guitar and a bunch of similarly played chord rhythms. I thought it would be nice to add a simple tune on keyboards for separating intro, verse, chorus, bridge and middle 8 considerations. You can drop in and out with recording the keyboards by humming the vocal tune in your head and then playing, in my case naively, in the right places. Gets confusing if you don’t. The monotony of sound means I forget where I am in the song.

Choice of keyboards isn’t important at this stage because it can be dropped/deleted if it is irrelevant, simply doesn’t fit later down the line or just isn’t good enough. Sometimes though, a little unlooked for harmony or simple beat/note/cowbell/vocal note add can lift a song completely. A bit of a sprinkle of faerie dust as The Troggs were heard to argue about in the music studio. Music is holistic and gives you gifts of beauty at times.

Keyboards came from both the Synthesiser and Vintage Electric Piano libraries. The Akai MIDI Professional system. I played loads of choices and went down many rabbit holes of strange sounds. Here is the ‘80’s Bitrate Synth’ and ‘Wide Suitcase’. The other one here to listen to I deleted. Captured it on an email sent to myself. But can’t remember if it was Summer Tines, Scarlet Synth Chimes or Perfect Mix Piano…….Oh for real musicians!

And so……… Here you have the very beginning of the process. I have tentatively written a decent bass riff and melody. But will need to finish it properly before committing to the recording on top of this. And….Of course, the ‘mixing’ process of total sound is no where near at present. I just downloaded a guide to ‘How to Mix in 6 Steps’. 600 is more realistic for my technophobe brain. It looks very difficult to get songs to a professional sounding level. Fingers crossed I have the wherewithal to achieve this skill.

So, humbly presenting ‘Stop this Heartache’. Which is the beginning of a full song project.

Please remember….This is a drum track, a simple one note at a time keyboard play and an acoustic guitar only. No bass, electric guitars or additional acoustic. Just simple straight forward ‘chug’. I put 3 recordings down with little differences to keyboard choices.

Writing the song, the acoustic style I play when singing this quietly here in The Den, is more an open melodic one and not so ‘chunky’. But I feel it should be an energetic song.

Frail Autumn is definitely this project’s name for an album of the self written songs I have. Not sure of what to call the ‘band’ as yet.

BELOW ARE 3 SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT KEYBOARD SOUND TRYOUTS. I FEEL COMFORTABLE WITH THE FIRST SOUND.