To One In Paradise (Synthesizer V)
Based on the poem by Edgar Allan Poe

Paradise
You were my paradise and all I wanted to find
Island of green in the sea of love
Fountain and my shrine

My days in trances
And in all my nightly dreams
Wherever your grey eye glances
Wherever your footstep leads
Lost in an ethereal dance by eternal streams

I lost you
My life's one light
A dream too bright to last
All that's gone (All that's gone)
It's lost in the past (It's lost, past)
It's lost in the past (Lost in the past)
Living in the past (Living in the past)

Paradise (Paradise)
You were my paradise
And all I wanted is find (You were all I want to find)
Starry hope that was overcast (Hope was overcast)
Dream no longer mine (Dream no longer mine)

No tree shall bloom (Trees shall not bloom)
No eagle soars (Shall not soar)
Silence holds the solemn sea to sandy shore (Language holds the sea to the shore)
Where light shines no more (No more)

All my days in trances (My days in trances)
And all my nightly dreams (And all my nightly dreams)
Follow your glances (Following your glances)
Where your footstep leads (Where your footstep leads)
By eternal streams (By eternal streams)


The Band

Bass, Electric, JazzFunkPoppy Ev16 110
Piano, ElectricVintage, Rhythm BluesyPopMike Ev 100
Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Pop8thsZaneHigh Ev 120
Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Pop8thsZaneLow Ev 120
Organ, Rhythm CountryBluesRockMike Ev 110
Piano, Acoustic, Rhythm Soul60sA-B Ev 110
Sax, Tenor, 2-Beat Rock Ev 110
Organ, Rhythm CountryBluesRockMike Ev 110
Vocal Aahs, Rhythm Pop3-part Ev 085
RealDrums:NashvilleEven16^5-a:Snare, HiHat , b:Snare, Ride


Details

In keeping with my goal of getting songs out the door, all tracks are BiaB and vocals again sung by Synthesizer V.

I though I should do an upbeat ELO-type song, so I worked out a nifty chord progression based around a stepwise bass movement in the piano, and dropped it into BiaB.

I then started looking for an appropriate ELO-ish style. But I liked how the _FLYAMP.STY demo sounded, even though it was more like Aztec Camera than ELO. I rendered a backing track and loaded that up Synthesizer V, where I worked out a melody. The song was a bit short, but I figured I could always add another verse or instrumental if I needed it.

That was the easy part. A couple of pages of dreadful lyrics later, I realized I wasn't getting anywhere. I thought that perhaps I could get some inspiration, so I started checking out ELO song lyrics. I saw this lyric from Strange Magic:

Oh, I'm never gonna be the same again,
now I've seen the way it's got to end

That got me thinking about expulsion from Paradise - one of the classic "that ended badly" stories. Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan and Poe's To One In Paradise seemed like they might have some interesting material, so I grabbed what I thought might be appropriate portions of the poems, and started putting things together.

Line by line, all the bits of Kubla Khan fell away, and with some effort I managed to shoehorn a semblance of Poe's words into the song. I didn't really want to do To One In Paradise since there's already a version by The Alan Parsons Project, but that's where I ended up. Best laid plans, and all that.

As usual, the harmony - the fun part! - was added after everything else was mostly done. This time, I start out without harmony so there was room to build.

I then searched BiaB for additional instruments, with the intent of putting in a short guitar solo. But nothing seemed to fit, so I used a sax instead. Poor sax, not much space for a solo, is there? wink

I didn't spend a lot of time "tuning" the vocals, but I ended up putting in a lot of work changing words and word lengths to try to make the lyric more understandable. Still, "Silence holds the solemn sea to sandy shore" doesn't exactly come tripping off the tongue.

I did an initial mix, and my son adjusted the mix and further trimmed back the instruments for clarity.

Do the lyrics match the upbeat melody? Not at all. wink


As usual, any sort of feedback is welcome! laugh

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?