Be Thou My Vision
Be Thou my vision, O Lord of my heart
Naught be all else to me, save that Thou art
Thou my best thought, by day or by night
Waking or sleeping, Thy presence my light

Be Thou my wisdom, and Thou my true word
I ever with Thee and Thou with me, Lord
Thou my great Father, I Thy true son
Thou in me dwelling and I with Thee one

Riches I heed not, or man's empty praise
Thou mine inheritance are, now and always
Thou and Thou only first in my heart
High King of heaven, my treasure Thou art

High King of heaven, my victory won
May I reach heaven's joys, O bright heaven's sun
Heart of my own heart, whatever befall
Still be my vision, O ruler of all


About The Song
The song was written as a poem by the monk Dallan Forgaill in the 18th century, and translated into English by Mary E. Byrne in 1909 and set to the Irish tune "Slane" (named for a hill where St. Patrick defied High King Logaire of Tara).

The song is in the Public Domain. Of course, this version doesn't use that melody. wink

A friend wanted to record the original version, but suggested I make an "alternate" version of the song. Of course, I went to town with a sleepy-time major seventh-filled track with far too much harmony. It wasn't at all what she had in mind, but I had fun doing it. laugh

I've probably got too many FX on the lead vocal, (honestly, on everything) but I'm a sucker for reverb and delay. I probably should have spent more time on the mix, but I'm tired. There were a lot of guitar squeaks to remove on this track!

I originally had used Eleanor Forte on the track, but changed it to Natalie for no particularly good reason. There are some spots where the melody doesn't flow as well as I'd like, and I may go back and fix them. The nice thing about using synthetic vocals is that it's pretty easy to make changes to the melody and lyrics after the fact.

As usual, all comments are encouraged. Thanks for listening!

Edit 1: Changed the bass to an electric bass, balanced the harmony vocals at the beginning, lowered the FX on the guitar, adjusted Ozone to reduce distortion, added some reverb on the finals "Aaahs", and some other stuff I forgot...

Instruments
Lead Vocal: Natalie (SynthV)
Backing Vocals: Jun, Kevin (SynthV)
Guitar:: 2914:Guitar, Acoustic, Fingerpicking Folky16thsBrent Ev16 085
Piano::~2505:Piano, Electric, HeldChords 085
Bass: 3458:Bass, Electric, AmericanaPop8thsSteveAB Ev 100
Drums::CajonSlow16ths
Percussion: Shaker Loops (Essential Percussion)

FX Chain
Lead Vocal: Sunset Sound Studio (Isolation Booth, Studio 2), Greg Wells VocalCentric (Natural Vocal Mix)
Harmony Vocals: Trackspacer, LX 480 Essentials (Joe C Vocal Plate), Finisher Retro (Filterbank '85), Greg Wells VocalCentric (Lead Vocal Dry)
Cajon: Fame Studio (Studio B Live, Drums), Neutron Elements (Percussive 1), EZMix (Overhead & Plate), LX480 (Large Plate)
Shaker Loop: LX 480 (Ambient)
Guitar: Trackspacer, Sunset Sound Studio (Studio 2, Isolation Booth), Sunset Sound Studio (Plate Spring, Plate 1)
Piano: ReaEq (high pass), Finisher Retro (CEO Chorus)

-- David Cuny

My virtual singer development blog
Vocal control, you say. Never heard of it. Is that some kind of ProTools thing?

BiaB 2025 | Windows 11 | Reaper | Way too many VSTis.