Falling

Afternoon in late July
I'm falling
Hidden in tall green river grass
Underneath the endless lazy sky
Plovers circle boats as they pass by

And I with all my heavy cares
Logic and my evening prayers
Abandoned all my plans
They wash away like sand

   I am left suspended
   With my castles in the air
   Come tumbling down
   Down to the ground
   There's nothing there

   Just a kingdom made of cards
   Broken promises and hearts
   London Bridge is falling down
   We all fall down

Summer's gone and snow is softly falling
Somehow I'm still living in the past
Gone those happy sunlit golden days
Like the autumn leaves
All blown away

Our time has past
The hour's late
Old Tom rings closed Oxford's gate
The closing of a door
That's barred forever more

(Repeat Chorus)

Instruments/Effects Chain
Master Buss: HoRNet ThirtyOneMK2, Lurssen Mastering Console (Pop Rock, Warmer)
Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Oscar) Greg Wells VoiceCentric (Lead Vocal), Capital Chambers (Chorus Wide Vox)
Harmony: SynthesizerV (Jun, Hayden), Capital Chambers (Chorus Wide Vox)
Female Vocal: SynthesizerV (Weina), Raum
Cello: 1856:Cello, Background PopCountry Ev 085
Ac. Guitar: 2916:Guitar, Acoustic, Rhythm CountryFolk8thsBrent Ev 085 + Holds
12 String Guitar: 1680:Guitar, 12-String Acoustic, Fingerpicking Ev 085
Acoustic Piano: 2999:Piano, Rhythm CountryFolk8thsMike Ev 085 (Holds), Raum (Airy)
Violin 1: 2337:Violin, Background, PopHigh Ev 085, Abbey Roads Plate
Violin 2: 2338:Violin, Background, PopLow Ev 085, Abbey Roads Plate
Viola: 2336:Viola, Background, Pop Ev 085, Abbey Roads Plate
Descant Horn: Audio Imperia Solo
Flute 1&2: Audio Imperia Solo

Yada, Yada
As usual, any comments are welcome! smile

This song is yet another riff on the work of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (a.ka. Lewis Carroll). "Old Tom" refers to a bell in a tower in Oxford.

Edit: By "riff", I mean it references "All in the golden afternoon..." and "A Boat Beneath a Sunny Sky".

I posted the original version of this song over 10 years ago. I'd always wanted to do this with better vocals, but unfortunately I'd lost all the files.

One of the new features in SynthesizerV is auto-converting vocal tracks, so that got me working on it... after I had thoroughly scoured my hard drive to make sure one more time that the files weren't sitting around somewhere.

I used Spleeter to split the track into vocals and backing. I was able to automatically covert the vocals, but it required a lot of corrections. It was obvious the backing track would have to be rebuilt from scratch.

I used AWC to figure out the chords, and it did an OK job of it. Then I found a thread on Song Master Pro, and the demo version did a much better job figuring out the chords.

The original version of the song was in C, but I adjusted it down to G to make it more singable. I tried out various vocal banks, and Oscar seemed the best fit. This version is a bit less "dreamy" than the original.

As usual, I tried my best to find avoid doing real work by looking for BiaB tracks that would do the heavy lifting. The high string trio worked much better than expected, and anchored by the cello meant I didn't have to do any string parts. There are a few spots where I should probably trim the cello back a bit.

For the guitars, I rendered out a normal track as well as a held strum track. I'd intended to add one more guitar part with light and pretty arpeggios, but ended up deciding the song didn't need it.

I added a descant horn in a few places as well as some flutes in the first section, but left them out of the second section, which is intentionally more bare than the first half.

I worked out a two part harmony for the second half, going to three part in some places, but it didn't seem to fit in well. Parts were too busy and fussy, and didn't seem to support the song. I kept a few of the parts that seemed to work, to give it a bit of change.

It's a rather slow song, and I played around with bumping the tempo from 90 BPM to 95 BPM. It's probably a bit better faster, but I'd have to do a lot of adjusting to really make it work, so I called it mostly done and posted it. wink

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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