No Stopping Our Love

the first time that we met
i said "i'll see you later"
and i walked away

but you were stuck inside my head
though i closed my eyes
your face wouldn't go away

how did i know you're the right one?
i couldn't say
but the feeling was so right
and i knew it would stay

no, there's no going back
you and me together, it's the real thing
so we're fin'ly on track
we're in this forever
through thick and thin

i've seen enough disappointment
but this love is true
we both know what it takes
and we'll make our way through

   said there's no
   there's no
   there just ain't no stopping our love

   baby, i said there's no
   there's just no
   there just ain't no stopping our love

for better or for worse
yeah, we have seen some tough times
but we never gave up

and when the going's gettin' tough
if all we have is each other
well, that's always been enough

how did i know you're the right one?
i still couldn't say
but i knew from the start
that my heart knew showed way

(repeat chorus)

BiaB Instruments
2611:Bass, Electric, UptempoSoul16ths Ev16 100
912:Piano, Electric, Rhythm SmoothPoppy Ev16 090
2525:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm FunkWahWahChords Ev16 100
4658:Guitar, Electric, Rhythm SoulRock70sRiffs Ev 100
1401: Guitar, Electric, Rhythm Soul70sBrightA-B Ev16 100
1410:Piano, SynthLayer, Rhythm Soul70sA-B Ev16 100
RealDrums Soul70sPercEv16^1-a:Snare, Closed Hihat , b:Snare, Busy Kick

Other Instruments
Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Amara)
Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Amara), Greg Wells VoiceCentric (Natural Voice Mix), Leapwing Al Schmitt (Modern Vocal)
BGV: SynthesizerV (Sheena 2, Weina 2), Waves VocalRider, Leapwing Al Schmitt (50s Vocal)
BGVs FX: Finisher Retro (Tube Colors), Abbey Roads Plates (Vocal Plate)
Percussion: Groovemate ONE

Effects
Main Buss: Curves AQ Stereo (Mix), Lurssen Mastering Console (Pop Rock Warmer)
Lead Vocal: Greg Wells VoiceCentric (Natural Voice Mix), Leapwing Al Schmitt (Modern Vocal)
BGV: Waves VocalRider, Leapwing Al Schmitt (50s Vocal)
BGVs FX: Finisher Retro (Tube Colors), Abbey Roads Plates (Vocal Plate)
Bass: Curves AQ (Bass)
Drums: Curves Equator, Curves AQ (Acoustic Drum Kit), Sound City Studios (Remike, Drums, Default)
Drum FX: Hitsville Reverb Chambers (Mid Bright Snare), TrackSpacer
Guitar 1,2,3: Curves Equator (Electric Guitar), Curves AQ Stereo (Electric Guitar)
Piano 1: Curves Equator (Electric Piano), Curves AQ Stereo (Electric Piano), Magma Springs (California Medium)
Piano 1: TrackSpacer (ducked by vocals), Curves Equator (Electric Piano), Curves AQ Stereo (Electric Piano), Reaper PingPong


Cutting To The Chase
No need to read all this - feel free to just listen and comment. Or just listen. Or whatever. laugh

The Story Behind The Song
This wasn't the song I expected to do, but the UPTSOUL demo sounded really good, with a sort of BeeGees feel. Plus, the new SynthV "Amara" voice seemed like a good fit. So my heart wrenching confessional song of sad beauty will have to wait for another day. wink

I fiddled with the chords so that they weren't an exact copy of those in the demo. There's nothing especially clever with the chords - it's all diatonic except for one place where there's a A7 instead of Am7 - very tame stuff. It's also got tons of major 7th chords, which makes my ear happy. There's not a whole lot of difference between the sound of the verses and chorus, which caused a lot of grief when I was cutting and pasting stuff in SynthV and lost my place multiple times because it all sounded the same. I should avoid that in the future.

Once I had something that made my ears happy, I exported a single backing track to SynthV to work out the melody notes. While Amara sounded nice in the lower register, I decided to change from D to F. The verses broke into AB form, which was good for a bit of variety. Since the verses and chorus sounded so similar, I worked to get a chorus that sounded like a chorus. Much to my surprise, I ended up with something fairly quickly, and got some lyrics in there as well. Super simple:

   said there's no
   there's no
   there just ain't no stopping our love

Laziness suggested that repetition would be useful here, and the chorus was done. Hurrah! St. Cecilia, Patron Saint of Musicians, be praised!

Tangent: It turns out that no one knows if St. Cecilia was actually a musician. You see, there was apparently a mistake make during the translation of her story, and instead of crying out as she burned to death, it was translated as singing, which is practically the same thing, right? Either way, those saints were made of stronger mettle than me.

I powered on to the first verse, and that's where I started running into trouble. It was something along the lines of:

   the first time that we met
   you said "see you in the morning"
   and you walked away

So, these people have just met in the first verse, and I'm somehow supposed to get to a proclaimation of Forever Love by the chorus. Even if I establish the scene in the first verse, that leaves only one more verse after that to move from that first meeting to the chorus. That means wasting lyrics just setting up the transition of time.

Who are these people? Classmates? Co-workers? Why does he say she'll see him "tomorrow?"

What was significant about that first meeting? Will this flashback to the "first time" have another flashback to the actual date? And was it even a date?

That's the problem with writing a song with no clear idea what it's going to me. For me, every lyric presents solutions (Look! Words I can use) and problems (These lyrics don't make any sense!). I spend an inordinate amount of effort trying to work a square peg into a round hole to avoid having to come up with different lyrics.

I figured it would be an "opposites attract" sort of theme, so I worked on that for a while. But that didn't really go anywhere, and some really bad chemistry metaphors were written and deleted forever. There's nothing romantic about covalent bonds. Some time around 2:00 AM I got the rough draft completed and staggered off to sleep.

With the hard part out of the way, I spent a way too much time fiddling with notes and lyrics, and trying out different words and phrases to see if they "sang" better. Sadly, the song lacks alliteration, but I managed to sneak in a few inner rhymes to make up for that.

I was going to add a bridge to the song, but accidentally cut and copied the chorus, and that seemed to work so I kept it.
The planned instrumental went bye-bye too. Less work for me! smile

I then adding harmonies. I decided to try to keep things simple, with "aaahs" and "ooohs" in the verses. Those are generally static lines, meaning the same chordal note is held instead of writing a more contra-punctual line. But I couldn't resist, so let me know of the background vocals work or not.

On the other hand, the harmonies in the chorus sing the vocal line, so easy peasy. I tried to make each harmonization of the chorus a bit different that the prior because cutting and pasting vocals feels like cheating.

Plus, I ended up added two modulations. That required going back to BiaB a couple times. I also made the entrance to one of the choruses a half-bar sooner, which caused more late-night confusion. Because of the modulations and, well, laziness, I just winged the harmonies rather than look too closely at the chords. Working with diatonic chords made things a lot simpler.

Working with harmony took a lot longer than I expected. Usually I can crank out harmonies in a hour or so, but I just kept playing with this, and then that, and it was something like two or three days of obsessing with details that no one is going to hear before I moved on.

I had just purchased Curves Equator and Curves AQ, so I dropped it on most of the tracks. To get a vintage feel for the vocals, I used my Al Schmidt VST. It's not a very dramatic, but it sounds pretty good.

The "oooh" BGVs were sticking out too much, so I ran them through a VST tube amp and then a VST plate. I thought that added enough thickness to the sound.

I wanted to do something with the drums (in addition to the re-miking FX I was already using), so I ran them through an additional reverb which made the snare sound nice. I put TrackSpacer on it to duck it under the lead vocals.

It finally got to the point where it started sounding like a song. As usual, I went though the tracks, automating the volume so everything wasn't playing at once, and hopefully the verses sounded different than the chorus.

There was something lacking, so I added in some shakers and percussion using the UJAM GM-ONE. I dragged in a couple pre-built MIDI tracks, and then editing them down (for example, removing claps) where I wanted them more quiet. That seemed to help with the punch.

However, the next day I noticed that the introduction was lacking, and sounded like a song I'd done a couple years ago with a very similar backing tracks. I added a MIDI guitar line and tested it with a bunch of guitar VSTis. Voyager Guitar, which I had picked up a couple of months ago, seemed to work the best. I thought the tone was similar to the electric piano, and sort of "glued" the other pianos and guitars together. So I ended up writing a bunch of chimey chords through the almost the whole track.

I went into the main vocal and started chopping it into chunks, and normalizing each chunk. That generally gives a more consistent vocal than using a compressor. Halfway through, I remembered I had just bought Waves VocalRider. I ended up putting that on the BGVs.

Congratulations for getting this far! The secret passphrase is "Cherry tree. Mine needs pruning."

As I said above, all comments are welcome, as I tend to fiddle with things even after posting songs.

Have at it! smile

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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