Right After The Rain

verse 1
sad eyes at the window
looking at the rain
taillights fade into darkness
heading far away

you would have known he was leaving
if you believed the signs
but you were in love
and love is blind
love is so blind

chorus
   look past the pain, you'll see it
   right after the rain, believe it
   life goes on
   keep holding on
   you're gonna
   see a new day

verse 2
the sunrise in the window
and still your mind replays
last night over and over
trapped inside a maze

you wonder how he could leave you
you feel so all alone
you wish you could run
but where would you go?
there's nowhere to go

bridge
there's no good reason why
just wave those dreams goodbye
tomorrow will come and then
you'll be ready to start again

repeat verse


Instruments and Effects

Main Buss
   EZMix3 (Pop Master Modern EZ)
   HoRNet ThirtyOne MK2
   GW MixCentric
   Kramer Tape Stereo

Lead Vocal: SynthesizerV (Oscar 2)
   Vocal Rider
   GW VoiceCentric (Natural Vocal Mix + Delay)
   Rev Plate-140

High Vocal Harmony: SynthesizerV (Etta)
   GW VoiceCentric (Backing Vocals)
   Rev Plate-140

Low Vocal Harmony: SynthesizerV (Hayen 2)
   GW VoiceCentric (Backing Vocals)
   Rev Plate-140

Piano/Held Piano: MIDI Acoustic Piano (1)
   TrackSpacer (ducking lead vocal)

Guitar 1: 625:Guitar, Acoustic, Strumming Rascal Sw 075

Guitar 1 Holds:
   UFX Reverb (Warm)

Guitar 2: 4198:Guitar, Acoustic, Fingerpicking SongwriterGentleFolkRock Ev 100
   UFX Reverb (Plate + Delay)

Bass: MIDI Finger Electric Bass (34)
   Modo Bass (60s P Bass, Fingerstyle)

Drums: MIDI NashvilleSwing16^4-a:HiHat, Sidestick , b:Snare, Hihat
   Addictive Drums 2 (United Pop/Fat Sound)

El. Piano: MIDI Acoustic Piano (1)
   The Famous E (Wide Ballad Chorus)

Fingerpicked Guitar:
   Hoard Picked Acoustic


The Story

TL;DR: All comments welcome! smile

After taking way too long to get started on a new song, I finally gave up on waiting for inspiration to strike and picked a demo track like I usually do. This time around, it was AGRASCL. I figured that instead of trying to come up with some clever chord progression, I'd stick with simple I/IV/V chords, and made a point of not having any Maj7 chords.

Then I went back and added in a bunch of Maj7 chords to the chorus, because they sound great. laugh

I thought I'd go for something in my wheelhouse - a 70's sounding track, middle of the road pop. Maybe an "America" (the band) sort of sound. As usual, do not listen to while operating heavy machinery.

I then exported the backing track as a .wav, and loaded it into SynthV. I drew out the melody for the verse and chorus in the piano roll, making sure that they sounded different. Hopefully the chorus sounds like a chorus. Time for some lyrics!

As usual, it was a struggle to come up with anything. I pretended I was facing a real deadline, and typed and typed until eventually I put down words that rhymed. Yay! This wasn't going to be a some with some heavy message.

The chorus doesn't explicitly mention them, but if you were wondering what you see after the rain... yeah, it's rainbows. I'd hoped to blend some ideas about surviving an emotional flood - you know, Noah's ark and such - into the song, but the lyrics refused to play ball. But at least I got some alliteration in.

And yes, I rhymed "on" with "on". Sue me. Maybe I'll rewrite the line Keep holding on to The storm is gone or something. The synth singers won't complain.

About this time, it became clear that the bridge was going to make more sense after the first verse, and with the song's slow tempo, there was only room for two verses. Yay!

The second verse was a bit of a problem. I really wanted to make that Noah's ark connection, with a dove flying over the receding waters looking for dry land, but it wasn't happening. As it is, there's this time jump, and who is this omniscient narrator, anyway? I suppose it's the person talking to themselves. Yeah, that's the ticket.

What really irritated me was using the word "leave" in the first and second verse. Yeah, "you" appears a bunch of times in the second verse, but it's a different kind of repetition. That's that's the lie I'm telling myself, anyway.

Predicatibly, the lyrics for the bridge was also a struggle. It turns out that some words don't have a lot rhymes, and those were the ones I chose to use. Kudos to all you folk who can crank out lyrics, my hat's off to you!

Once the lyrics were finished, it was time to go back to Band in a Box and export the tracks into my DAW. I had a couple guitar RealTracks that I tried out, but they didn't really work. I made a version of the song with held chords, and exported those tracks as well.

I noticed there were a couple of MIDI tracks in the style, so I exported those as well. I ended up replacing the bass and drums with MIDI bass and drums. I also used the MIDI piano tracks for the electric piano, simplifying it a bit. All the MIDI tracks got edited a bit, so the introduction was less busy, and the bass hits some parts I wanted to emphasize.

I also fiddled with the vocals, bouncing back and forth between SynthV and my DAW. I also heavily edited the syllables to make sure they vocals were level, and edited all the plosives and sibilants. I added Vocal Rider to the track for good measure.

Does it work? Am I releasing it too soon? Or just overthinking things?

The heck if I know.

As usual, all comments are welcome! smile

-- 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.