Valentines Way

VALENTINES WAY (2019, Christiane Spruit)

The lights getting low
without a shadow
a dark glowing moon
hangs heavy on the wall of my room

Drops in the drain
do sound the same
they fall, lose and die
like tears roll down and dry

As the crow flies
to hell and to paradise
all nights turn into dawn
as life carries on

Gone for a day
on valentines way


The band:
533:Bass, Electric, 12-8 Crystal Sw 065
~526:Guitar, Acoustic, Fingerpicking Hank Sw 065

I used EZDrummer2 to build the drum track.
I'm playing the electric guitar parts and Chris is playing the piano part.

Production notes:
Mixed with reaper, mastered with Ozone8.

Guitars (used my tele) are recorded direct and are going through S-Gear and/or PRS amp sims processed with CLA Unplugged.

Piano processed with CLA Unplugged, Bass with CLA Bass, Acoustic with CLA Unplugged and Drums with CLA Drums (I love the CLA series!)

I used melodyne on the Bass track to tighten up the timing (changed the feel from Swing to Even)

This song is 75 BPM 6/8 time. To build the track using BIAB I reduced the chord durations by 1/2 and reduced the tempo to 50 BPM (75 * 2/3)

You can also listen on soundcloud: Valentines Way on Soundcloud

As always we appreciate any and all comments!

You & Chris surely create wonderful compositions together...
Her beautiful voice & your superb guitar work always compliment each other...
I really the line...

Congratulations for that vivid image...
And another outstanding collaboration!

Dave & Chris,

Another exceptional effort from the two of you...

Everything sounds good. Nice piano. All kinds of excellent guitar! Nice vocals.

Excellent mix.

Elegant music. Great listening.

fj

I like it! It feels like a short poem or haiku - giving the emotional outlines without specifics.

Sonically, this excellent. The vocals and guitars are standout. A real treat for the ears!

Dave / Christiane,

What a great dark and brooding ballad... The vocals and guitar lines are just perfect - great mix as well. The clarity of this production is really stunning - pro all the way.

Loved it!

Bob

Dave / Chris

Firstly you are getting good with those EZ - Drums nice build up.
Chris sounds great - and a nice overall mix.
Lovely clean tone on the guitar solo - and overdriven guitar is well mixed in.

Another really nice production.

Peter

This sounds like a classic heavy ballad, but you have selected more softer approach with cleaner solo guitar - and it sounds really beautiful. Melodically very strong. Nice contrast in the lyrics hell/paradise and night/dawn, kind of optimistic in the end when life carries on. Excellent playing and singing once again.

Janne

Loving what David said: "I like it! It feels like a short poem or haiku - giving the emotional outlines without specifics."

And it is stunningly delivered with Chris's haunting vocal and piano...wow!

There are enough tasty guitar licks in the production to supply a room of guitar pickers for a LONG time. Excellent.

The info on how you worked with the time signature is fascinating and informative...albeit above my (Bud) paygrade!

We much look forward to the SC version to add to our fav playlist.

Outstanding! You two have an impressive level of consistent excellence -- never a "filler" tune.

J&B

Great work on this Dave! Really dig the signal chain you used too. You nailed the vocals too!

WOW, this is a gem!! You guys get better all the time.....sweet guitar, and Chris' vocal is AWESOME!! Another great tune!! Take care. Greg

This is cool and the lovely vocals match the excellent arrangement.
the only thing I'm not 100% on is the kick/bass drum tone. It's very modern and clicky - if you could EQ the click away it'd sound right for the song.
Lovely stuff - lead tone is cool - particularly for a sim.

Wonderful job on this Dave! Such a haunting lovely sound! The tone on the guitar in the solo (which was great) is fantastic! Chris's vocal is stellar as usual! It occurred to me while listening that if she tried to do some Ann and Nancy Wilson (Heart) stuff, she would absolutely be killer with it! Anyway, great job! Thanks, Torrey

Dave & Chris,
Congrats on your new song!
Quality of this is outstanding. Beautiful artistic composition!
Guitars are super sweet and crisp. Chris vocals rock!
This definitely makes into top tier songs here for 2019.
I enjoyed it much!

P.S. Dave, thank you for taking time in writing out ingredients. I have heard some good things about ezdrummer, it worked out very nicely for this piece.

Thank you for sharing!

Misha.

Hi Dave and Chris,

What a nice, sweet song.
It's composed very good and the vocals are as beautiful as in Summers High, although more modest.
I liked the piano at the start of the song and how it builds up with the other instruments.
One tiny thing: where the singer sings ...'wayiyaiyai'(fonetic) I would prefer a more stretched 'waaayyyy'
Now it distracts a little bit. That is a pity. But you're the boss...

Hans

Hi Jim,
That is my favorite line too. Thanks for the support and kind words, we appreciate it!



Hmmm, might be the first time anyone has used "Elegant" to describe our music. I like it!
Thanks, floyd



Christiane is really into poetry, including haiku. That sort of thing is way above my pay grade, I'm just the guitar player
Thanks, David, happy you likes this!



Hi Bob,
Thanks as always for your listen and comments!

Plus one to that. The piano intro and clear guitar tone are just right
Moody and simply brilliant!

Robert

So good! I really don't have words that are good enough to show you how much
I love this song! it is so well-produced and captivating...
Christiane has a fantastic voice... you are very lucky that you have a singer of that standard to work with!

Wonderful performance from both of you!
Will

Very pretty. Extra nice chord work and writing. Sounds good and feels right.

I'm having a lot of fun with EZDrummer, getting better with it the more I use it I guess.

Thanks, Peter!



Yes, I'm trying to get more melodic with the guitar in my old age.

Thanks, Janne!



Thanks as always Janice and Bud!

As far as the math for the time signature goes, I didn't figure that out myself, it's above my paygrade too! I found the info on a website someplace.

Wow - this is stunning I love the slow, brooding dark energy in this. It doesn't miss a beat, and just builds and builds. It almost has an ominous vibe to it. Very powerful, and the vocal performance was immaculate here as well.

You should be proud of this one - thanks for sharing!

hi Dave&Chris awesome great job love the vocal progression guitar work and mix is clear crisps eric thanks Eric

Don't think I could put it any better!

Very nice!

Steve

Dark, eerie, moody song, guitar work matched it nicely, listened twice, enjoyed it even more the second time.

Thanks for stopping by, Joe!



Make my day to read comments like that. Thanks, Greg!



Ray, thanks for mentioning the arrangement, we spent a lot of time planning that out and tried it a few different ways until we were both happy with it.

I soloed the kick drum but I'm not hearing any click at this end. Unless I'm not understanding what you mean by "clicky"?

Thanks for the listen and comments, very much appreciated!



Hi Torrey,
Thanks as always for the positive comments! And always great to hear nice things about guitar tone from a fellow guitarist!

Thanks, Misha!

As far as EZDrummer goes it is a real easy program to use and gets good results IMHO. I use it whenever I want something specific that I can't do with realdrums, which is maybe 20% of the time.
The demo is fully functional if I recall, so give it a try! And if you are thinking about buying it, wait until it goes on sale. That goes for the midi packs too, they all go on sale at some point.




Hi Hans,
I'm happy you liked the song overall!



Thanks, Robert!



Very happy you liked this one, Will!

As far as finding a vocalist goes I suggest you have a look around soundcloud, I'm sure there are lots of singer/songwriters there that would benefit from working with someone that has the ability to create good quality backing tracks.

In my case it was Christiane that found me, she heard a couple of the instrumentals I used to do and asked if I would like to work with her. That was 2015 and 40 songs ago, time flys!



Christiane gets the credit for the chord work on this one, I should have mentioned that in the song description. She sent me a piano demo and we took it from there, I just made a couple of minor changes to the chord progression and of course did the arrangement. As a general rule if the song is in 6/8 it came from Chris.



Exactly what we were going for, thanks Deryk!

Thanks for the listen and comment, Eric!



Thanks for stopping by, Steve!



Thanks for the second listen!

Dave,

Great tune man. The mix on this is superb!

Love the plugins you used on the drums. What was that?

Super guitar sound too and great vocals.

Awesome man.

The Summers High song after it has a wicked groove, by the way!

Hi Christine & Dave,

this is soooo nice.

Good composition, excellently sung by Christine, well arranged and played,very transparent sound. Great on all levels.

Cheers,

Stefan

Excellent mix and production. I always enjoy your guitar work. Love the vocal.

Very cool song. Loved the chord progressions in the song. Very dramatic backtrack. Chris's vocal was awesome as usual. Your guitar work was just super as well Dave. Well done....

Right off, the mix stands out as superb!

Lyrics abstract, vocals sublime...

I am delightfully engaged!