Originally Posted By: floyd jane
I really like this!

Thanks, you made my morning! smile

Quote:
Wonderful opening!

I got lucky on that. I was trying to find something that would be simple, and when I tried the electric piano, it was the obvious choice (a continuing homage to Al Stewart, linking to "Time Passages"). I added some delay to it, brought in the guitar, and for once was sensible enough to leave it alone at that. grin


Quote:
An excellent piece of songwriting. I have no issues at all with anything wink

smile The initial idea focused on traveling through the desert until the arrival "at the gates of Babylon", and spent too much time on abstract language. The introduction came from trying to anchoring the lyric in reality before getting lost in my own metaphors.

Fortunately the rewrite jettisoned a lot of the meandering lyrics.

Quote:
One lyric suggestion... I may be misinterpreting this... in your chorus,
"I could scale the Zagros mountains
Or be covered by salty sea"
Should that be "Or cover the salty sea"?

It's like you've read my mind here. The line is basically a quote from "The Water Is Wide":

The water is wide, I can't cross over
And neither have I wings to fly

The original version of the lyric was:

I could scale the Zagros mountains
Or sail salty sea

It carries the metaphor better, and has the inner rhyme of scale/sail.

But I wanted to also capture that feeling of wanting to run to the heights or drown in the sea when a relationship goes bad. The result is (as you noted) a bit of a compromise that does neither.

There is a strong case for mangled metaphors in language. Check out Shakespeare's Genius is Nonsense - the article title is too clever for its own good, since it's also a double meaning.

But I don't think the line really works, and I'd been thinking about how it could be rewritten.

Quote:
The lead instrument was a surprise

I love that trumpet! I just forgot to list it.

This time I planned ahead, and included the RealTrack number in the exported .wav file name so I could list the instruments I'd used later. The solo comes so late in the track the I simply missed it.

You nailed my thoughts on the solo exactly. I'm got an aversion to silence during solos, and I think in this case "less is more" might be the solution.

I'm still wondering about the balance between the lyric and the instruments. My co-worker consistently has trouble understanding the vocals on my mixes (and not just the Vocaloids), so getting vocal clarity is something I'm still struggling with.

Thanks again!

-- David Cuny
My virtual singer development blog

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