February - No Apologies
A man in a dusty town. A woman in scorn. Guns, games, desert, duel, death, a Western Blues Opera in 2:30 minutes. Number 9 in my One Day One Song challenge.
Today’s timeline:
During lunch: jotted down some notes to a ZZ-Top-ish idea about a Western style revenge love story. Had to end with a tombstone, that much was clear from the start.
9:00 a.m. - First contact with my recording. Tinkered with the guitar to flesh out the lyrics. Not much use for much melody in this one, so I kept it between my simple voice and the gnarling guitar. Completetd the lyrics.
9:30 a.m. - First runthrough of the rhythm guitar, followed by a runthrough of the vocals.
10:00 a.m. - Bass track and tinkering of the drum variations
10:20 a.m. - The lead guitar comes down. Have the idea to double it and spread it out. Have to do the solo parts all over in order to play them exactly the same two times.
11:00 a.m. - The lead guitar took too lonk, but can’t be helped. Mixing, adding effects. Need to play around with the EQ for a while to distinguish the rhythm guitar and the vocals and balancing the two lead guitars
11:30 a.m. - Done mixing. First listen outside of Logic Pro. Vocals too soft, need more bite. Another mixdown, better.
11:40 a.m. - Song done.
Lessons learned today:
Keep the solo parts simple in order to double or tripple the sound.
The straighter the story, the better the song turns out to be.
Did I wish for more?
Yeah, some powerful drum rolls would have been great. And some breaks here and there instead of the computer’s autofil.