He Might is probably almost at the finish line. I don't know if I like the bass clarinet take, particularly in the instrumental break. It also sort of disappears when other things are happening. A lot of these songs are not easy for me to sing, and I probably recorded these vocals years ago, so maybe they could use a new take?
This one is pretty close too! I have new vocals that I have to edit or at least sift through. I want to see if I can do some (digital?) harmonizey things with them where I put another track an octave lower at types. I do not know if this will work, I will need to get Decabuddy running on this computer. I might need to redo the autoharp. I might need to redo the acoustic guitar for the 100th time. I might need to redo the electric guitar, or replace it with something else (synth?) that sounds nice for texture. I kind of am missing something in the higher registers in the choruses.
I am probably not going to change Once A Day as much as I thought I might. I do think there's a lot of stuff I could do better on it, but I think I would probably just get cleaner takes of vocals, and woodwinds, and maybe guitar. Honestly I've been a little afraid of touching this because I don't have the harmonizer plugin on this computer yet.
I recorded new vocals yesterday, and I'll need to sift through those. The old vocals were put through a lot of stuff, crazy spring reverb and soulcrushing compression & autotune, I don't really know if there's a reason why besides that it sounded cool. We'll see if they make the cut. I recorded the accordion solo and I wrote and recorded a draft of the glockenspiel too, but probably I should do that again.
Haven't touched this in ages either, I did some things to the drums, we recorded a tenor sax, I might have done another vocal but I probably didn't keep it. I'll have to look at this sooner or later.
Oh MAN this one is sounding nice. Yesterday I did vocals but they will have to be sifted through. There's a couple things going on in the vocal, switching from one to many voices, jumping up an octave for a little bit... There's one trombone problem that I need to find a way to fix. I need to make a decision about this bass clarinet track too.
Oh. Literally haven't touched this since I hit export 2 years ago. I think I could make the saxophones and mandolins a little nicer, and I could probably sing a better vocal. There was some percussion thing that felt a little off the last time I listened.
Of the ones that are underway, this one is the most unfinished. Actually let me come back to this.
This one emerged out of the aether last month, a song I didn't think I would ever finish writing or recording just because it has too many ideas. I slowed it down by like 30bpm (it now clocks in at a respectable vivace - 157) and somehow put a million acoustic guitars in it when it was primarily Casio-driven. It still has too many ideas - verses 1 and 3 are like a 4-on-the-floor rock groove, verses 2 and 4 are more of a 6/4 clave groove. Anyway this song sounds great and it's almost done - I'm waiting on some friends to get me vocals, saxophones, and violins. Back to what I was saying:
It is kind of a miracle that Drop The Knife coalesced because I had so much spaghetti to throw at the wall. Bad Job is kind of the same way, I have like 5 potential directions for how I want the verses to sound and I am sort of attempting to get away with trying all of them. There's a banjo that I love, there's persistent envelope-follower guitars meowing, I want the bass to be from a casio, but also on an upright bass, but also I have some bass harmony things that would only sound good on a bass guitar. I have plans for woodwinds and arco strings, I want a pipe organ in this but I don't think I'll get to play one anytime soon. This song would sound nice with xylophone - it's currently at my friend's apartment though, but it's in C major so I could play it on my tiny toy xylophone too.
I suppose it feels like a miracle any time a song gets written. But some songs need more provoking than others. It took forever to write the lyrics to Bad Job, and I'm not 100% pleased with them but I am very happy to have this song Written. Maybe it'll morph before it gets recorded. The sax solo is great but I wish I were a more expressive sax player, I wish I could really make it honk & growl. And the keyboard solo at the end is still only in my head, where it's been for like 5 years, so I should probably sit down at the synthesizer and start pulling it out of there.
I have 4 songs that I am pretty sure I will finish for this project.
I haven't started recording this but I've certainly been playing it a lot more on drums in particular. I realize I want more of a Max Tundra feel in the percussion. I am not a good enough drummer to do this without manipulation. But I think if I sit down with like FL Studio and write out a drum track for me to learn and record then that's a good starting point. I should do that soon.
Another that has been agonizing to flesh out - like with Bad Job, I have a little piece of this song that I think is strong enough to justify the amount of work it's taking to finish. I feel like I have a bunch of directions for the musical content of the verses all recorded but I haven't yet laid it all out as a Song. Daunting.
Like with Drop The Knife this was one I was reserved to maybe never finishing but when spending time at a piano recently I laid this out. Very satisfying harmonically, nice and simple to play on a piano but I'm probably going to redo the whole thing on woodwinds. Slow and full of space, an outlier for me. Have to write more words.