Lie, to me

I’ve started recording the bed tracks that will become 'Lies & Speculation'. As happens so often, songs are still pretty dynamic and morphing in unexpected ways.

On Saturday afternoon I was in the studio, laying down the bed tracks for Love Isn’t Enough (LIE). When I demo’d the original, I had a crappy MIDI track playing what was meant to be a violin accenting in the background. The melody was good, but I couldn’t get the violin to sound like anything other than a cheap 80s synthesizer.
So I tried my usual fallbacks: I tried it on a piano. That didn’t work. I tried it on a guitar. That didn’t work either, but wasn’t as bad as the piano. So I kept banging away at the guitar.
On a whim, I picked up the slide and plucked a completely different melody. IT SOUNDED AWESOME!!!! In about 3.5 minutes, I had worked out a beeeauuutiful slide line to flush out the chorus. I wouldn’t need the crappy MIDI violin anymore. A couple of knob-twists, a couple of button-pushes, and I had a new track set up to record the line.
In one take, I got exactly what I wanted. My eyes were watering with excitement as I put the guitar down and set up the PC to playback what I had just recorded.
With almost post-coital bliss I relaxed, a huge smile on my face. Suddenly something moved. The glass slide slowly rolled off the desk, shattering on the hardwood floor!
There would be no Take 2 today. Thankfully Take 1 got the point across. It would retain the magic that appeared, so that once I buy a replacement I can do a proper job of it.

Of course, the new guitar line necessitated changing the drums. And then the bass. And then the background vocals. Kinda like when my wife buys new nailpolish and suddenly realizes that the whole outfit should be replaced.*


It was a really exciting day. I had just hit a new level with this album. LIE would turn out to be the star I first envisioned when I wrote it 2 years ago, and it will pull Lies & Speculation up with it.


* she doesn’t really do that.
* but if you buy more of my albums, we might be able to buy her more clothes