May 2013
Back On The Boil
We were unable to get together on the day we’d arranged (me, Steve T’s fault) and so Steve Floyd spent a load of hours knocking up some incredible keyboard / drum recordings with his new kit. We also set up a drop box so that it would be easy in future to transfer files to one another.
Steve sent me a number of songs with his parts finished including; State Of Love, Blast From The Past and The Shape Of Things To Come. He also included a new instrumental he’d written, tentatively entitled “Recession” and asked for some lyrics/melody from my end.
The Shape Of Things To Come
I did this first because for no particular reason except that it was so different to the older version. I mean it is still recognisable as the old song, but Steve Floyd has turned it into a dance track of sorts and I really like the ambience of it now. Trouble is, my voice doesn’t hit the high notes quite as easily these days and I don’t have our old singer Nick Sheehan’s amazing range either. Also, the old lyrics weren’t perfect. So I tinkered with the melody and the lyrics, setting it in a slightly lower range. I added some guitar with a gentle distortion on it to offset the electronics a little. Then I got a bit over-creative and mixed in some harmonies and some high guitar. If my partner in musical crime isn’t keen, I can easily strip it out again. 🙂
Blast From The Past
I re-recorded Blast From the Past next. This is the song Steve Floyd wrote in the “between years” and I love it. I’m not sure what precisely it is. I think it sounds like a show tune. A friend of mine thinks it sounds like it came from Glee. We don’t worry about this stuff. It is what it is. if you like it, listen to it, if you don’t, don’t. 🙂 I didn’t change much from the last recording of this, just cleaned the guitars and harmonies up a bit and used my new electric guitar instead of the old acoustic one.
Recession
If this new song is the sort of thing Steve Floyd can just “knock out” then I should probably worry about him finding a more talented partner than me. 🙂 Great piece of music – really enjoyed listening to it. I added some guitars and wrote a simple repeated verse and chorus. Although the song name was downbeat, the tune itself sounded very positive and uplifting, so I wrote the lyrics that way. I think it works, but in the end this is up to Steve Floyd. It’s his song.
State Of Love
Okay – so I’ve done something quite drastic with State Of Love. It’s being the very archetype song from the old band I really wanted to do it justice, but the trouble is that despite Steve Floyd’s wonderful new keyboard/drum arrangement, it still sounds like the same song. It was a real challenge – to make it different enough to merit what the Project is trying to do. There was a cheesy rap in the middle which worked at the time but I couldn’t see what I should do with it now. I could take it out – but it really was integral. In the end I chose to leave the rap in but record it in a more subdued way and with a top harmony. I dropped the verse melody an octave, but left the chorus high with a low harmony. The I added some big beefy guitars which give the whole thing an edge it never had before. It’s still State Of Love, but not as we know it 🙂