Month: February 2022

Last May I impulse-bought a Roland VK-1, which is a synthesizer designed to sound and be controlled like a tonewheel organ (such as a Hammond). Yesterday I finally started putting it to work on Fight Songs, along with a Pigtronix Rototron Leslie speaker simulator.

In a side-by-side comparison it won’t fool anyone into thinking it’s a real Hammond and Leslie. But it does sound good, even great in a track, and at something like 20% of the price and weight of the real thing I consider it a steal.

I’ve been attempting to channel my inner Steve Nieve (with moderate success, though you’ll be the judge of that). I’m not riding the drawbars live yet, but I’m dialing in a unique timbre for each track, switching Rototron speeds, and sliding up and down. Maybe too much sliding. (You’ll also be the judge of that. It’s very Nieve-y, though!)

I even took a little solo on “OTA” (that’s a working title; track 2) and might take another :gasp:

It’s going fast – three songs so far, in two days – I’m sure I’ll do one or two more this weekend, and might be wrapped up by next weekend. After this it’s really just down to my collaborators, mixing (already in good rough shape), and mastering. This has come together in a hurry since I set up vocal mics on Thanksgiving weekend. I’m hoping to have it out by the end of the year.

I should have written this back in September when it was fresh, but here we go; a deep dive into how I wrote one song.

Below, on the left, is the original sheet for what has become “March Four Hundred and First” from my upcoming Fight Songs.

This song started by accident, as they often do. I was playing guitar through my Eventide TimeFactor delay on the multi-tap algorithm, and came up with some parts I liked and vocal melodies with scratch (i.e. to be replaced later) lyrics to go with the guitar parts. I recorded a rough instrumental demo of the guitar parts and wrote out the vocal ideas on this sheet.

On the sheet you see the working title “mTap Reverb” from the guitar effect, the three song sections (“F#,” “Turn” and “End”) that correspond to those parts of the instrumental demo, and the melodic ideas and scratch lyrics for each section. My notation includes the note names and how the melody moves up or down, which is enough for me to remember or reconstruct when I finish the song.

The basic melodic ideas for all three sections of the song made it through to the final version that’s coming on Fight Songs, along with some words from the scratch lyrics (“January, February” and “I don’t want to…”), the vowel sounds for the “End” part, and the idea of being in a car.

Continue reading Writing Lyrics