Welcome to the first in a series of weekly newsletters documenting my progress with the song I am currently working on.

This is "Wake Up!" my song written in 2018 as part of my "Big Issues" album. In the week since I started re-editing the song I have modified all the instruments on the track and given them a more laid-back feel.

I use ProTools as my DAW (Digital Audio Workstation) and, by default, each beat of the bar is subdivided into 960 parts. "Wake Up" has a triplet feel rather than a straight rhythm. In theory this means that each of the notes of the triplet should arrive at 0, 320 and 640 parts (divide 960 by 3). However, these figures are unusable in practice as they give a mechanical inhuman feel to the music so when I originally recorded the song I used the figures 0, 300 and 600 to the notes of the triplet which I now think is still too machine-like. More recently I have been giving figures of 0, 288 and 576 to the triplet notes as I have found these values give a more natural feel. The first track I used with these settings was my remake of "Easy Peasy" (see my Song of the Week #4)

I have applied this more laid back feel to all the instruments on the track which include:

* drums (virtual set of 1980s drums recorded in Abbey Road)
* bass guitar (recorded live on my Variax bass guitar emulating a Fender Precision Bass)
* two electric guitars, both of them recorded on my Variax 6-string on its Fender Telecaster setting. One part is used for the off-beat stabs and the other plays the guitar solo  
* a virtual Wurlitzer electric piano
* a virtual Vox Continental organ using its "House of the Rising Sun" setting
* assorted percussion including a cowbell and a tambourine

I have now started working on the vocals, going back to my original recordings from 2018 but editing them more sensitively than I did on the original version - I have learned a lot in the past seven years! As with some of my recent re-makes I have used an AI plug-in on the vocals.

When I've finished the remake of the audio I intend to make an accompanying video but more about that in my next newsletter.