Weekly Newsletter #2 (04.04.2025)

When I used to sing vocal harmonies in the band, and later at open-mike nights, I developed the good practice of watching the lips of the others who were singing so that I could synchronise my parts with theirs. However, when I record harmonies to my own lead vocals this, of course, is not possible so I use the time-edit features of ProTools to tidy up the beginings and endings of each word in the vocal parts.

I don't see this as "cheating". My father was a carpenter and joiner (and a very good one too!) and he would use every trick at his disposal, including veneers, varnish and polish, to ensure that the final product was of the highest possible standard.

During the past week I have edited the following parts:

Saturday: the six vocal parts in the first chorus
Sunday: the six vocal parts of the first verse and the same number for the second chorus and the second verse.
Monday: the six vocal parts of the first and second middle 8 sections ("Why on earth…")
Tuesday: the six parts of the remainder of the song and some edits to the brass parts
Wednesday: tidying up the brass parts and bouncing down to a mix
Thursday: Imported the audio into Adobe After Effects and created markers at each significant point of the song

Also on Wednesday I began thinking about the video for the song (although I had already had a few nebulous ideas).

Incidentally, I went for a long country walk in the sunshine on Sunday and as I walked I sketched out in my head some verses and a middle eight section for a new song. It's a development of an idea I had back in August 2020 which was based on the traditional gardeners' rhyme:

Four seeds in a row
One for the rook
And one for the crow
One to wither
And one to grow

I took some liberties with the song turning it into:

Four for the rook and three for the crow
Two are gonna die but one it might grow

as I liked the counting-down lyric trope here and the implication that it takes ten seeds to produce one flower is- more dramatic than the original four to one. However, it never developed any further until now.

A possible later verse could be:

Some seeds freeze and some seeds boil
But not many fall into perfect soil
You gotta sow way more than you'll ever need
If you wanna grow a flower from a packet of seed

and a more reflective middle eight could be:

But the words that you say and the seeds that you sow
Have more in common than you'll ever know
'cos sometimes you gotta say things again and again
Like the only seed growing from a packet of ten

These are just rough jottings at present. I am quite pleased with them although they might, or might not, develop into a finished song. If they do, I see it as a folk-style song with a finger-picking acoustic guitar for accompaniment - possibly a banjo and an unright double bass could fit in there.

New song update:
By Tuesday I had made a radical change to the song by pacing the lyrics better and inserting a couple of bars in between each half line.  I also slowed down the jaunty tempo I had in my head. So now the lyrics are:

Well it's four for the rook [pause]
And it's three for the crow [pause]
Two are gonna wither in the heat of the sun [pause]
And one is sure to grow

Watch this space!