that’s what i worked on today — ‘rise’. one of the last two that needed some kind of drums or something. i thought a lot about what i wanted to do with it and today decided that it would be an acoustic driven song. i used to have much love for the acoustic duo type of songs. (as a point of fact, i actually used to only have love for that type of song. so i’ve decided that is more or less what this one will be.

started as usual with the tempo and figured i wanted shaker as the only back beat. i was able to find a premade loop that worked so that was nice. i actually tried combining two shaker loops together but it made it too much; too intense of shaker for what the song needs, i think.

then i recorded the rough track. but since it was done in the middle of the day instead of first thing, it doesn’t sound as horrendous as some others i’ve done. then i started hearing lead. …aaaand then i had to figure out how to play it. so i spent forever figuring out how i wanted the beginning part to sound, since that’s the most important part, and then recorded it with many, many screw-ups in it and just noodled through the rest of the track. that gave me a pretty good idea of what types of things i like and want to avoid. also this one repeating thing i came up with works really well for the bridge. so i’m honing it in…just slowly.

speaking of the bridge; i wanted to add strings. i think i’ve spoken of the garageband strings before being a bit lackluster; it is true. they are. but i put them in there anyway. i think i’ll end up cutting them out and doing something else there instead due to high cheese factor, but i’m gonna leave them in so i can hear the final product with them and see what i think then.

so i was basically done setting this one up after that. then i re-listened again just now and am starting to see more of the lead take shape. i also heard a really, really simple percussive beat in the background, which i added, and i think it really helps the feel of the song. pretty happy with it now.

so now just one more to go drum-wise; gotta figure out what the crap i’m going to do with ‘bring it back.’ i’m thinking once i move on to stuff like bass and acoustic that it will go much faster and that i’ll be able to knock a good number of those out each day….exciting.

OH and joanna is totally lending me her banjo…! it won’t make a widespread appearance on the songs, since i don’t really want it in lots of them and then mostly because i’ve never played a banjo before. but how hard can it be, right? but i got the one song with a banjo part in mind…..so good. country and/or western, here i come.