'Restless' - the making of...

I don't know if many people actually read any of these posts but I am finding it helpful nowadays to record the journey for myself - and if anyone else benefits; well, that would make me happy.

After experimenting with electronic only music I became actually restless and just wanted to make an old school guitar-blast tune. I went against many of my principles and did not concentrate on 'melody' so much as just making a noise - the result is the tune 'Restless'. Here:



The tune began accidentally as I had been listening to Led Zeppelin and playing around with 'Since I've been Loving you'  which gave me the feel for what was going to become 'Restless'. However, by the time I came to put it together it just turned into a scrambled jam instead. Oh well. I also borrowed my son's violin bow and decided to record (rather loudly) myself playing the guitar with a violin bow, which is actually harder than it looks. I shoved it as the 'middle eight' in the tune.

The actual guitar parts I used the RP50 effect and the Wah Wah Pedal which doesn't seem to be working so well nowadays but still gave it a bit of expression:

The drums were 100 bpm 'blues' acoustic drums from the looperman website, that someone kindly donated for download.

The rest, well, I played these puppies:

If you are interested in anymore, I made two videos explaining it a little further:

Wonderland - making the tune

'Wonderland' is made totally on midi keyboard and computer DAWs, though the original tune, I wrote on a normal stand up acoustic piano. I had the idea floating for quite a number of years and I thought I would finally try and finish it.

When I started to record it I wanted it to be a danceable tune but it kind of wrote itself into a 'Bambi' sort of sountrack. I'm not sure exaclty how that happened but sometimes I just follow it where it wants to go and that's where it seemed best. So I put away all of my 140 bpm drum dance loops and it finished with Timpani drums and a kick only.

The 'voice' on it is from Sonar LE's Cakewalk sounds called "Ahh Female". It goes for just over one second. I played the melody with the 'voice'  via a midi Keyboard and then sculptured it rawly to have fade ins and outs and a bit of reverb to make it slightly more voicey. I didn't try too hard because I also wasn't pretending it was a real voice, I wanted it to sound sampled as well.

As far as the song itself goes, I had the basic structure which is strongly around C and Dm (with Am) but worked out the middle eight with an unplugged electric guitar pad and pen. I was after a shift without losing the feel:

 

Knowing I have a blog and being a 'drop in the ocean' I know not many will read this but becuase I like to learn from other music folk, I took some photos on the journey of making it and I put descriptions of the VSTi's among other shots if this is your bag. Enjoy the wonder of it all ...