hello.music round one – Slowly Yes

hello.music

Here is my entrance fee for round one of hello.music. It’s a couple midi things, a bass line, and the beginnings of a vocal line. A few musings:

  1. Need to stop using the “Circuit Dialog” synth because it’s featured in just about everything I do in GarageBand
  2. The chorus needs retooling because I want the line “a temporary setback” to follow the last “I know you well enough to call this…” of the chorus
  3. Need a verse melody
  4. Bridge.
  5. I would like to alternate verses with Jenny Lewis. Then we will fall in love.

Slowly Yes

[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/hellomusic_greg/slowly yes.mp3]

7 thoughts on “hello.music round one – Slowly Yes”

  1. This is really neat.. I can definitely hear the postal service in this one. One thing to help that (if you want to get away from it) is replace the drums with something more live sounding .. those hand claps will get you every time…

  2. in the same way my song in round one is sounding a bit too Death Cab for Cutie for my own good, this one is bordering heavily on Postal Service. you can definitely tell who some of our favourite pop musicians are right now. that Ben Gibbard sure can wreck some pop havoc. i love the vocals though and the drum beats sound quite nice in a Thom Yorke\Godrich or P. Service way. keep up the works.

  3. a few questions

    1) what types of things are you doing to your drum sounds and what are your favourite loops to use?

    2) what is that warm sounding string or pad synth you use underneathe the jangly sound of the circuit dialog synth? its perfect.

    3) what types of effect on the vocals?

  4. For round two, I think I will try this with all real instruments, just to test the difference. I kind of like the postal service sound for it, but I’m curious nonetheless.

    Here’s the technical info:

    1) The drum is midi keyboard input with the techno kit patch. I added the Bitcrusher AM Radio effect and also adjusted the pitch with AU Pitch.
    2) The pad synth is the Shimmering Flute patch. For a GarageBand patch, it’s pretty good. At least had the sort of sound I wanted. I can’t wait till we graduate to Live and Reason.
    3)I copied and pasted the vocals on to two tracks. On one, I used the Long Panning Echoes effect, and turned the volume down, to help fill in the dead space that is my singing voice. The main vocal track got the Telephone Lines effect, but it also sounds kind of cool with a double filter. I think this could be handy in the future, so you can have one track that gets totally mutilated (the Echo track), and one that keeps things together (telephone lines). Good for layering.

  6. chorus lyrics:

    Slowly, yes is my answer for you.
    ’cause I know you well enough to call this.

    My typical process for writing lyrics:

    1) Sit down with pen and paper.

    2) Stare at wall for 15 minutes while spinning pen in right hand.

    3) Scribble something down, and quickly scratch it out for being so presumptuous.

    4) Decide the song sucks and isn’t worth pursuing

    5) Go do something else.

    Any tips?

  7. Lyrics have always been the hardest point for me, not because I dont like singing, which I kinda do, but more because I am not schooled in writing lyrics that are personal, yet unpretentious or universal or uncliche.

    I have sketchbooks full of lines and phrases I never use and when it comes time to write lyrics for a song I have a melody for in my head, I lock up. Sometimes I just have to pound out something and refine it later.

    Its hard to trust your instincts.

Comments are closed.