Lifting
"Catchy, positive pop song, male vocal."
A new soft rock song for the solo collection. The description in the byline is generated by Cyanite AI which came out well before ChatGPT etc. and I find very helpful for categorising genre, mood, and similarities.
Photo by Artem Pechenkin on Unsplash.
My notes show I started this song in 2019. The original musical ideas are nothing like the final song - more a Sand Spiders punk song, but I still like alternative styles and have a few in the backlog I want to polish off. This one’s been written for a while but I was nervous about the vocal as it’s not a range I’m all that comfortable with. But in the end I thought, bugger it. No one else is gonna sing it. So, here it is, warts and all.
I am greatly assisted by Melodyne note-based editing, an extraordinary tool for finessing vocals - pitch, timing, vibrato, de-essing, de-breathing, and a lot more. I had a breakthrough with it recently after seeing one of their videos and am now much more confident using it, and hopefully producing better results. It’s a lot of work - going through takes, comping (picking the best parts of each take), then going through note by note to fix problems. More work goes into the vocal than all the other instruments combined. Maybe I should move to instrumental?
I thought I had a good take last night but there was one section I just could not get right. I tried this tool then that one, then another. Then I looked for a different take, then another. Nada. In the end, I gave up and had the same refrain at another section in the song, so I copied it in. I generally prefer having a unique take for each section, but in this case needs must. If you’re that interested (which I doubt), it’s the vocal section 1:27 - 1:31 that I replaced with the section at 2:36 - 2:41. OK, so maybe it’s still not that great but if you’d heard what I had before, you’d be thanking me.
The song itself is pretty simple and the concept is as old as time, but this is my take on it, and I loved the instrumentation, especially the lift in the chorus. It has good “prosody” as the technicians would say. Yeah, I prosodied this sucker out of the ball park. It’s got more prosodisation than a hall full of songwriters. I’m not into the technical aspects of music theory - perhaps it shows. I just love writing the damn things.
‘Chasing dreams’ and ‘catch the fire’ I think are references to being a songwriter, something that’s been with me consistently throughout my adult life. One of those “what ifs”, but so raw I couldn’t bare to touch it. ‘What if’ I really sucked at it - the thing I had fantasised about so often for so long? The fear of failure and humiliation overcame the desire, which I still harboured strongly but kept secret.
I think of it like this. Ever since I read Jaws sometime in the mid 1970s (I was around 10-ish), I had a morbid fear of sharks. Perhaps a phobia? I couldn’t look at the ocean without imagining the terrors that might lurk there. I loved swimming and catching waves but the fear never left me - real, shivering, fear. Every shadow, every brush of seaweed.
The fear followed me some 30 years later to Freshwater in Sydney, just a 15 minute walk to a wonderful surf beach. I wanted to volunteer for surf lifesaving with some mates but just couldn’t get over my dread. I think I read a book about desensitisation and embarked on a program to see if I could address it.
I started in the rock pool at the north end of Freshie beach. I’d go in the evening after work to the dimly lit 25 metre-ish pool, shadows playing with the water, seaweed and sand that had washed in on high tide. Every lap was gut wrenching, but slowly my confidence grew. I hadn’t been munched up by some giant white toothed apex predator last time, so perhaps this time would be the same.
I’m not free of fear of sharks these days, but have learned respect for them and am mostly confident in the ocean. One day, I hope to have a place by a surf beach (not too close - global warming, yanno) which I can learn and enjoy - without the shiver of dread I used to feel even looking out to sea.
Songwriting has been like that for me - a gradual overcoming of fear, but in this case ‘social’ fear of rejection, humiliation, disdain. It still bothers me but not enough to stop, even if I don’t really know why I do it in the first place.
Anyway, thanks for attending my TED talk. I hope you enjoy the song and it gives you a lift as it does for me.
1 yeah I've been feeling kind of down and out lately but I guess you knew that seems no matter how hard I try the best I do is getting by what happened to my life p but I'm alright yeah yeah I'll be fine 2 one day I'll get my shit together things will be so much better I'm not out of this fight I'll never stop chasing dreams that's all life means to me trying to catch the fire p I'm alright yeah yeah I'll be fine I'm lifting c I'm lifting into blue sky I'm lifting I can fly so high 3 and all those things that bothered me won't get me down I see them now they're nothing throwing them off like a stone I've been carrying on my shoulders I can breathe p oh yeah yeah I'm alright I'll be fine I'm lifting