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Save Me Now Introduction

In December 2020, Paul McCartney released his McCartney 3 album. This was a collection of songs he created during lockdown with him writing ...

Tuesday, 27 February 2024

Somewhere New

 

Ageing can be terrible. Especially when it starts to affect your memory. Someone I know very well was telling me about a relative who had dementia. Their memory was slowly fading so they decided to go on what would be their last holiday to the place where they had their honeymoon many, many years ago. The reason for this was because it was a familiar and comforting place to be. Somewhere from the past and somewhere different to the nursing home.


This became the story for this song. What if a woman went to visit her husband in the home. What would they say to each other as his memories faded in and out? Where would they go? Somewhere safe, somewhere new, somewhere good.


I had a chord progression which I really liked. It was in 6/8 time and quite upbeat. Usually when I am writing, I start with a chord progression and then just sing whatever words come to mind (unless I’ve written the words first, which is rare). With this chord progression the first line I sang was “take me to somewhere new’. But it didn’t really go anywhere after that for a couple of weeks. Then randomly, one day I was out walking our dog and I remembered what my friend had told me and everything clicked into place.


The narrative took the form of a conversation between the man and wife. Originally I was going to sing both parts, but that seemed silly when I had the option of asking Georgia Batterley to take on the role of the wife. Georgia very kindly agreed and actually went the extra mile by recording several harmony vocals as well.


The man recognises his wife as someone he knows and loves. That’s all he knows. He feels safe with her but he can’t remember her name. The line “Just take me anywhere, as long as it's with you” is kind of heartbreaking.


The humming section was deliberate. It takes the pace down a little and gives the listener time to reflect on what is happening.


Whilst slightly ambiguous, I make no apologies when I tell you that the final line of the song (“take me away to somewhere new”) is actually the man saying that he is now ready to leave this earth. They have been on their final trip to somewhere safe and he is at peace. It happens to all of us this thing called death and my intention for this song was to convey a bittersweet narrative.


The original recording was much bigger with lots of electric guitars and strings, but once Georgia had recorded her parts, the song didn’t need it, so all of that was stripped out to leave a much simpler acoustic performance.


I hope this song resonates with those who have experienced the effect of this horrible disease and also that it is in some small way, a tribute to my friend and their family member.



Wednesday, 21 February 2024

Green Light


The verse section for this song was actually written in the mid ‘90s, and there have been several chorus sections kicking around for the last 30 years which I was never happy with. It was also very much a guitar based rock arrangement back then with the rhythm being a bit like the song Wonderwall by Oasis. 

I always liked the verse sections and decided that I’d try to write a brand new chorus. It felt like it should have an electronic bluesy feel to the song.


Being new to Logic Pro software, I was amazed at how many sounds there were, so I started to experiment with drum loops one day. I don’t know why but this song came to mind, so I had to try to remember how it went and what the chords were. Very quickly I started a groove and the song fell into place. A simple electric piano part provided an anchor for me whilst I meticulously programmed a ‘boppy’ synth bass part, 

It needed a chorus, and one day out of the blue, I came up with what you hear really quickly. It was far better than any of the previous ones and allowed me to make it big - just as choruses should be!!

The songwriting process is interesting because good songs often go through several drafts before the finished version is ready, and Green Light is no exception. Sections were added, others cut, lyrics changed, timing changed etc and that’s even before getting to the arranging and production stage.

The end section had a repeated chorus, but when listening back, it didn’t add anything to the song so I was brutal and cut it. I think the song works better ending where it does with just the single chorus.

The song was inspired by a night in Derry, Ireland back in 1996. My band had played a Halloween festival in Derry that evening, and I met a girl. We went back to hers for drinks and she had a lamp which had a green bulb in it. We listened to the Stone Roses and stayed up chatting for most of the night until morning time.

To make the song work, I created a story about forbidden love. I.e. a good catholic girl falling for a British guitarist. In the story, they both want the passion but stop themselves. The ‘Green Light’ is both the actual lamp, but also a metaphor for letting something happen.

I love the line ‘take off your dirty clothes, they’re so clean’, just because it's kind of sleazy and has a double meaning.

As I learn more about crafting songs, I feel it's important to introduce hooks wherever possible. In this case it was the IT Crowd sounding keyboard which cuts through throughout the song. Musical hooks can be as important as sung hooks.


Just one more thing. In the production mix, Matt removed all the crash cymbals from the second chorus which was genius as its has a totally different dynamic from the other choruses and set it apart.

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Smile Again

 

Another song born out of lockdown. Originally, this was going to be a piano instrumental track. I had the basic melody which I’d recorded, and it was nice but it needed to go somewhere else. I was playing it on the piano one day and accidentally played the wrong chord, which was in an entirely different key, but somehow, it sounded perfect. From there I finished the melody of the song.

 

I had a particular friend in mind who wasn’t in the best place even before lockdown, but the isolation made it so much worse. They were unable to smile. This is what this song is about.

The original demo was just piano and vocal, and there’s something hauntingly beautiful about it which we could never recapture in the final version.

I must have made 50 attempts to get a lead vocal that I was happy with as the range of notes was slightly out of my comfort range. In the end, I decided to record a 3 part harmony arrangement.

The lead guitar is a strange one. In the mixing stage, Matt decided to move it back a bar. It works really well but sounds so different to the original intention.

I love the fact that musically, it changes key from Am to Eb. It kind of breaks all kind of rules but I think it works for the song.

I really like the sound of the clock in the hall at the start of the song. This imagery inspired me to use the actual phrase in another song called The Perfect Storm.

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Tuesday, 20 February 2024

The Man With the Camera

There’s a song by Paul McCartney and Wings on their London Town album called ‘I’m Carrying’ which is such a simple song and McCartney plays a very simple arpeggio in E major on the 12th Fret. One day I picked a guitar up to play it but by mistake, I started in the 13th fret, which put it in the key of A minor. I continued to play the song in this position and it sounded so interesting that I decided to keep it.

 

The lyrics came really quickly and I don’t think its any secret that it is about how smart phones and speakers are always listening so that they can build their AI algorithms in order to profile and manipulate us in some way. 

 

I wanted to arrange the song so that each verse was different to the last, so had lots of fun layering up sounds and atmosphere.

 

For the end section, Matt suggested we have a musical fade out section similar to the end of ‘The Day Before You Came’ by ABBA.

 

See if you can spot a brief snippet of the theme tune from a popular British Science Fiction series near the end…..


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Friday, 16 February 2024

Save Me Now



I set myself a challenge to write, record and mix a song in just one week, and I actually managed to finish this song in just six days. I have no idea how it happened but starting on a D chord is always a great way to start a song. 


Sometimes, songs literally do write themselves, once you have the first line. 


"What would you say, what would you do, if I walked away, would you sit and stay and watched me disappear into the blue"


I'm a big fan of harmony and backing vocals, and this song has an abundance of both. It's nice writing, recording and then hearing back the counterpoint harmonies which I think complement the lead vocal really well.


There's a stop after the first chorus and whilst the song is called 'Save Me Now', I deliberately omitted the word 'Now' as I think it clashed with the start of the guitar solo.


I'm not a natural lead guitar player, so I'm always nervous when it comes to reccording lead guitar lines. However, whilst ot perfect, this one happened really quickly as well. So much so that I continues recording in the end section of the songs which gives an almost question / answer effect with the lead vocal.

The chorus seemed to write itself. D to Dmaj7 round a few times and then down to an Em. What could go wrong?

Lyrically there’s nothing special here, but it tells a nice story I think.

Originally, I had programmed the drums and that version is the one which was completed in six days. Since then, the brilliant Steve Dutton recorded his real drums and then Matt Stockwell used these in his final album mix.

By sheer accident, this became the title track for the album. 

Thinking of a title can often be the hardest part but then I was thinking that this project really helped me get through the lockdown. It kind of kept me sane, so in a way it did 'save me'.

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Thursday, 15 February 2024

Lets Dance



This was the title of the first song I wrote. Ironically, it was written using one of the Ukuleles I’d built earlier in the year during the first lockdown.. It’s loosely based on a dream I had about my mum. She died in 2016, so dreams are the only time I get to see her. In the dream, she looked much younger, and was dancing away. This gave me a starting point for the lyrics. 

 

Writing on the Ukulele is so different to guitar and piano because a lot of the simple chords shapes are actually more complex jazz chords that you would not naturally go to on a different instrument.


For any musicians reading this, some of the chords used in this song are..... C. A9, Cdim, Dim, Cmaj7, Fmaj7, D9, G7, E7, Fmin6...... It may seem like there's a lot going on here, but most of these chord are just slight variations of each other and come naturally when playing a Ukulele.

 

I had great fun experimenting, layering this new song up with lots of backing vocals, pianos, bass and drums. Once I had everything recorded, I attempted a mix down of Let’s Dance and was really pleased with it.

 

Around this time, I was having a catch up on the phone with my old friend Matthew Stockwell. We’d lost touch in recent years, but as with many other people, the lockdown prompted me to make contact with old friends to see how they were. Some good things came out of isolation.

 

I was telling him about my plans, and by sheer coincidence, he told me that he had been getting into sound engineering and was looking for a project to work on. He asked me to send over the multi tracks for Let’s Dance containing all the instruments and vocals I’d recorded so that he could have a go at mixing the song.

 

About two weeks later, he sent back the version which was to become the finished mix that ended up on the album. I have to say that his mix blew me away. It was a hundred times better than my mix.


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Right there and then we agreed that Matt would mix what would be the whole album. With one song in the can, my only problem now was that I had to write, arrange, perform and produce another ten or eleven songs…….



Save Me Now Introduction

In December 2020, Paul McCartney released his McCartney 3 album. This was a collection of songs he created during lockdown with him writing all the songs, producing and playing all the instruments.

 

Earlier that year, to keep myself sane, I decided to make a Ukulele as a project to keep myself stimulated during the lockdown. The crafting became so engrossing that I actually ended up making four, but once that project had finished, I was looking for the next thing to be doing. The McCartney release inspired me to try to write and produce a full album of my own. What if I could pull something like that off? Would it even be possible?

 

I started researching home studio setups. Fortunately for me, we have a secure building with power at the back of our garden, which turned out to be an ideal location for a home recording studio, so I set about buying bits of equipment that I would need as a bare minimum.


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And so in February 2021, It began………