Sunday, August 22, 2010
As We Bow Down, revisited
New score & audio(?) coming!
Look for it “real soon now” - New score and (maybe?) some audio for As We Bow Down. I copyrighted the song back in 2002, and it’s one of the songs I’ve actually gotten a small amount of royalties from through CCLI. I started out just to record it into Garage Band, then started modifying the piano part to play less of the melody. In coming up with some counter-melodies, I realized the major chords should have set the key signatures instead of the minor keys I used in the score (The song alternates back and forth between a minor chord and the major chord one step below, and changes key up a whole step 3 times). So I re-wrote the score with the corrected key signatures, and found a couple more minor mistakes, probably from transposing it from old PC software to Allegro, then to Finale on the Mac. I’ll get it posted to the web site after I find out what the procedure is to submit a revision to the copyright office, then to CCLI.
I started out just translating the midi file from Finale into GarageBand - but I’m sorry, midi files always seem to sound like midi files no matter what you do to them. I know you can do a huge amount of work making sure every note is the velocity, duration, etc. that you want to make it sound more “human,” but - well, that’s a huge amount of work. So I recorded the new, hopefully improved piano part (not written into the score, not sure it ever will be - pretty much ad-lib at this point) onto a “real instrument” audio track, recorded some OK-sounding vocals over it, and added the flute part I had written for Debbie (when I wrote the song, she was thinking of taking up the flute again). It’s sounding OK, except I made a few mistakes I went back and corrected, and the transitions to the cut-ins aren’t always the smoothest. The vocal track also came out all on the left channel - I got it panned over near center, but I’ve still got to smooth out the volume settings where I cut-in different segments. The first verse also sounds a bit rushed (I found out you “can” change the tempo of an audio track in GarageBand - it just makes the piano sound like it’s underwater when you do). So I may re-record the whole thing instead of patching up what I’ve got. I’m encouraged, though - after not working with Garage Band all that much, I think I can actually get something decent out of it, given a long afternoon’s work. It’s definitely a lot of work though, especially since I don’t use it enough to remember all the settings and I’m fighting hardware as much as getting music done.
Bottom line - a new score and audio for “As We Bow Down” should be coming “REAL SOON NOW!”