That Bridge Needs Work, Fast(er)

Today I upped the tempo of my new track, incorporated the opening motif into the bridge, fixed the final bridge modulation, recorded scratch vocals for Verse 3 and added a distorted electric guitar. Good dirt!

Upping The Tempo

While I want Didn’t Feel Safe to be a relatively slow track, I found the tempo of 80 BPM was dragging somewhat and keeping it slow just to meet the minimum 6-minute requirement of the assignment doesn’t make artistic sense. I’ve upped the tempo to 90 BPM which still gives a time-passing-slowly feeling, without putting the listener to sleep.

In the process, I learned that Logic Pro will time-stretch audio for you when changing tempo, provided that you:

• Turn on Flex mode using CMD F
• Enable Flex on all the channels with audio on them

Unfortunately, this messes up the timing of fast-swipe comps, which seems to be a logic bug; but I’m planning to re-record all the vocals anyway so I can deal with this.

That Bridge Needs Work

I wanted to incorporate the motif from the Intro into a later part of the track, and the Bridge was sounding a bit boring so I incorporated it there as a kind of call-back. I copied the MIDI notes into the Bridge section, adjusting their pitch to match each of the underlying chords in the descending cycle of 5ths and adjusting the second note to keep it diatonic to C natural minor and the third note to match the quality of the underlying chord.

I also shortened the duration of the notes to allow the strings to come through, again implementing the principle of Layer Cake Orchestration^TM.

Fixing The Modulation

I wasn’t happy with the way the end of the Bridge modulated back to A natural minor, so I changed it using a BØ7 borrowed from C major to give a iiØ7, v7, i in A minor:

Chord:	Cm7	BØ7	Em7	Am
Key: C Minor	i7	VIIØ7
Key: A Minor		iiØ7	v7	i

Ah… that sounds much better.

Verse 3

Today I also added a scratch vocal recording of Verse 3.

The lyrics for Verse 3 are:

Four decades later
Mum’s feeling unwell
We have lunch together
Where her retirement dwells
Dad died 16 months ago
And now the house is gone
Really makes me wonder
Just what could be wrong
Take her to the hospital
Wait four hours to be seen
She gets impatient and upset
You’d think that she was three
Try to stay calm and relax
Hope that she’s all right
Sometimes I find it hard to breathe
I still can’t sleep at night

Time For Some Electric Guitar

I created the introductory motif on a Grand Piano… or rather, my MIDI keyboard synthesising a grand piano. That instrument doesn’t really suit the sound of the song though, and it’s time to have an electric guitar anyway. In yet another application of Layer Cake Orchestration^TM, the guitar part for the Choruses stays static when the vocal melody is moving, and only moves when the vocal melody is static, giving an effect reminiscent of call and response. I call this Temporal Layer Cake Orchestration^TM.

Where I’m Up To

Here is the Logic project so far:

And here’s how it sounds with the latest addition:

I’ve got a dramatic, exciting addition prepared for tomorrow, including a featured artist…

Continue reading about Didn’t Feel Safe in: Time For Some Drama