Week #47 - Relief

A laid back groove I came up with at a cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was quite a relaxing trip, and I felt like it embodied this feeling perfectly:



Description:

A weekend of massage and hanging out in the hot tub and in front of a cozy fireplace led me to write this piece. It's about getting away from the stuff that drains you in your day-to-day life and uncovering the real you again.

Tools:

Propellerhead Record 1/Reason 4
Epiphone Les Paul Custom electric guitar
Fender Jazz electric bass
Audio Technica 2020 condenser microphone

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Notes:

- Here's a video of the original rhythm guitar part as written in the woods:


- So I took the acoustic groove above, electrified it, and filled it out with keyboard, a second guitar, bass, and finally drums. I wasn't happy with the chorus and thought it would make a better breakdown section instead so I wrote a new chorus and put it into a pretty standard arrangement: intro-verse-chorus-verse-middle8-chorus-solo(2 verses)-chorus-outro. Once I had an arrangement, I worked out some lyrics and recorded vocals over the top.

- The verse is a sort of 12-bar blues pattern in F#m but instead of the standard 5-4-1 ending, the last 4 bars go: E | D | A | Bm |

- The chorus is an 8-bar pattern: F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | F#m | C#m | D | E |

- The middle8 comes in a measure early and lays back even more. it's actually a middle9: C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | A | C#m-Bm | D-E | E |

- The guitar, keyboard, and bass parts were all pretty much written and recorded in a single session. I kept things simple as a regular 5 piece band would perform it. I did think about adding horns or strings, but I thought it was best kept simple.

- The drums were written on my new phone (Motorola Droid) with a drum machine app called ElekDrum. I exported the MIDI and imported it into a Redrum module where I edited it a bit more. It's basically the same beat throughout with a variety of fills, and the drums drop out for the middle8 until the last measure and a half. I wrote a few fills and then just used the Alter notes tool to make variations on the rest so it wasn't the same the whole time. I went back and did the same thing to the main beat every few measures as well.


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