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Sunday, 12 March 2017

Songwriting Sessions: Layers

Last week I talked about the songwriting sandwich (which you can read about here). No, it's not a special way to make a sandwich that gives you songwriting superpowers. It's really about adding layers to songs to make them more interesting.

I'm doing just that with a song I'm recording and mixing for my second album, Songs For Ghosts. It's an all-acoustic album, and with each track I need to make sure it's exciting and inviting. Once I have what I think of as the "skeleton" of a song (the basic chord progression, lyrics, and the basic rhythm track, whether it be piano, guitar, organ, etc.), I often need to add more to the song.

Sometimes I add more guitar, more voices (harmonies), random sounds or noises.

For "The Girl With the Green Eyes", one of the songs from album #2, I felt the need for a second guitar in the second verse. It was fine for the first verse. but the second verse just needed a little something to make it more exciting.

I'm still mixing the song, so I can't really play it for you in its entirety, but I'll give you a sample of the guitar from verse one, and then the two guitars from verse two. Here it is without the second guitar:


And here it is with the second guitar (the balance might be slightly off, as I haven't done any mixing yet, but you probably won't notice that anyway):


Neat, huh?

More to come on this project as it develops. I'm seeing an end in sight!

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