Emily’s Song

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Song info

This song started out as the distorted clav riff you hear heading into the choruses. Originally, that riff was the basis for most of the song, either in the clav or as a heavily-filtered string patch in the lower register. I also had a couple sped-up drum loops I was infatuated with, and I was going for a kind of driving, synthy sound. You can hear all this in this quick mix I made back then:

Emily’s Song - 2004 demo clip

Some of the main elements didn’t change, like the breakdown in the chorus and its drum loops. Some things had to go, though. For one thing, the melody in the verse was too high for my voice and needed to be changed. The trouble was I really liked where that sat in the chords and I didn’t want to lose it altogether. Fast foward a couple years and When I was arranging the song for piano/vocal for a concert I had my eureka moment: I’ll sing the third lower and give the original line to Frances as harmony. From that moment forward, that harmony in the verse became one of the cornerstones of the song.

When I migrated my recording from Deck II to Digital Performer, I wanted to start fresh with this song. I originally tried to copy over some of the loops I’d made in Deck, like the low string sound, but somehow putting it all together again it wasn’t working for me. So I began the long, drawn-out process of finding an arrangement.

I finally settled on the synthy, bell-like sound of the intro and verses after trying a hundred different permutations: kalimba, music box, piano, and so on. It has that driving-synth feel I was originally going for, and it also contrasts nicely with the piano-and-drums chorus.

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