Week 14, Call it a Day

The fourteenth song is Call it a Day. YouTube link for iPhone

I wrote the song and recorded the guitar part on Friday night and then went to the Pitt football game the next day. After several hours of yelling at in vain (they lost), I had very little of my voice left over for the next several days. On Monday night, tired of waiting for my voice to recover, I brewed a cup of tea and started recording. I wasn’t thinking about being voiceless when I wrote it, but of all of the songs I’ve written thus far, this one would be the best suited to the scratchy “She’s Got Betty Davis Eyes” version of my singing voice. Judge for yourself, but I’m thinking that it was a happy coincidence.

The song is written in standard tuning and is about as simple as any I’ve done to date. The recording is my acoustic guitar recorded in the kitchen with the Blue Mikey into my iPhone.  Just one track. The scratchy vocals were recorded with the iPhone’s mic. While I was working on the vocal tracks, and the mic was on, for some reason I slammed my hand on top of my notebook which was sitting on top of the kitchen table and it sounded surprisingly good, so I went with it. I added two tracks of hand slamming and three tracks of clapping for good measure. All of the tracks were recorded on the iPhone into Harmonicdog’s MultiTrack app. I imported everything into Reaper, added a little reverb, and called it a day. I’m really happy about how it came out.

I’m heading out to Denver on Friday to visit family and attend my sister Brooke’s college graduation, which will make for another interesting adventure in “holy cow I have to record something, I only have a week, and I’m not home.” It may be later in the week, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

5 Comments to Week 14, Call it a Day

Fred
December 10, 2009

I really like the recording. The kitchen ambience works great with the guitar. I like the slaps and slams–I wondered what you were hitting. As for the song itself, it reminds me a bit of Neil Young and his Harvest album. (Boy, does that date me.) You seem to respond well to pressure and deadlines!

project52
December 10, 2009

Thanks Fred! I’m a big Neil Young fan. It’s timeless stuff. I’ll admit that the claps and slams weren’t all kitchen ambiance – I had a little help from my trusty Waves TrueVerb plugin.

Chris
December 10, 2009

Dang, no iPhone friendly format this week. OK I know your busy but here’s hoping links will recommence soon

As an aside, I will congratulate you on meeting your deadlines, given how much you have on your plate.

project52
December 10, 2009

Sorry Chris. I wanted to get it up last night, but I was exhausted. I should be able to put it up there tonight.

Sayf
December 10, 2009

My favorite one so far, keep it up!

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