I’ve been working away at my next book, keeping well ahead of schedule, and decided to take a short break over the Easter holiday to record a song that’s been rolling about in my head.
The song is called “He Made a Way” and you can find it on my music page in MP3 and Ogg formats. Unlike most of my recent work, this song isn’t in an odd meter and doesn’t use fancy harmonic stuff; instead, I decided to dip my toes into African styles like Soukous and Rumba, because I don’t think there’s a happier-sounding style of music on the planet. Sometimes you just want to write a happy song, you know?
For those who want some technical details on the recording, here are some notes:
- The LP aspire cajon was recorded with a piezo pickup on the soundboard mixed with a Peavey SDC a couple feet behind the soundhole.
- Additional percussion includes a talking drum, cabasa, and wooden frog, all mic’ed with the same SDC.
- The cymbals are just a hi-hat with the plates separated and loosened so I could treat them like a crash or ride. Also mic’d with the SDC.
- Bass is my new Ibanez GSR 206 going through a cheap compressor pedal and into a passive DI.
- Electric guitars are my trusty Washburn WI-64 going through the same signal path as the bass. Yep, no POD, no amp, just a bit of compression into the DI. Sounded more authentic to me. That chorusy sound is just double-tracking.
- The acoustic guitar is an old 12-string with the low-octave strings removed. Nice little trick I picked up for thick guitar sounds without the thuddy junk in the low-mids. I think I used the Peavey SDC on this as well.
- The flutes are my Clake Sweetone tin whistle. 3 tracks.
- All the vocals are just me singing into my AT3035 through an ancient Mackie 1202.
- Everything was tracked and mixed in Ardour 5 with a few Calf Plugins for compression, EQ, delay, and reverb. Effects were used sparingly because my music computer is a Core2Duo piece of junk.
Hope you enjoy the song. As per my usual, it’s released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license, so feel free to make copies and share it with anyone who might be blessed by it.
Happy Easter!
