Sleepless (rough demo)

February 12, 2010 4:42 PM

Trawling through my back pages I came across this one. A fairly poxy demo, but.....something there. Strong hook (imo). Given that I'm short on fresh ideas at present, I intend to make this my next project. So.... comments on things like instrumentation, tempo, dynamics, arrangement or anything else would be welcome before I start hacking away at it.

Lyric:

So now it's over
The lies and the knives put away
There's nothing much left to say...now
But we'll keep talking
Far into the night
Knowing nothing we say
Will make it right

No black ties
No lilies
No Coroner's Court*
You don't ask when you're drowning
"What sank the boat?"

Sleepless
Night after night
A slow dancer
Round in my mind

Sleepless
Time after time
A slow dancer
Come, one more time

Can't move the clock back
Can't undo mistakes that I made
I can't "make it all right"...so
Walk away (all we've said has never been the truth)
Walk away
Save it for another day
Oh, for God's sake
Take it as read

There's no point in pretending
Things are alright
Time I was moving on with my life

Sleepless etc

* In England the Coroner is a specialist lawyer who holds public inquiries (a kind of court or trial) into unexplained deaths.

posted by MajorDundee (3 comments total)

So this is what you call a 'poxy demo'. It's better recorded than my 'final' versions.

I like it a lot and I don't think I would suggest any change in instrumentation/structure, but I think that using quite a bit of reverb on the drumkit might suit the feeling of the song. It really sounds finished, though, what do you want to change about it?
posted by micayetoca at 4:10 AM on February 13, 2010


Thanks for the comment mica. This was done on a Boss BR1600 with rubbish preamps etc. The main problems are (a) not a great vocal - too quiet and hesitant, (b) just a bit too slow and (c) lack of "transparency" or separation in the mix. It's not technically up to scratch and I have better equipment now (and a little more confidence vocally). I couldn't remix it even if I wanted to because I no longer have the Boss and I doubt whether I could transfer the data (which I do have somewhere on a cd) onto my current DAW.
posted by MajorDundee at 5:37 AM on February 13, 2010


Oh, I see. More a recording concern than an actual structure/instrumentation concern. Well, I know you didn't say you would, but you know how re-recordings sometimes are, so I just wanted to say, don't change the way you play the main guitar here, it sounds really good as it is now.
posted by micayetoca at 6:24 AM on February 13, 2010


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