PSRSotwNotes04.09-01

Peter's Song of the Week Club!

9/1/04

You're All Beautiful

Peter's Comments:
<Waaaah> I hate my computer!

The recording software is getting slower and slower. (Hit play, wait five seconds. Hit record, wait five seconds.) Twice, it decided to spontaneously reboot. It can't play back much of anything without a ton of digital artifacting.

The last time this happened to me, the whole computer got slower and slower until it was unusable, and I had to replace part after part until I had replaced everything and found that the culprit was the $40 power supply.

Not that I'm bitter. But: computers are evil, and will continue to be so until we get those cool terminals with manual typewriters and Frenel lenses that they used in Brazil and Max Headroom.

In spite of this computational imbroglio, I still managed to drag a song out of the malfunctioning mess. This one has been percolating for far far too long, periodically demanding more guitar embellishments and additional background vocals. It started out as a Crowded House pastiche, but all that remains of that is the bridge that sounds suspiciously like "Into Temptation," and the ascending prechorus line that is suspiciously like similar parts of "In My Command" or "The Climber."

I'm actually pleased with the song -- even right after writing it. (Usually after writing something, all I can think is 'Gak!') Yes, my voice-leading is all over the place and I still can't get decent sounds out of a POD, but I think the synthy drumbeat worked out better than expected, and it's generally catchy. Still, this song didn't really teach me anything besides "Keep the song in a key you low enough to sing in -- or, if you can't do that, at least don't subsequently modulate up." :)

I dunno. I'm getting better at chording around on piano, so perhaps I should compose more on that instrument. We'll see if that gets me anywhere new.

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