Come Walk With Me

[Michael Willis]

https://soundcloud.com/user-201997735/come-walk-with-me

This is a song about... well, a lot of different things. Sung by my love, Julie Willis. I'm the clarinetist, and our friend Alan "milo" Sanderson played the guitar and bass parts. Everything else is midi tracks that I sequenced.

This is a very different style of music than anything I've ever done before, and it's my first serous attempt at writing lyrics and recording a vocal track. Don't go easy on me though! I really want to know what I can improve about the composition or mixing.

Stuff used:
Buffet Crampon E-11 France Clarinet
DrumGizmo (DRS Whiskers)
Maestro Concert Grand + LinuxSampler
Dragonfly Plate (piano and guitar tracks)
GxAmplifier (on the bass track)
Dragonfly Room (everything)
Calf Saturator

milo can remind me about what guitar and bass he used

[milo]

Nice to hear the finished song! I was hoping you'd finish with all of that Dragonfly Reverb business and get back to work on this track. Congratulations on your first song with vocals and lyrics! That's a big step.

The guitar is a Takamine G-series, and the bass is some cheap no-name that I found at a pawn shop, a Fender Precision clone. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade the bass because it feels nice on the fingers and sounds pretty good.

[ufug]

This was an absolutely delightful song! Thanks for sharing it. It's always refreshing hearing music with such a good vibe and direct approach. Technical comments didn't even come to mind because I was too busy enjoying it.

The first part of the opening clarinet phrase seems like a sly nod to the bridge of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", especially considering the lyrical angle. Very sly, intentional or not!

[GMaq]

Hi,

Just had a listen, good work by everyone! I'd like to hear a bit more whiskers and a little less piana but very minor points, nice to see some collabs going on!

[Michael Willis]

Thanks everybody! This one was a long time in the making, I think the seed ideas were in my head nearly a year ago. It has almost become a metaphor for itself; there were so many times that I would think "This is the stupidest song ever! I am so done with this thing!" but then the lyrics would go through my head and remind me to keep moving and not give up. Thanks a lot to milo for bringing his gear to my house last year to record, and then occasionally prodding me to keep at it since then.

It sounds to me like the piano is a bit too loud and is covering over some parts of the vocals.

I'd like to hear a bit more whiskers and a little less piana but very minor points, nice to see some collabs going on!

I maybe rushed the mixing too quickly after recording the vocal track. This had been sitting for months with the instrumental stuff pretty much all done, so when Julie and I finally carved out some time to record the lyrics, I really wanted to get this out there. I even dropped the piano gain by about 3 dB before exporting it, but I think you're right, the piano part is mostly just straight one-beat chords so it should be even more subtle.

You should be proud of me though, I think I did a good job of not overdoing the reverb! If anything, I love reverb a little too much, so I also dropped the overall reverb level a few dB before exporting the audio.

The first part of the opening clarinet phrase seems like a sly nod to the bridge of "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head", especially considering the lyrical angle. Very sly, intentional or not!

Ha! I'm not really familiar with that one, other than hearing it on my mom's radio when I was little. The truth is that I had most of the clarinet riff in my head (just humming it to myself over and over) before writing the song. The first notes sounded too much like the beginning of "Lean on Me", so I kept twiddling with the notes until I had something different enough

I'm curious what you mean by "direct approach". My guess is that you are referring to how the lyrics aren't really shrouded in mystery, even though they are symbolic it isn't too hard to understand what they mean?

[Rainmak3r]

Nice track! For some reason it reminded me of "Carpet of the sun" by Renaissance, probably the 70's sunny feeling to it

[ufug]

I'm curious what you mean by "direct approach". My guess is that you are referring to how the lyrics aren't really shrouded in mystery, even though they are symbolic it isn't too hard to understand what they mean?

By direct approach I didn't mean anything about the lyrics specifically, just that it's a well-crafted song played by real humans in a lovely and totally sincere way. Not to digress, but there is so much electronic music in the world these days (and there's nothing wrong with that at all) but it's all pushed to a grid and although I can appreciate it intellectually I have to admit that I rarely have any response to it. When I hear a song like yours with your clarinet and your love's voice, it hits me directly at an emotional level. I felt really good after hearing it. If it's not too corny to say, there's a lot of love in this song.

Get ye to some Bacharach! He's a national treasure and I think you have some melodic kinship.

[Michael Willis]

When I hear a song like yours with your clarinet and your love's voice, it hits me directly at an emotional level. I felt really good after hearing it. If it's not too corny to say, there's a lot of love in this song.

Thanks, Scotty! That means a lot to me coming from you, since I find a lot of your music really fun to listen to. The whole reason I got into making music is because music elicits emotions. For years I've wanted to compose stuff that would have that effect on people, so your comment really made my day.

There are a lot of layers of meaning to this song, an obvious one being that life is tough but a good friend can make it really rewarding too. So your comment about love isn't too corny, it really echoes what I was going for in the first place. I think too many love songs are just about infatuation, and not about the hard parts, so this song directly speaks about the latter.

[folderol]

Nice song, and mostly fits together very well, although I did think the piano needed to taken down a notch. It tended to overpower the singing earlier on.

[Basslint]

You guys and gals are making better and better records!

Agree with @folderol on the piano, a bit quieter would sound better.

[Michael Willis]

Thanks to all for the feedback. If you'll indulge me one more time, I made some adjustments:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/x7p7adw2c1lr3 ... -03-09.mp3

Here's the original for comparison:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/3b6jwvgfv9asj ... -03-01.mp3

Please download the file instead of using the playback feature in dropbox, it seems to do its own compression for streaming that makes the vocal part sound fuzzy.

[fridge]

Sweet. Puts me in mind of Duke Special (without the Ulster accent!).

[Michael Willis]

I made a final draft of this and replaced the original draft that I had on SoundCloud:

https://soundcloud.com/user-201997735/come-walk-with-me

It's not a lot different, I just made some adjustments to allow additional shine from Julie's voice, Alan's guitar comes through a bit more, and the piano is tucked away in the back where it belongs.

[tseaver]

Nice work! The tune and the setting are a nice frame for the lyric / vocals. Love the clarinet as the second "voice" here.