It’s Valentine’s Day and I had this little thing bouncing around in my head all day. I was at the in-laws house for the evening and kept wanting to jump on their piano to work this out, but, you know, that’s just not social. As soon as we got home and the wife went to bed, I ran to the piano and worked some of it out. You can certainly hear some bum notes and I was a little late on my timings here and there, but you can hear where I’m going with it. This is all improv and, well, I don’t know how to play piano. I’m just messing around in the major scales for G, C, and D following a basic 12 bar blues pattern.
Like all of my noodles, we’ll see where this one goes!
vd-movement
Well, I still haven’t recorded anything for “Wah Me” but I have had this little diddy dancing around in my head for a few weeks. I just laid down a noodle recording of it to try it out. It still isn’t what I heard in my head but at least I can hear it. I’m not sure if the percussion is exactly what will end up in the final version (whenever that’s finished) and the guitar sounds chinsy. We’ll see where this one goes…
Oh yeah, the title “Romance” comes from the lyrics that popped into my head today while I was formulating the song. Vocals are not included in this noodle mix.
Romance
For Christmas, my wife bought me a wah wah peddle. Since it was early in the month I convinced her to let me play it the first night. You know, to make sure that it sounded good and worked (and because I was dying to use it, but that wouldn’t go over as well). After screwing around with the settings a bit, I settled in to a sound that fit my playing. I kept playing around a few progressions and ended up recording it.
First I put down a guitar track just to get a basic feel. Then I found a looped drum track that fit the feel and adjusted the tempo to match what I was playing. I randomly chose portions of the song that would increase in intensity, and then I went back and recorded a bass line. I made it up as I went along and eventually found a groove. For the increased intensity bits I used the wah on the bass. After recording the drums and bass I went back and recorded the guitar part. After recording I played with the mix a bit (try listening with headphones) to clean things up and make it more interesting. Not that this is by any means a final product, of course, but it’s always nice to hear what you can do with the tracks in the mix.
I must say, man this one’s rough. The intense portion turned out to just be noise (it was fun while I was playing it, but the end result is still noise). Here and there the bass and guitar hit a groove, but overall, man this one’s rough.
Since recording this initial “jam” I’ve attempted to write and lay down a bass groove. As soon as I actually receive the wah wah I’ll try recording a new draft of this one. We’ll see where it goes!
wah-me-noodle