Leave You Blue - 2011-02-21 mix

Leave You Blue is a song that Pia and I wrote last year, with Mel contributing some lyrics. It is a funny little song about a relationship that has gone sour, partly set to a standard 1950's chord sequence that has been used in lots of soppy songs.

The lead vocals are obviously mine. They're meant to be overly passionate and I think I succeeded. The distortion is a due to my tube pre-amp being overdriven - an accident that could have been corrected via a quick re-take. However, we liked it, so we kept it - I figure it sounds like a bad singer in an RSL club who is trying too hard. The Barry White style comments in the intro and solo are some of my usual goofing around while recording, but we decided that they fit, so we kept them. So, in summary, the lead vocals are mostly accidental! :-)

My other contributions to the recording are the vaguely mandolin-style guitar on the right, which I recorded using a capo on the 7th fret and spiced up with some delay, and the lead guitar.

Pia played bass and the guitar on the left. Her backing vocal sections are each a single, first-take recorded after a couple of listens and sing-a-longs. It is amazing to watch Pia just pluck harmonies out of the air! We've made them sound all ethereal using some delay, reverb and other effects - we didn't take the time to record multiple multi-tracked parts.

The somewhat annoying drum track was sequenced by Pia and I in a hurry before we started recording the other parts. I look forward to adding real drums. :-)

I think it's a pretty reasonable demo. A full band version with keyboards and big electric guitars should be fun!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License.

The composition Leave You Blue is Copyright 2010 Martin Schwenke, Pia Waugh & Melynda McDonald, all rights reserved.