When I returned to the hastily recorded idea of “Saturday Brunch”, a couple of days later, I still liked the chord progression and the theme – so I started arranging the music and programming a demo track of the song.
In a situation like this, 9 out of 10 times I’ll start with the drums. I have a few kits that I always aim for when making neutral sounding demo’s. By “neutral”, I mean that it’s going to sound like a standard drum kit, not too fancy, not too artificial and not dictating a certain style … kind of open for “everything”.
Ok, today I’m going to post the first samples from the making of my next album – samples showing how a tune develops from idea to recorded demo. After this, I’ll write more about how the demo develops and what I do before the track is ready for real musicians. This is the first post of a series about the development from the very first demo until the final song is there, and later on I’ll also write about other songs.
Saturday Brunch
The working title of this song is “Saturday Brunch”, guess why … Yes, it was on a Saturday and I had been eating brunch with my family – actually we were still eating, when one of the kids spilled milk on her clothes and the other one needed a dry diaper. My sweet wife said she would take care of it, and that I should enjoy one more cup of coffee – nice. While my wife and kids went upstairs, I sat and enjoyed the morning atmosphere. I picked up my guitar from a chair nearby and started jamming. Shortly after, I had a little groove going on. Two bluesy chords with a tail, some imaginary drums and bass, and I started humming an idea for a theme. I kind of liked this groovy little vamp, but couldn’t find my phone to record the idea like I normally do.
Normally I record my ideas for a son into my phone. BTW: this is a sreen dump from my phone, so you’re not supposed to play anything by pressing the play button.
A couple of years ago, keyboard player David Garfieldintroduced me to guitarist Paul Jackson jr. and thereby his Gibson ES-346 that he brought along with him for the gig. At the time the ES-346 was Paul Jackson jr.’s signature model. The guitar sounded fantastic and was super versatile. It had a full and massive tone like a Les Paul, with lots of sustain, and at the same time a warm and jazzy tone when it was needed. I was impressed and maybe a little in love.
Soren Reiff, Paul Jackson jr. & Forrest Robinson
After the gig I did some research and found that the model had been discontinued. I browsed the internet from time to time to see if I could find a used one, but without success.
This is a story about an unusual reunion. If we are friends on Facebook, you might already have read a few lines about this a couple of weeks ago, but here follows a more detailed account.
It all started when I got an email with an interesting offer: A former “girlfriend” would like to come and live with me again. I was a little anxious about how my wife would react to this. But when she heard about this old relationship, she said “go for it”. There’s a really good reason for this – because when I mention ”a former girlfriend”, I’m talking about a Valley Arts Guitar from the early nineties 🙂 Another reason might also be the fact that I don’t keep my guitars at home, so she doesn’t care that much about how many guitars I have 🙂
Over the years I have sold a few guitars. Luckily enough, I have only regretted a very few of my sales. One of the few sales I’ve regretted was the two Valley Arts Guitars I had during the nineties.
Yesterday I did a workshop/clinic on guitar effects in general and I talked about my pedalboard. I often get many questions about my setup, therefore I’ll post a couple of pictures of my current board below, and give a couple of tips concerning how to set up your pedalboard.
Since I don’t have any sponsor deals with any company/brand mentioned here – neither manufacturers or stores are allowed to use my name to promote any product, without prior written consent from me. But you are very welcome to link to this blog or to my site www.sorenreiff.com if you want other people to read about my setup.
The other day I wrote about how an idea develops into a song, and my approach to arranging the music. Today I’ll write about how I prepare a song for recording and my studio workflow around the recording sessions.
If I’ve been returning to an idea for a song and been able to see some potential, and still like the overall feel of the tune, I start to think more seriously about the arranging the music.
Arranging the music
At this point I normally have all the fundamental parts of the song; verse, bridge and chorus … So, it’s time to consider the overall flow of the track – how it builds up and develops.
I go through several different phases when I’m writing music before an idea for a song might end up as a recorded and maybe even released song. Here I’ve written about how I work when I’m composing music. Later on I’ll write about my workflow when I’m arranging music and preparing the song for recording.
The first idea for a song
I get almost all my ideas for my songs when I sit and jam by myself in a time gap between more important stuff – suddenly there’s a small phrase that catches my attention or maybe an interesting chord progression that inspires me for a theme or other chord progressions.
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