PB004 - Cry Me A River

This week I put my new song – A River – on Bandcamp. This is the first song from an upcoming EP – A Means of Communication.
I’ve not decided whether these songs will go on Spotify eventually or not. But I would really, really love for people to go and listen to it on Bandcamp and follow me there. You’ll like Bandcamp, and the £12 a month you’re currently giving to Spotify could instead go to an artist you want to support.

I’d also love it if you could share it with friends, enemies, family, colleagues—anyone who might like it. I’m trying to find out if I can get enough people listening to quell my internal doubts, without entering back into the Spotify-playlist-Instagram complex that I’ve described previously. The only mechanism for that to happen is if people I know [you] send the link to people I don’t know.

This post is going to be the history of how I made the song. Hopefully, it is of some interest and gives some understanding of the hours I am wasting on this shit.

Structure

I am often at risk of over-analysing things. Combined with having no logical schedule or budget, this made me start to impose artificial constraints. These are partly to stop myself from using the perfection of one thing as an excuse not to make the next thing, partly to stop myself ruining the thing by working it to death, and partly to stop myself from losing touch with reality.
As a result, when I’m making music, I try to be clearly in one of a few modes and not go backwards to a previous phase: sketching, writing, recording, editing, mixing, or mastering. So… this is the structure we’ll follow.

Sketching

The initial sketch came quickly. I had my Ableton Move – a little drum-machine-cum-synthesizer that I use for sketching out ideas without needing a computer – plugged into my guitar loop pedal, drummed in the claps as the basic rhythm, played a simple guitar line over the top, and then layered the ‘Indian Flute’ sound I have become slightly obsessed with.
This is the first version, just called Flutey Loops: it had a hypnotic groove, and I thought it might turn into something more electronic.

I sent it to my friend Ray to add a beat. He sent back a new version with a breakbeat on it.

I liked the rhythm and the sense of tension, but didn’t have a strong idea of where it was going.

Writing

Around the same time, I was clearing space on my computer—deleting old Ableton files—and stumbled across a demo called Crumbling Down.

I have absolutely no memory of recording it, but it’s clearly using my equipment and it was on my computer, so I assume I made it. Strangely, it had a similar rhythm and key to Flutey Loops — not quite, but close enough to make me think I could use it as the ending.

I reworked and rerecorded the guitar parts from Crumbling Down, and through that process, I found what I now think of as the essence of the song. My music doesn’t have lyrics, and often not even a proper hook, so I’m always asking myself: what is the song?

My music theory is limited, but here’s what I think is happening: the first half of the song uses a D minor pentatonic scale. The five notes in that scale are all in C major, but C has two extra. With the two unplayed notes and everything resolving to D, the beginning of the song feels like it is in D minor. In the second section, one note in the bassline shifts, but the tonal centre is still D, so it moves into something like D Dorian (I had to look that up—I don’t fully understand it). The final section introduces a different guitar part that adds an extra note to the scale and settles things firmly in C major – a much brighter, happier key.

Once I figured this out, the gradual harmonic change really hooked me. I liked the way it moved from something darker and ambiguous to something brighter and more open, without an obvious turning point.

Ray had stopped replying by now, so I slowed the track down and swapped the electronic drums for acoustic ones.

Recording

This video will give you the best idea of the different guitar and keyboard parts I recorded. I was experimenting with some TikTok video editing software to visualise the different layers in the song, so I apologise in advance for any motion sickness.

That was in late March and is pretty close to the first demo I was traying to get ready for a music production retreat I was going on.

At the retreat, I had access to decent microphones, a box of percussion instruments, and people with rhythm. I recorded several layers of shakers, tambourines, and sticks – all trying to enhance the feeling of the second half lifting and expanding.

Editing

Invariably, the parts I record have mistakes. More and more I try to practise playing the part properly then rerecord it, but I still do a fair bit of fixing in post. This process is another internal battleground for me – deciding what is so ‘wrong’ that it distracts from the song vs what smoothing out of variation would ruin the song or even just deny the fact that I’m a human and a DIY musician.

Mixing

While on the retreat, I learned a lot about mixing. So when I got home, I mixed the song from scratch. I’m too close to my own songs to know if I’m being objective, but I do think this song is a step up from anything I’ve mixed before. I hope the songs that follow match it.

What I learned was to strip back all the complicated techniques and plugins I’d picked up from YouTube over the years and focus on the basics: EQ, panning, compression. Used well, and with care. Practically and philosophically, I was very much taken with this approach.

The reality of this process is me mixing a handful of songs at home, then listening to them on different headphones every time I leave the house, making mental notes, coming home, making changes, re-exporting—repeating this until either I can’t find anything to change or I feel I’m at risk of going mad. 

Mastering

Mastering is the final stage of production, when an engineer uses a few simple tools to delicately bring the song to life and make sure that it sounds as good as it can in all environments—not just on my speakers in my lounge. It is also an opportunity for a fresh pair of ears to listen and identify issues that the producer has just got used to over time.

If I could justify the expense, I’d love to pay someone else to master my songs, but I’m already throwing a lot of money away on this project, so I decided to draw the line here. Instead, I listened to twenty-or-so hours of podcasts with an incredibly dry mastering engineer called Ian Shepherd. I also used a free trial of some very expensive software to measure the effect my room has on the sound in order to offset that while I’m mastering.

Finally, in the past, I’ve noticed my songs often sound quieter or thinner than professional releases. I can now see—and measure—that I’ve improved on that.

Recording & Editing (Again)

I sent the finished mix to Chris, who ran the retreat. He was super helpful and sent back some oohs and aahs, which I used to pad out the second half.

Then, out of nowhere, my friend Jon McGovern sent me a live drum take — followed by a full horn section recorded by his friend Jason Wosniak.

I thought the track was done, so this sent me into a bit of a spin. The added parts brought a lot more energy — but also shifted it away from the calm, steady feeling I’d been working toward. I used them subtly, but they add a lot of texture and keep the ending building for longer than it otherwise would.

Still, the full horns and drums sounded amazing, so I made a second version: Full Flow Edit. It’s more triumphant. Arguably, just better.

At this point (late May), Ray got back in touch. He was ready to work on the track again, but I’d listened to it a thousand times and couldn’t face making more changes.
I sent him the stems and he made a remix that I love — kind of dub, kind of house — built around the flute hook but otherwise completely different. I mastered that version too.

So now there are three versions.

Naming

Naming lyricless songs has always been an interesting question for me. Sometimes I’ve used it as a chance to project meaning onto a blank space — using a phrase I’d like to propagate in the universe. More often, I see it as a way to acknowledge the arbitrary nature of the creative process and just pick something – as I have ‘just picked’ so many other aspects of the song to stop myself getting lost in details rather than making music.

Various flute puns were in the running, but then I remembered a game Emma found on the street: Tell Me, a 70s quiz game with vintage cards and a spinner. I loved the aesthetic of the cards and decided to use them for both artwork and titles. Once limited to those 50 or so prompts, the right name was an easy choice.
It’s called A River — because it builds and expands like one.

Please go and listen & share – I hope you enjoy it.

Free Palestine – go and protest.

PB x