We’ve got a new single out today. Download the high quality MP3 for free right here
–David Child
In the last blog post, I talked about how I carry around an audio recorder with me wherever I go. It’s a great way to capture melody ideas when I’m not near my main music computer. That being said, these song sketches pile up really, really quickly. If I didn’t have a system in place for organizing them, I’d have hundreds of audio files with cryptic names all over my desktop in no time. As promised, this week, I’m going to cover how I deal with this song ideas after I’ve recorded them.
As you’ve probably gleaned from this post’s title, once a week, I review all of the song ideas that have accumulated on my iPhone. I save the best ones in a catalog of song parts so that they can easily be assembled into full songs later.
Usually, I do this on my desktop computer and with an acoustic guitar within easy reach so that I can play with the ideas and come up with other related ideas before archiving them. The first step is to get all of the song pieces into a folder on my music computer. Next, I go through each of the files in the folder. For each piece, I follow these steps:
File Name | Ideal Key | Key Range | Ideal Tempo | Tempo Range | Rating |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
B017 you you took me by surprise.mp3 | G# | E-A | 150 | 150-155 | ☆☆☆☆ |
Here’s a quick rundown of the columns:
That’s it! I do this every week. It usually takes me a half an hour or so for all of the parts. Periodically, I’ll go into the song pieces folder on my computer and try out different combinations. When I’ve used a part in one of my songs, I’ll put a (*) next to name of the part in the list so that I know not to reuse it elsewhere. Once I’ve got two or three parts that can be combined into a full song, I’ll record a quick acoustic demo of the pieces working together, and then get to work on actually recording the song in earnest.
Hope this helps!
–David Child
Hello everyone,
We’re announcing a brand new Manwomanchild single called “Chile La Roja.” The song appears on a compilation entitled: Fast Forward: An Indie Music Compantion to South Africa 2010.
Enjoy and Go La Roja!
–David Child
Hey everyone,
Announcing a brand new Manwomanchild single called “Louis XIV.”
You can listen to it and download it for free here: http://louisxiv.manwomanchild.org/
Check out the new EP here. Sign up for the mailing list and download all three tracks for free. Or, if you’re feeling flush, you can buy them on iTunes or Amazon MP3.
A little background info about the release:
David Child – Vocals, Guitars, Synths
Craig Gifford – Bass Guitar
Mason Neely – Drums, Percussion
The record was recorded in 2009 at Machine With Magnets in Pawtucket, RI. The album was recorded and mixed by Keith Souza and Seth Manchester.
The EP was mastered by Jeff Lipton of Peerless Mastering in Newton, MA.
–MANWOMANCHILD