Songs from Across the Sea is the last song from the short album we made as our wedding favors. See the last post for more details on that superfly CD. I like this song, but it suffers the same production woes as The Lifting (you can’t get gold records when you’re producing yourself and you’ve never done it before). And, there’s the lyrics. They are weird. They try to tell the story of my heartache while Mary Ann lived in China, of our being separated, but bringing sea animals into the picture does not help things.

Mary Ann and I have developed an alternative version sans angel porpoise calling anyone’s name, but this multitrack is in stone. Not because it’s sonic grooves have been carved from historic Knoxville marble, but because I didn’t save the tracks. You’ll learn a lot in the studio without a tutor—a lot of bad habits.

I feel proud of the resonating stereo space in this song. It builds out using multiple acoustic guitars, multiple electric guitars, MIDI organ with a Reason sample, MIDI chimes with a different Reason sample, sweet Reason beats, three or four vocal tracks, and a butt-load of reverb.

In two weeks, Imma hit you up with a recent song.

This song comes from Songs from Across the Sea, the short album my wife and I put together preparing for our wedding. I made this song up in the recording studio at Johnson Bible College while I worked to get presentable songs together. We gave away the finished five-song set as the wedding gift to our guests.

I wish I had saved the multitrack on this file as I would like to hear an instrumental version. That’s what you get when you don’t back files up in a classroom studio. The Lifting has three guitar takes, two panned far on either side and one in the center. I fell into the introduction because, when making the songs, I acted as my own studio technician. I’d press record on Pro Tools and then mentally prepare for the take before I started playing. The recording had a minute of silence before the song started, so I would noodle until the song started. That turned into the introduction.

I like the song in general, but it’s rushed on many levels: the vocals are mixed too hot and sound piercing. The lyrics stay too far away from understandability, and the second verse—the one that formed the song for me—keeps the awkward phrase, “And my mom missed her sister’s face.” That could afford to sound less weird. The three guitar arrangement sounds too simple. But, lo, I did not have the instruments nor the time.

In summary, this song is a first draft that’s produced well. It could add depth and polish to revisit it down the road, but I’d prefer to move on to new, better material.