With our next single just around the corner, I thought I'd actually get off my arse and write another blog and talk you through I don't want to say goodbye.  So, here I am, on a train on my way to the office - ON A FRIDAY - having just had from Tuesday to Thursday off because a very, very dodgy stomach.  I'm still not eating (which probably isn't a bad thing) but I am on my way into the office…  ON A FRIDAY!  How many other people would actually come into work ON A FRIDAY, having been off the rest of the week?  Huh?  Huh?  Exactly.

 

Anyway, this song then.  It was first written, largely by Tommy, back when we first started working together on the album we assembled in just over a year that we called Closer.  For us, the entire album was amazing because we'd never really thought we could put a whole album together before, but in reality, the whole thing was dire.  This is why, in putting together our new (but still first) album, we're salvaging parts from the wreckage of Closer, polishing them up and hoping to have something that actually works at the end of it all. 

 

Much has changed since 2000, when we first produced this song.  For those interested in the technical side of things, where we were using something like Cool Edit (I think), to 'mix' parts together, which was hellish because if you got the timing out, you had to unmix it, then budge the cursor along a bit and then mix it again…  and if that wasn't right, then you had to undo it and start over…  Then maybe you'd put another part over the top of the bits you were happy with and then decide that the first part might be a bit too loud.  Well, then you were pretty much screwed.  To.  The.  Wall.

 

With Acid Pro, of course, it's a lot easier, you can apply effects separately, try them out against the bed of the rest of the track, adjust volumes, change positions and even fiddle with effects' parameters real time in a logical fashion.  So that's a huge difference between now and then. 

 

What else is new?  Actually, not a lot.  The synth is the same and Tommy is still Tommy, however I think something's different about both of those two elements.  Experience, I think, has counted for a lot of change in both the way I produce music and the way Tommy performs vocals, plus now, with the different mixing software, double-tracking vocals and applying harmonies is much less time-consuming and sonically hazardous than it used to be and so as a producer, you just feel more inclined to do it.

 

I was considering doing an I don't want to say goodbye changelog, you know, like they do when they bring out a new version of software, but I thought I might be a bit too gimmicky, it wouldn't really be comprehensive and probably lacking in detail.

 

Lyrically speaking, I don't want to say goodbye is fantastic, in my opinion.  Tommy did such an amazing job coming up with some really heartfelt lines.  He wrote it from his own point of view as well, which makes the whole thing feel quite therapeutic and I remember receiving the bit of paper with these lyrics written on and thinking that it was something pretty special.  Originally, I couldn't really extract a chorus, nothing really had the feel of a chorus, so I think I just pressed on with putting together a demo track using the lyrics I did have, then hit where a chorus should be and just wrote it around where the music was going, which is why the lyrics of the chorus have a clearly different rhythm to the verses, which I like because the change of pace keeps the song dynamic.

 

I don't think the chorus sounds as though it was written by someone else though, it is very in-keeping with the feel of the rest of the song, but I do think sometimes that perhaps I could have written some better lyrics to keep up with those that Tommy had written.  I love the way, for example, the opening of the song is this barrage of questions, the whole first verse in fact, is just questions, all asking the same thing: are you okay?  Are you going to be okay?  It's fantastic.

 

The new version of the song is based on a live version I put together, but was never used.  I have a system of putting the letter L at the end of the synth's filenames if it's a live version, What I've gotta do went from GOTTADO.SNG to GOTTADOL.SNG, which made me titter, and GOODBYE.SNG turned into GOODBILE.SNG, because, well…  Tom Baker rocks.

 

So yeah.  The live version's music was a slightly rougher-sounding cut of a track that's on the EP, SilverSpirit's first and second movements, which is basically a rip-off of a remix name of Pet Shop Boys' Go West (track 3 on the single, I think) where the main song played followed by a longish dancy bit.  I felt the same principle applied here, so the name just fitted.  But yeah, so that's the live version, mixed with the same vocals that we'd recorded for the proper track so it is not, obviously, live. 

 

The harp.  The harp's new.  I liked the harp because I wanted something to pan to the left (or the right on first and second movements because I had my cables around the wrong way (I left it because I thought it was different)) that would balance the glock on the right and I really liked the way the harp line sounds as though it's really playable by a real harpist.  Sometimes you hear harps used in such a way as you don't think the harpist would really be able to move quickly enough to get their fingers pluck those strings that hard, so I'm quite pleased that our harp line sounds faintly realistic even though it is, it has to be said, a preset that I'd not even bothered modifying (if it ain't broke&hellip.

 

The piano line.  That piano line is easily one of the best melodies that I've written; it's probably really one of my favourites.  I'm sure when we release the single and EP we'll get sued because it's already been done or something, but I've never heard it before and I'm really, really proud of it.  A pianist friend of ours, when we first recorded I don't want to say goodbye in 2000, said that, basically, he didn't like the music, didn't like Tommy's vocals, but liked "that little piano phrase".  I remember feeling really pissed off because, though it was nice to have praise about the piano line, what was more important to me was the whole package and how it worked and he'd clearly not taken in those lyrics or just listened to the bigger… um, audio-picture. 

 

Yeah, I dunno, it went a bit odd there, didn't it.  Audio-picture.  Quoi?

 

The piano line has been set back in the new version so that it's not such a central part of the track, I worried a bit that people would get a bit bored of it and it would stop it from being catchy.  Is it catchy?  I think it is, but it's all subjective, isn't it. 

 

I was going to warble on about the remixes and what-have-you, but I've just realised that I've gone on for ages and ages and ages, so I'll just shut up…  Finally. 

 

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