2020_12 To The River - Demo by Rose Wintergreen published on 2020-12-04T11:49:30Z A late night walk to the river. Standing on the St Kilda Rd bridge looking over the edge, this song arrived. I sung straight into my phone voice memo recorder. ---- Lyrics: I went for a walk to talk to the river I asked her what she saw What it is that makes her quiver in the night What makes her shiver What makes her believe that we’re gonna be alright I walked to the river to talk to the river To ask her what she saw When the lights changed, the music stopped… I walked to the river and I asked her what she saw It’s getting late now but the music is still going There are people walking past, they are wanting to know What I’m doing standing still here singing into my phone I went for a walk to the river to talk To ask her what she saw when no one was looking I went to the river I went to the river Are there still ripples in the water if there’s no one to see? Are there still lessons to be learned if no one’s there to be taught? Won’t you tell me? I walked to the river To see if she could tell me What it would take to be delivered a sense of hope I walked to the river and I asked her I walked to the river and I asked her – “won’t you talk to me?” I walked to the river and I asked her – “will you talk to me?” ---- Production notes: I've built the track around the original voice memo, reinforcing what it felt like looking out over the water, keeping it quite minimal but duplicating a small slice to create the eerie backing note sounds at different pitches, and fattened some key sections of the vocals with reverb backing layers etc. Spliced together with an open hihat sound used sparingly for texture, and two samples provided by Aimee Chapman for a Beat Collective Challenge. Processing notes for the Beat Collective samples: - sample 1 - the tinkering textured sound that appears at the very start and again at 0:56 and a couple of other spots further in. Still very recognisable. Just happened to drop it into this track at the end of my writing process and it worked in really well. Just compressed, added a slow pan, added some ambience and warmth. - sample 2 - pretty recognisable still. Comes in around 3:03 but most audible 3:13 onwards. Pitched down. Added Valhalla, reverb, frequency shifters, Filterbank vocoder, flanger, erosion, warmth, hot driven tape, Chopper autopan. Have put "Master - add sustain" and "Master - make it loud" on the master channel.
