Filming Evaluation - Day Three - The Song

On the 28th December 2015, we met up at Charley's house at 10am. From then on, we were rehearsing and practicing the song in which we had written and composed together. The song would be used during the running scene, as I would be running to it. The lyrics are:

Song lyrics for 'Living a Lie'

I used to stay awake with you

Talking till two

I was in love with you

But you were blocking my view

And every single time you spoke

I couldn't cope

Never wanted to let go

But now I struggle with hello

Just open your eyes 

And you will see

Now I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day to day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye 

Cos we were living a lie

Do you remember the time

You lay by my side

I couldn't call it then

Never thought that it would end

And every time you smiled at me

I could never believe

This was never meant to be

The end of you and me

Please just open up your eyes

And look at me 

Because I'm flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day 

I want to find you now 

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

I wish that I had known

How much we had to grow

But it's okay

I was better alone anyway

Now I'm flying 

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I am flying

And I'm not crying

I'm living my life

Day by day

I want to find you now

Some place, some where, some how

I need to say goodbye

Cos we were living a lie

In our group, we were lucky to have the talented musicians, Charley and David. They could both sing and play guitar, and coincidentally, Charley's dad was an amateur music producer, having the appropriate software, skills and equipment necessary to assist us in the recording and production of our song.

After David arrived a little later than planned, we had already ran through the song multiple times and were ready to get straight in. Unfortunately, David didn't know the song as well as we had hoped, so the majority of the morning was spent teaching him how the vocals and chords go. 

Whilst Amy and Charley were teaching David and ensuring he knows it perfectly, Charley's dad, Guy, was teaching me how to use the software, Sonar X3 Studios.

This was a very exciting opportunity as I knew exactly what to do and so we could get on with it. Charley and David started with warming up their vocals by doing some simple practices. Then, we had to record a reference track, which would enable us to fit the lyrics precisely with the tune, and also re-record parts of the song if there were areas which didn't sound too good. David got his guitar and ran through the song a few times with Charley until he knew exactly what he was doing. This took a long time to do, as David didn't know the song as well as we thought he did, but this meant that Amy and I could re-watch our footage and check we had everything, also it enabled us to run through the software and ensure that we could use it accurately.

Once we had the reference track, Guy taught me how to add some more instruments onto the track, so that it sounded more like a professional track. This added depth to the song and made it sound more realistic as a professional song. We also experimented with the tempo, until it was accurate, which ended up being 115.00, with the timing of 4/4. 

In Guy's recording room, it was similar to a study, so that meant that it was not sound proof. Charley lives near a main road, meaning that there was a lot of background noise which we wanted to eliminate. We ended up using Charley's duvet to hold around the microphone, so the background noise would be blocked out. This worked effectively but was very tiring to hold up! 
Charley recorded her part first, as this meant that David would be able to listen to Charley's recording and harmonise to her. After we had recorded all of the lyrics, and the guitar, we put them together and listened back to it. Unfortunately, it wasn't at the standard that we were hoping. Charley and Guy re-recorded her part in an attempt to fix the song, but it was unsuccessful, after working on it for a full day, we decided to go home and think about how we could improve it.

We planned to go back to Charley's house after school on Wednesday 6th January, so that we could re-record the necessary sections. This time, we hoped that they both knew the song perfectly, but there were still a few tweaks in Davids vocals that needed adapting. Again, the beginning of the session was used going over the song, but granted, this was partly because we were waiting for Guy to finish work in order for us to go into the recording room. 
This time, we knew what we needed to do so we worked more efficiently and managed to get everything re-recorded. That was all we needed to do, as Guy was walking Charley through how to use the software so she didn't need us to be there for the editing process of the song. Overall, although we were limited for time as it was a school night, we worked better than we did on the initial day, which could be due to the fact that we knew exactly what we needed to do and how we were going to do it.