Critical Appreciation

I was playing around with some different chord progressions and really liked the sound of this one. The C, C7, F, Fm progression, it made me feel reassured about love then turning to melancholy when the F resolves into Fm. It was a good start but I felt I definitely needed to add more chords and couldn't leave it as those four chords repeating. I added a progression of C, Em7, Am, Am/G, D/F#, G, G7, which is a progression that I have found a lot in other songs that I really like. These two progressions were good for the verses but needed to come up with something for a chorus. Switching to Em felt right to contrast between the verses starting on major chords but also wasn't the relative minor. For the beginning of the chorus I liked the change from Em to Am, so far so good but really wanted to add a nice change so it wasn't just Em, Am, Em, Am. I then decided after the second Em to go to the A7 which feels like a key change, though I'm not sure if it is one, which I really liked. From there, after A7, I went D, D7, G, Bdim7 which resolves nicely back to Am the relative minor of C, I also just like adding the dim7 chord to songs. Once back to the Am I repeat the chords from the end of the verses going from Am to Am/G, D/F#, G, G7 which brought me back to the beginning of the verses. I thought I'd do another verse after the second chorus for a small solo. I kept it simple as I'm not super proficient at soloing so it took me a while to come up with the solo which pretty much simulates the main vocal melody with some slight differences. I do a final chorus and then finish halfway through the verse, I liked the sound of finishing on the Fm rather than C and it fit well with the lyrics too.

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For the lyrics, I started with the lyric "Whatever you want, my dear" and so felt the rest of the song should be a confession of feelings of love to someone. I got the feeling that the person that the lyrics are referring to is in need of some reassuring. I started to write more lyrics with this theme in mind. Originally, the song was going to be called "Whatever" as an homage to The Beatles song "Something" and also because I intended to start each verse with the word "Whatever". That changed though as I preferred the first line of "Whenever you're near, my dear" and so I would change the name of the song to "My Dear" as eventually this would be a repeated phrase in the chorus. For the chorus, I had this line "Though it's profound," so wanted the chorus to be a reminder of how special feeling in love is. The rest of the chorus sort of seemed to come naturally from the initial line, miracles seem pretty profound and the chances of meeting someone you feel compatible with and actually love seems miraculous and marries well with the first part of the chorus. Then adding "I love you honestly, my dear" seemed like an easy choice as a direct declaration of love with the two words that would become the title of the song. I was happy with how the lyrics developed and was content with four unique verses. I liked the idea of repeating the first verse as the outro to the song as it gave those lines a bit more gravitas as it would be the only verse that was repeated.

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When it came to recording the song I used my MacBook Pro with Logic Pro. I recorded my voice twice, once for the melody and another for the harmony. I recorded my guitar twice as well, once for the rhythm and another for the solo. I recorded my vocals with a condenser mic and recorded my guitar with a direct line, I have since learned that recording an electro/acoustic guitar with a microphone rather than a direct line produces a much better sound so I will do this in the future. I will need to buy another mic in order to do this and I think I'll get some other equipment at the same time as getting a new microphone like a new mic stand for it. I used a Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 audio interface which I've had for quite some time and is a very reliable piece of kit. I am essentially a novice when it comes to mixing, though I did do a module of DAW when completing my HNC. Regardless, I didn't record enough and as the old adage goes "Use it or lose it", so I got a lot of outside help when it came to mixing the track. I haven't recorded much as I don't have my equipment set up all the time. After recording this though I got the desire to do it more. I have a lot of unrecorded material written in my computer and hope to finish writing those songs and then record them over the Summer.

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I have other songs I have written on word documents on my computer but wanted to write a totally new song for this project. I don't think it is one of my best songs but I like what it's become. It's been a good exercise to try and write a completely new song without waiting on becoming inspired to write something. I think next time I will watch some videos about mixing and mastering and try to incorporate what I learn when recording my other tracks in the future. It was fun trying to come up with something new and it's a skill I should develop further for writing. Waiting to be inspired to write something can take a lot of time in comparison to deliberately sitting down and writing something completely new.