Here’s a rough mix of the fifth song from the Spellbound project. As mentioned previously, this is a two-part song that was a collaboration between Martin and myself. This is reflected in the musical structure and instrumentation along with the lyric. The first part is built on a rhythm guitar pattern providing the backbone, with a swoopy synth solo floating on top and a synth bass underpinning it all. Martin’s original guitar track was a six-string electric with a flange effect. I tried to emulate that, and also double-tracked it on twelve-string guitar. When we wrote this song Martin only played six-string, but later on switched to twelve-string as his main sound. I have one of his old twelve-string guitars and have been looking for opportunities to use it to make the music sound more like him.
Martin originally sang the lead vocals on the first section, but on this recording I’m doing all the singing, so I added a bit of EQ to the vocal tracks, giving his parts a boost in the upper treble and mine a boost in the low treble to differentiate them a bit. This is kind of funny because back then I used to be able to sing really high, and was the guy in my rock group to sing the Rush and Yes songs.
In the second section the instrumentation switches to a keyboard sound. In the original I used my Roland Alpha Juno. For this recording I have a stack of electric piano, clavinet and the Polysynth sound from the Juno blended together. There’s also electric bass, which is an option not available to us in the original sessions. This section has a really nice dynamic flow, coming down and building back up in the chorus. There’s a synth solo and an electric guitar solo. I based my solo and guitar sound on Martin’s original, but back then it was just a couple Boss pedals, now it’s a whole universe of computerized effects to learn how to craft. After the guitar solo I introduced a new section I call the big build, with guitars and synths and everybody going nuts in a coordinated fashion, climaxing in a dramatic pause. There was a section in the original toward that I had considered cutting cuz it was kinda just there, but I filled it in with a bit more guitar and synth jamming and really brought it to a satisfying place.
The outro is a long synth solo with a slow build, using the pattern of the first section.
I must say this came out much better than I expected with I first started tracking it. At first I didn’t really think it was a super strong song, but rather was kind of long and meandering, clocking in at over seven minutes. But the new arrangement has lots of instrumental layers and dynamics, and of course the performance and recording are much better. It really takes you on a journey! Here is it is, enjoy!
https://zingman.com/music/mp3/spellbound25/TheCallOfTheMuse31.mp3