A few weeks ago I shared a song in progress as The Ominous Folk work on a song about Annamarie Nightshade, written for us by Keith Errington. Annamarie is a character from the Hopeless, Maine project and The Ominous Folk started life as a Hopeless project too, although it's definitely now a project in its own right as well.
In the first blog and video, we were breaking the song in and just getting a feel for it. By the time we got to this second video, we'd had time to think about the song. Susie has taken the lead with arrangement decisions, particularly in changing the pace and establishing an underlying beat to sing it to. We usually handle arrangements in this way. We try things, we discuss them, we see what ideas arise and we go with those. No one goes into a song with an exact sense of how it should work, and the process of figuring it out is always collaborative.
I've changed my harmony line slightly - the last note at the end of each chorus, and a rather more ambitious high note at the end. I've kept the uneasy harmonies. I have work to do with the first verse - nothing unusual there. One of the things we're able to do as a group is sing together without using an instrument to give us the notes, and without pitch pipes. This takes a lot of practice. We will get to the point where Susie and I will just look at each other and then hit the starting notes. It's the sort of thing that looks like witchcraft when you do it live, but actually depends on putting in the time and work.
With current conversations around use of computers in art, I'm conscious that a lot of people see the magical bit and not the process that gets you there. The difference between people who create and people who don't isn't magic, or luck. It's just a question of spending the time on it. Equally, no one needs a machine to do the creative process for them, it's just a question of patience and effort. In this case, being willing to sing the same song, over and over until it works.
At the next round of developing this song, we'll have a harmony line from Tom underneath these two - that's most of the way there as well, and James coming in to bolster up the chorus.
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