TL:DR – My songwriting process for a recent composition entitled Ticking Clocks. Stream or download it here.
About a week ago, I mentioned that I was putting together a new song. I’d recorded a so-called 1+1 demo (just me singing with Martin guitar). But, earlier this week I hooked up with Adam, the drummer from my band, and we worked on the arrangement in his ad hoc studio with me on Taylor guitar (DI, direct injection, into the desk, U-phoria UMC404HD) and he on drums (electronic drums with an acoustic kit setting, also DI into my desk).
Once we had things just about right and had recorded a decent take of the drums and guitar, Adam added some nice retro 70s synth (the synth sound is called “Chick Corea”). I then returned to my home “studio” to record vocals (MXR mic), to add some electric guitar (Ibanez RG, EQ’d to a jazzy tone), Yamaha bass, and even a bit of tuned percussion in the form of MIDI glockenspiel played on my Akai keyboard (MPK mini).
I then mixed down the multiple tracks into the final song using one of the less well-known, but just as good digital audio workstations (DAWs), Acoustica Mixcraft. There’s really no need to break the bank on Pro Tools, Logic or whatever at this level. After all, most of the heavy lifting is done by the VST (virtual studio technology) plugins that even the professionals use in their pricey software. Mixcraft is basically GarageBand for Windows.
I then worked up a photo of a broken clock taken by Adam to create this montage with the title of the song and our names. Oh, and I recorded the ticking of a working clock for the very end of the track.
Lyrically, I am still thinking this is about the young woman in The Beatles’ song She’s Leaving Home. We never knew for sure why she left, but it seems there were issues. My song is almost a sequel to that song and perhaps we can imagine she is called Luka, as in the Suzanne Vega song, perhaps even the suitcase in my song is the very same suitcase that was ‘pulled from under the bed’ in the Squeeze song Another Nail in my Heart. Now she’s back at her childhood home and they are gone. However, you take it, The Beatles, Suzanne Vega, Squeeze and perhaps (as Adam pointed out) even The Style Council were influences on the final song, and a touch of Rush with the intro, I confess.
The key turns in the lock
she pushed the door wide open
with her suitcase. It’s a shock
to find herself back here once again
She locked the secrets deep inside
Unanswered prayers her woe betide
She finds the clocks
They stopped the day she stepped away
From the cruellest of hard knocks
and all the fear that it revealed
The silent screams, the sound that mocks
Those echoes drowned by ticking clocks
No need to knock
She grasps the letters from the floor
You know she’s taking stock
And gasps to know the secrets
they don’t hold her any more
The key’s inside the box.
She didn’t need to worry
About secrets locked up deep inside
Unanswered prayers her woe betide
She winds the clocks
And knows the secrets they can’t hold her
The cruellest of hard knocks
and all the fears that they concealed
She locked the secrets deep inside
Unanswered prayers her woe betide
She faced the shocks
And knows the secrets they can’t hold her
The hardest of hard knocks
And all her fears now gone forever
The latest iteration of my song Ticking Clocks is available to stream for free on BandCamp, or name your price and you can download it.
You will hopefully listen all the way through and hear the proggie addition of a ticking clock at the end that has a growing reverb bloom and pans away from centre…well, a friend mentioned that he liked that addition to the song and assumed it was some grand long-case clock. Unfortunately, the reality of my home studio is much more mundane…
This screengrab shows the tools I used to make the clock sound much better: Compression and Reverb:
I had tried to use ChatGPT to help with the lyrics and the title, but none of its suggestions worked in any way. I also used MidJourney AI to generate some poignant artwork, but none of that really fit either. Top left works best, top-right spoiled by hovering suitcase, bottom-left too old, bottom-right too young.
None of the versions in this generation work, although bottom left could inspire another iteration, where the girl is standing looking into the house and its raining indoors!
