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For song 6, I liked the idea of the “‘ice-cream chords’ challenge” (i.e. write a song involving the “ice-cream” or “50s” chord progression - I-vi-IV-V, or C-Am-F-G in the key of C), not least because I could “dovetail” it with one of my current musical preoccupations…

In recent months, I’ve been listening a fair amount to Buddy Holly’s songs, and particularly what are often called his “Apartment Tapes”: the last, largely acoustic recordings he made in his New York apartment around December 1958, weeks before he died. I won’t bore you with a lecture (though a blog post might get it off my chest!), but in short I believe Holly’s death was not only a personal tragedy for those close to him, but also a great loss to music. (We can’t know what he would have achieved had he lived, but I like to think he might have gone down a rootsy/Americana path, rather as JJ Cale did from the early-70s. Discuss )

For my “ice-cream chords” song, I approached recording it in a similar vein to a good proportion of Holly’s “apartment tapes” demos: a guitar-and-vocal main “take”, but in my case, adding a couple of overdubs, which Holly never got the chance to do. I first tried recording with acoustic guitar and vocal into the same mike (Sonic Port VX), recording into Music Memos on the iPad, and letting MM build a drums/bass backing. This worked OK to my ears, so I sent the song to Garageband (iPad) and overdubbed a second vocal (to bolster the original), and electric rhythm and lead guitar (Ministar Testar). Mixed in Logic Pro X.

(Funnily enough, I realised just as I was uploading this demo: I hadn't recorded it as I intended! I'd meant the intro chords to be the "ice cream" ones, and the chorus chords to be the IC ones "out of sequence" (IV-V-I-vi), but in the end I played the intro as I-I-IV-V... maybe I'll have another go sometime?)

lyrics

So it’s Friday
I’ll pick you up today
By six-thir-tay
Mmm-mmm

You and me
Hot-dogs surely
A drive-in movie
Mmm-mmm

Drive round town without a care
I know you'll be always there
Went shopping for a ring today
I wouldn’t want to miss a cliché

Home obediently, by
Ten-thirty
Parents happy
Mmm-mmm

I see your bedroom light
And you wave me goodnight
The whole world feels alright
Mmm-mmm

credits

from Blackbirds Banquet: Songs From FAWM 2016, released March 7, 2016
"Mason" - drums
TA Walker - acoustic and electric guitars, vocals, Garageband "upright bass"

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TA Walker UK

Guitarist/multi-instrumentalist, composer and songwriter, often with "electronica", "lo-fi" and "prog" inclinations.

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