Saber - They Say

The last of the three songs I recently finished:

  They Say by Saber (Major Awesome)

Lyrics:
The neon lights are bundled in my drinking glass
Standing there right next to me in the cooling grass
With every headlight passing us in this warm night
The thought of you returns

Nevermind this broken heart and wandering mind
Nevermind the time we had, the knowledge gained
Dont you mind our favourite place and our first kiss
I know I won't

CHORUS
And everything I need to say sounds trite so I pipe down
And every smile I had for you now turns into a frown
And every wall surrounding me still reflects your sound
Give it time to cool they say
Any girl will do they say
But noone matters when compared to you

At times I find myself racing through the streets I knew
When everyone seemed to look just like you 
And memories that cling to places that we shared
They come to live

Nevermind this broken heart and wandering mind
Nevermind the songs I saw you dancing to
Nevermind the ending days, our parting ways
You know I cant

CHORUS
BRIDGE


Give it time to cool they say
But noone makes me feel this way
And noone matters when compared to you
Give it time to cool they say
Any girl will do they say
But noone matters when compared to you



I began composing this one in August 2010. The acoustic guitar pattern that forms the basis for the chord structure was put together pretty quickly and hasn't been changed at all from its initial form because I liked it so much. During the weekend of composing I also wrote some lyrics for it and recorded a very early version with an electric clean guitar, just accompanied by vocals. I was not at all satisfied with the lyrics for the verses but I really liked the chorus, so I soon became frustrated with the song, also because I wanted to record a video of me playing and singing the song in one take and just couldn't do it properly. Thus the song was put on hold for several months and I didn't dare to try my luck with it again until March of this year.
First I began recording the guitar pattern again, this time on a nylon string guitar that I had borrowed from a friend. Her guitar was also equipped with a pickup, so I put it through my Digitech RP500 multi effect board and put some spring reverb and delay on it. At the same time I recorded the actual guitar with a microphone placed in front of it to maintain the beautiful acoustic sound, thus recording two layers of guitar with two different sounds in one take.
When I was finished, I improvised a few other guitar layers: a reverse-delayed acoustic guitar, a clean electric guitar and a distorted electric guitar which were all used to create a general atmosphere that was full and dense. Of course there had to be a distorted lead guitar in there, so I recorded some improptu played solos during the chorus parts.
I also recorded the vocals for the chorus without having finished the lyrics for the verses yet, just to have done something in the vocal department.

After giving myself a break of one day or so, I began writing lyrics, starting again from scratch. This time I used a different approach and was able to rely on knowledge I had gained from several other songs I had written during the last couple of months, and I quickly had a rough draft of the words done within an hour. I began recording the same day, adjusting words and melodical structure as I went along, adding background vocals afterwards.
After all that was done, I began mastering the song. While I had given Pilgrim Struts and The Palette to my dad who is way better at mastering and mixing than I am, I refused to use his mastered version of They Say the minute he asked me for it. He probably did a much better job at mastering it (frequency- and volume-wise), but I just love the overall sound and mood of my final version so I really wanted to publish it.

Well there you go! Hope you enjoyed the songs a little and found my experiences not to boring.