7s7d: D2
“September Sunset Samba”
Prompt: the days grow shorter
Submission of Member: Sid B
Prompt: windblown leaves and apple trees
Submission of Member: Emily T
Prompt: sunset samba
Submission of Member: Brent M
Day two down.
This is one of those where I'm not sure if in a month or two I'll think it's cheesy as hell and really hate it and wish I'd never written it, or if after a few days it will settle and I'll start to really like it. Could go either way. But for now I think it's cute and interesting and I'm fairly happy with it.
As some of you know, I love Fall/Halloween almost equally to the holidays that follow (and I REALLY love Christmas, and Christmas music), so each year I try to write an Autumnal or Halloween song if possible (in addition to an annual attempt at a new holiday song). So I've definitely added one to the catalogue this year at the very least.
The melody has been stuck in my head all day - which could be just the result of the very transparent and intentional "quoting" of one of the most recognizable songs of the last century ("Autumn Leaves") or might be due to whatever madness I came up with.
I was up very early this morning with the intent to get as much "seven songs in seven days" work done as I could so that I could be finished before my Beloved returned home from his church gig. This would have been the ideal scenario since I needed to be available for him this afternoon to help him prep to leave and get him to the airport (he'll be out of town for a minute), and, then, hopefully, be able to enjoy the rest of my weekend-day to myself.
Unfortunately I woke up just a touch late, but did end up getting the song written by 11 or so and was starting to set up the recording rig, but then my beloved husband returned home a few hours earlier than I had expected. It's pretty much impossible to track when he's at home (unless he's asleep) under normal conditions, so frantic packing and laundry finishing took front and center. His being out this week will give me more quiet-time recording flexibility, though I really wish he would have been home so he could lay down some percussion tracks on these songs!
By the time my time was mine again, and I had started getting back to what I was doing, I had lost a lot of daylight already. Since I had to diagnose some sound routing stuff for the recording set up, I figured I may as well take a look at the streaming sound routing which went so horribly awry last Friday right before Crooner Coffee Hour. That, of course, took longer than expected, and I even accidentally went live (on camera) for about two minutes to FB and YT. Fortunately I caught it quickly and after reviewing it, was grateful that I hadn't done or said anything awful in those two minutes. I pulled it down off FB but made it available as "unlisted" on YT so that you could perhaps delight in my mortification. I don’t know why this makes me laugh so much to just watch myself in the true throes of what seems to be my daily dose of torture trying to set up live stream tech. Anyway, this moment happened before just the final step of balancing out the background loop to the live microphone, which is probably a good thing since you can't *as clearly* hear me talking to myself (I was looking at the audio meters checking the mic level and background loop visually, but if you don't know what I'm doing I look and sound like a crazyperson).
(Good news: I *think* I got it figured out? All the routing is now setup but I do need to do a couple tests to ensure that what I think is being heard on the stream is actually audible and in balance with the rest of the items in the mix. Fingers crossed. But I wanted to look at it since tomorrow is more 7 Songs but then also Disney Day and I want to feel more confident about how that sounds than I did last week.)
Once I got through that, I had to sit down to chart out the new song from this morning before I could start a proper recording. That process usually takes considerable time, but sometimes goes fast. That stage in the process is typically where I try to make some "final" decisions about whatever the solo-live arrangement is going to be (intro/outro+tags, key, any key changes, repeats, if there's going to be some kind of instrumental bridge and what that should be, turnarounds between phrases or sections, phrase lyric modifications, and a double check that the lyric rhythms all "work"... for instance...), and unfortunately in today's case it really took a while. By the time I had finished checking the chart one last time it was pretty late and my dreams of putting together a killer demo with backing vocals and other instrumentation and still getting it to you before the end of the day were dashed, so, unfortunately, here's just another phone demo as a placeholder for now.
Not sure if it's a bad thing or not(?) but this song includes three separate prompts from three different Keyholders. In the past I think I've used more than one prompt in the same song, but these particular prompts just really seemed to belong in the same song together to me and I couldn't resist! I also cannot resist a good alliteration, so I hope you enjoy "September Sunset Samba.” (I would have liked to call it “September Samba” but there are kind of a lot of “September Samba”s out there it looks like? Hard to tell if some of them are covers or not…) I also am not super happy that I did two bossa-y songs for Day 1 and Day 2 back-to-back, but found solace in knowing y’all mostly really dig these Brazilian vibes, so I just went with it.
Thank you for these EXCELLENT prompts, friends!
More comin' atcha tomorrow!
❤️L
Submit a prompt I can include into a song this week (or another time) by clicking here.
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