Song: I Can’t Be Your Man
Key: C Major Genre: Neo-Soul
The story behind this song is about a girl who can’t seem to get over her ex-boyfriend and as the the new guy in her life, how unfair it is to be in a relationship where’s she’s not giving herself to it. Constantly talking about her ex and all the memories they had together, and the ex still having a certain hold on her. The only twist to the creation of this song is that it is actually about me and the girls that complain about me not being all the way in, as far as starting a new relationship goes.
The inspiration for this song came from playing around with my piano and plus I had just listened to Musiq Soulchild’s latest album and decided it had been a while since I’ve made something R&B’ish.
Songwriting-wise I’ve learned about keeping the idea simple and eliminating subplots because in the beginning it was a convoluted story with several plot developments which really disconnected from the point. I’ve learned that only a few instruments are necessary in creating a song instead of layering instrument over instrument, which I used to do. The use of segmenting parts of a song structure to differentiate between verses and chorus was also exercised in this song.
On the engineering side of things, putting together harmonies by myself was an interesting and frustrating thing. I’m not used to harmonizing with myself so trying to figure out the chords to use and well as using counterpoint to make the harmonies interesting was a challenge. I’ve also now developed a way of using pre-mixdowns or “stems” to mix the many vocals I have into main subgroups to save resources on my computer and to make the mixing process easier when adjusting levels and pans for certain instruments and vocals parts (i.e. backgrounds, leads, adlibs) as well as cutting down on effects usage locking up my computer.
As a note, you can view the video that was made at the time this song was concocted here.
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
Me(mags) and Jess Archer thought it was awesome! love ya!
Aww. Thanks Maggie and Jessica!
awesome:)
very nice….. good job fella!!
Wow, I am really impressed by this. I am glad you have stopped being lazy. As far as the story behind the song goes, I am glad you see that. I struggled with it at one point too.