Cork Nights

Photo by Donncha O'Caoimh

This has taken me over a year to finish, and finish is being facetious. I have abandoned this song, I need to move on from it. Not that I feel bad about it, it was Da Vinci that said art is never finished only abandoned. Every now and again I would tinker at it adding and subtracting bits, so for better or worse this is it.

Cork Nights (Document 8).mp3

Being, in actuality, an immigrant to Cork, the city still holds an air of magic to it. Its that sense you get when something is familiar but not quite native. There's a distinct definite feeling I get when I think about the city, and for me at least, this song evokes that feeling every time I listen to it.

Anyway, one night last year while returning home, polluted from the nights frolics and feeling slightly melancholic, I watched the traffic and night rebeler's out the car window as we traveled. I had this sombre melody playing over in my head, along with a rough chord progression. When I got back home I sat down and recorded a rough sketch of I had been hearing. As the days went on, I fleshed the ideas out and made a fuller, (albeit extremely rough) piano, bass and drum version. And after that it just evolved as you would imagine any other song would. This is where the "Document 8" title came from as each iteration of the song would be saved as a new Reason "document". Minor changes meant the file only got a letter attached to the end. Document 7 went up to "g" because I swore Document 8 was where I was going to call it a day.

There's very little actual programming in the tune but plenty of quantising and alterations to notes. Nearly everything was played live, including the percussion and "guitar solo" at the end. Ah yes, a good old guitar wankery solo at the end. I remember it so clearly, I was just after watching an episode of Ugly Betty and I lashed out an overthetop guitar ending in two takes. It was a joke to begin within, still could be I guess :) Anyway thats it now. FIN.

[image source]