In the company of trees
‘In the company of trees’ is the working title of my passion project to realise my 16-year-old self’s dream of writing and recording my own album.
Slowly but surely I am making a collection of demos…
Sine-curving
Sine-curving, liner notes, August 2024
Life's an experiment, loves an adventure. Here's my latest song: Sine-curving
Spring 2023. I was sitting in the cafe of Crickhowell's brilliant bookshop, @bookishcrickhowell, when the words to this song crept in. I had just bought Spell Songs II (If you like words, nature and music, then you must look it up). I read this line in the opening notes by @jackiemorrisartist & @robgmacfarlane:
"As kingfishers flashed across the windows of the studios, and a grass snake sine-waved across the water..."
Sine-waved across the water. What a line. What an image.
I'm not sure when sine-waves became sine-curves, but my song has been evolving for over a year now — swimming around my consciousness, driving me slightly insane. It's good to set it free. If it's not bleedingly obvious, it's about the ups and downs of life (a particularly original topic for a song, I know). But even if the theme isn't original, I do like the line about circles, triangles and squares.
It seems strange that from the nature-based, acoustic, organic, inspiration of the Spell Songs project, that my song became so digital. On reflection that feels like a shame. I'll have to tag this post as 'made with AI'. To be clear, it is only the video that is truly AI-generated. And it embraces it in all its current weirdness - where people morph into each other, characters seem to change age decades in seconds, and scientists can't quite seem to use their 6 fingers to twist a 1950s analogue knob. These quirks will no doubt be an obvious carbon-dating feature as they are quickly ironed out (I'm picturing a '60s futuristic ironing robot right now).
The song was written the old-fashioned way: an acoustic guitar and a notepad. No ChatGPT for lyrics. Perhaps they would have been better if they were? (don't answer that). But the recording is of course digital.
Some digital tools
Apple Garage Band
Guitar rig 7 - Native Instruments
Lyrics video
@microsoftcopilot (base images)
@luma_ai (video clips)
@runwayapp (video clips)
@adobe (after effects and premiere - editing, effects etc)