I don't remember exactly when I started doing it, but sometime in the late nineties or early aughties, I started taking my old, beaten up Yamaha acoustic with me on my long walks in the woods with my dog, weather permitting. That guitar was originally my older brother Doug's, but sometime during the mid-eighties he handed it down to me. It had a bad puncture wound on the soundboard near the bridge, caused by an accident involving a metal post on his bed at Cornell's U-hall, if I remember the story right. [The square scar is still visible in the picture here: the Yamaha's in the lower left.] I got the awesome guys at the Ithaca Guitar Works to glue that up and put in a pickup under the bridge so I could play acoustic with my band E.B.A. sometimes.
Anyhow, my long walks in the woods with my dog and an acoustic have led to the discovery of many new riffs and tunes over the years. When inspiration strikes, I try to record it as soon as possible. At first I had a little dedicated voice recorder, then after it died I'd call my work voicemail, then once I had my first smartphone (a Nokia 9290 Communicator!) I'd record the idea into a voice recorder app. This is one of those tunes that came to me out in the fields and woods behind our house in Danby, NY, just south of Ithaca. The title and theme might be a bit cliche, but I was really feeling it. How you perceive and pursue your life is all in your head. If you focus on how desperately messed up the world is, it's easy to get despondent and messed up. If you focus on beauty and love, it's easy to fill your head and heart with beauty and love.
Recording notes: this started with a canned drum loop of real drums, then I recorded the acoustic guitar part. Then I deleted the drum loops from the beginning so the drums don't come in until the first chorus. Next was bass, plugged directly into the computer audio interface, which was the M-Audio Duo at the time. Then I did a clean Strat track with a glassy chorus, then another Strat track with distortion that doesn't come in until the third verse, driving the climax of the song. The electric guitars were direct through a Line 6 POD 2 and the Duo. Last was the lead vocal and four backing vocal tracks. Recorded with Deck II on a 233 MHz bondi blue iMac.
This ended up on my 2005 album babble on.
Thanks for listening!
-Andy
life is what you make of it walking my dog strumming away I try to do this almost every day an attitude a point of view take it or leave it it's all up to you over and over again life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it so I stumbled along and found this song watching the clouds as the sun went down it's either the same thing again and again or the most beautiful thing in the world I'll tell you again and again life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it I want to know I want to see but sometimes I have to just let it be day after day trying to get along what is the point of a simple song? over and over and over again life is what you make it over and over and over again life is what you make it pull out the stops don't hold back this might be the one chance you'll ever get day and night over and over again never the same but it never changes over and over again life is what you make of it I'll tell you again and again life is what you make of it don't you know, don't you know life is what you make of it oh yeah, ooh yeah, ooh yeah life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it over and over again life is what you make of it ©2004 by Andy Wyatt