By Chris Moore:

I let Saturday go by without posting, but I spent several hours working on a new track: “The Best Reason I Wake Up,” a rare love song.  This song has a difficult time signature for me to strum naturally while also maintaining steady rhythm, so it provided an interesting challenge.  The metronome was profoundly unhelpful, so I ended up playing to a drum track that helped me keep time.  The drums were wildly incongruous to the song, though, so I deleted the track after I landed a solid acoustic lead.

The second acoustic guitar and the lead vocal tracks were recorded fairly easily, yet I didn’t feel at the top of my game, and I may very well re-record both at a later date.

The final component I recorded on the “musical typing” feature of GarageBand.  Once this is clicked on (via the “Windows” menu), the keyboard of your laptop is essentially transformed into whatever instrument you choose.  For this song, I experimented for the first time with the drum set sounds, and I managed to piece together a drum beat that I think works well with the song.

After two days of listening to the rough cut in my car, I plan to revisit “The Best Reason I Wake Up,” and I will probably re-record not only the second acoustic guitar and lead vocal, but also the drum track.  Now that I’ve experimented with the musical typing feature, I know I can make it even tighter with a few more tries.

But, in the spirit of transparency via blogging, I’m attaching the first rough cut below.  With any luck, the final cut will sound much better than this version, but it’s a start…

“The Best Reason I Wake Up” (Rough)