THE RAIN

Home Recording: The beginning

I have been writing songs since the day I picked up a guitar and loved every second of the process. Pure creativity, pure fun. I had tried being in Bands and I have done a lot of open mike sessions in my time but I did not really enjoy that side of things as I get very nervous. My friend was working as a trainee sound engineer in various studios in Manchester and that is where I met Paul (The other half of the Singing Crows) on a night session. We worked in the day and night sessions were cheap, sometimes free.

He invited me to his house to record some music there. He is a tech head and was setting up a home recording studio. I arrived to a small desktop mike set up and an old synth that had letters like DX5062Wd at the end of it or something like that I don’t have a clue to this day. He did have a mean Bass guitar called a status. There were two young kids running around the room, Buffy the Vampire Slayer was being shown for the first time in fact I don’t know if it was yet aired, Brit Pop was still in its infancy and his wife was flat out on the Couch after a heavy twelve hour shift in the factory. All was well.

We recorded our first song called “The Rain”. We have never looked back. It was totally different for me as I had always sung with just my guitar. Now technology had arrived in my life. Bangs and crashes, sweeping pads, strange noises bouncing from right to left. I loved it. We recorded The Rain and I called it full production. It was a massive file and Paul had to bounce it onto a CD for me to listen to. It is quite long and indulgent, but I did not care. At last you could use technology to create music affordable to create just like those Pop Stars with their million pound budgets. Could not believe it. I am so grateful for the advancements in technology.

I remember saying to Paul that there will be a day when we will be able to share this music across the internet. We will even be able to share files from my house to his. MySpace was on the horizon and all was well in life. Inspired, Paul bought a Korg Triton which had just come out and we re-recorded The Rain. Some of our music is very old now and we we have decided to place these on our Blog as the quality is not the best however, you may like the tune or the lyrics might capture your heart. Therefore, we are going to post all of our music that may not be BandCamp quality on this blog for you to freely download if you wish.

I will explain the meaning of the song or the history of it. I was not going to do this as the song can mean something different for you and that is fine. There are too many meanings to explain in each song as there are many emotions tied up within the essence of the song. Some may be autobiographical and some were written, as I imagined them to be, as pieces written for the screen, possibly a film or a drama. I would love one of our songs to be part of a drama or a film. Anyway, dream on. Some were written as observations of other peoples lives.

So, this will be a story board of many things that have gone on in our lives that probably will relate to you in some way. Love gained, love lost, spiritual awakenings, friends deceptions, friends lost and friends gained. We hope you revisit our site and enjoy the ride. We are in the process of writing new material after a few years of work getting in the way and stealing our time, well actually we have both been skint and need the overtime.

Please enjoy the music.