Desh Saxena
Continuing my trend of using books as inspiration, today I chose to create a song featured in Soul Music by Terry Pratchett. I’m only halfway through the book, but it’s already a favorite of mine—rock music and fantasy together? Yes, please! I need more of this.
This book is packed with references to real rock songs, like Great Balls of Fire and Stairway to Heaven (aptly renamed Pathway to Paradise). I decided to recreate Good Gracious Miss Polly, a song from the book - Based on Good Golly Miss Molly, but this came with a few challenges.
Firstly, Little Richard is widely considered the architect of rock ‘n’ roll, and his voice has the perfect mix of distortion and power. With modern effects, I could replicate some of this, but I also decided to take the vocals more seriously for once. Instead of relying on software, I actually stood up, warmed up my voice, and practiced singing the entire song three or four times. I’m happy with the result—this is a single vocal take with no autotune, flex pitch, or cuts between different takes. I found that by avoiding strain and focusing on hitting the notes without pushing too hard, my voice sounded much better—and I even managed to squeeze in a Little Richard-style scream at the end!
The other big challenge was the piano. I recorded it using a MIDI keyboard, expecting to make a ton of edits, but surprisingly, I barely had to tweak anything. I only quantized the section after the piano solo—yes, I did a piano solo! It’s not great, but some might call it jazzy. I only filmed one take of the piano, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well it turned out.
Finally, I decided to use lyrics referencing in world places in Pratchett's Discworld series - Such as Sto Lat, Djelibeybi, and Ankh Morpork.
For production, I aimed for a "polished '50s" vibe. I added some reverb and saturation to the master track and used Logic’s mastering tools to enhance the final sound. The picture below shows my mastering chain:
I have decided to try out @mattlee's new platform tortoise, and will release the song as usual on Youtube, Instagram, TikTok and Rodeo. I recorded a short form video, on top of this.
100 SOngs in 100 days Day 84 - "Good Gracious Miss Polly" on Tortoise https://nfeed-frame.vercel.app?id=00001521-3e04-4bf2-af65-657dad37432c&img=bafybeifo45ysmkrxp2tlh77eqvb622qmolz3dopedmui4qlnat7sm5hvyi
The creative social network.
