Songwriting and Producing Clips for “After Today”

Brainstorming – This song is about an event in my life, the death of our child. But I also tried to write it in a way that would apply to anyone who has cared for a terminally ill loved one who has passed on. Writing it helped me to process everything that happened and to maintain some hope along with it. It’s a brutal topic and a heavy one, I realize that, but hopefully it will touch some hearts. 

Writing the Song – When I first began writing, I started out with a page of just some notes. I just wrote down some of my feelings and thoughts about what it was like caring for Eli when he was terminally ill before beginning to write the actual music and lyrics. Polishing the Song – Whenever I am completing a song, I try to play it for at least one other person, usually my husband :). I made at least 3-4 drafts of changes. 

Sheet Music – I hate writing out the sheet music, it is so much easier just to use a lead sheet and improvise as I go. I also don’t write out all the rhythms of the melody I am singing while I am writing the song, so figuring what rhythm I am even singing can be a chore!! Ha ha

Practicing the Song – Instead of Doing separate vocal warm ups – I just warm up my voice with whatever current song I am working on. I always start with gentle exercises and then work my way to harder exercises. I also start lower in my vocal range and then work my way higher as I go. I love this routine because it warms my voice up while still getting to practice my songs and saves me time!!

Recording the Song – I use Cakewalk for my recording software and then use the Project Series USB Dual Pre-amp (amplifier) along with my GAUGE ECM-87 STEALTH CARDIOID CONDENSER MICROPHONE to record vocals. I was pretty tired when I recorded these vocals, but I think it was fitting for the emotion of the song. 

Polish the recording – Brad and I worked together to finish it up by adding some cello, drums, another layer of piano and reverb to fill it up a little. He helped me balance the tracks and add the basic effects like boosting the overall volume and compressing the audio. 

Plan and Film the Video – We went to this big dirt hill out in the desert by our house to film the song. My husband and I actually went there twice, once in the early morning to film the sunrise (we wanted the sunrise to use in the video toward the end of the song) and then again at sunset to film the music video portion. My dad had a good idea to film in the dark with candles on the keyboard, so we did that!

Put everything together in Vegas Movie Studio – What I decided to do was look through all the footage ahead of time and write down on a piece of paper what parts I thought worked. Then I put it all into Vegas and aligned each take with the MP3. Then I spent some time going through the whole song, editing it down and selecting portions of the footage. Later, Brad came home and had a different creative vision for the song and spent a little while on it. He completely re-did what I had, but it was a lot better! So I realized, I didn’t need to do half of what I spent so much time doing. Next time, I will put the footage in the program, align it with the MP3 and then hand it over to Brad. He’s the videographer anyway! Once he’s done I can polish up a few things, if there is anything else. Team work!