Stay On The Line : New Single

Next Monday, August 25th, my new single, ‘Stay On The Line’ drops…. Apparently that’s what you call it when your single gets released. This might seem somewhat defeatist, but as usual, I’m not expecting great things. It’ll receive the same promotion as my other songs, but it’s very hit and miss with regards to making inroads into playlists and the like. 

My failing in the most part I think is that the commercial success of a song is more dependant on the efforts and money put into promoting it, than the songwriting itself….and it’s the songwriting that I’m interested in. Anyway….

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Background

It’s on older song, rather than my tendency to move to record newer material. Newer stuff always feels more exciting, of the moment, but this song, with it’s slightly slow 6/8 groove has always been a favourite to play for some reason, so it’s kind of stayed in the set more than others.

The reason it’s arrived at this stage really is that I’d always thought that it would make a good piano track. ‘Stay On The Line’ will be our fifth single release, and each time Jeff, (my recording partner in crime) and I have tried to learn from our previous efforts, but also, to do something new, so that each release offers something different, but with an overall arching theme that hopefully allows the tracks to sit together as a collection, like they might if they were on an album.

Recording

We generally track a guide guitar and vocal to a click track ( a metronome ) and build them up from there, but in this case, there’s only about 20 seconds of guitar in the whole track, so it appeared at first that our usual method just wasn’t going to be a starter. 

I’d asked my friend Sophie about doing the piano part, which I had no specific idea about, I was very happy just to let her play what felt natural, which she did, to my original Soundcloud demo. Jeff and I loved it, however, my demos are not played to a click and we couldn’t align anything else with the piano because of the variable timing. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t good enough….so I had to go back and do my usual guitar guide track for Sophie to produce her piano piece from, in the knowledge that the guitar recording would almost certainly not play a part in the final song. 

She offered up a rhythm line, some extra piano riffs and some backing vocals, which were great, James came in to play some bass for the track, and suggested the telephone effects which we used, and then Jeff and I added drums and guitar to the bridge section, which we’d decided we wanted to be much heavier, like the ‘don’t throw your hand’ section in ‘Everybody Hurts’ by R.E.M.

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That comment might need a little explanation.... at 2:20 'Everybody Hurts' reaches a bridge section when Michael Stipe sings 'Don't throw your hand' ...this section is much heavier musically than the rest of the song. Jeff and I envisaged a similar approach....

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Adding layers of guitar and percussion is a pretty random process for Jeff and I. I’ll often come in with a vague idea, or perhaps a particular effect that I’d like to try, but it’s all trial and error really. If we were paying for studio time it’d be different, but as ‘home recorders’ we have all the time we want to do, redo, or destroy any ideas or parts we come up with. Quite often Jeff will play something on the drums and I’ll give him some kind of high brow musical feedback like "Hit it harder, make it go boom, titty crash” and he’ll give me similarly high brow guitar suggestions like "Make it go Wee-OO-wee-OOOO, and crunchy, before you do the slidey bit”..... We know what we mean.

Anyway, once all the high tech banter is out of the way, we mix all the parts we’ve decided to use, (that’s applying effects live reverb and equalisation) before sending it off to our friend Steve for mastering (that’s basically an overall spit and polish). When you’ve got the finished article, hey presto, time to upload it for distribution to sites like Spotify, and time to do a bit of plugging.

Promotion

Most promo I do happens after the release, because my following is sufficient for many people to get excited ahead of the day….but once it’s out, it’ll get shared, sent to local radio stations, uploaded to sites like BBC Introducing etc etc, I’ve got a bit of a checklist……

Anyway, today I uploaded a video for the song to youtube. It’s A.I. again, like my other videos, for which I make no particular apology. I don’t have the time or budget to shoot a real video. The ability to create videos and reels from a series of prompts and artistic choices is useful for me. I’ve used a site called Kaiber for this. It’s clear to see how much the technology has come on in the last year.

Anyway, here are the lyrics, and here’s the result….thanks for listening.

#1

I’m hanging on the line,

hanging out, to see if I’m wasting my time

Wish I only knew what it was you’re thinking I’m meaning to you

#2

I guess I’m out of time, 

Operator, you don’t give me much for my dime

Wish I only knew what it was I was thinking of saying to you

Chorus

All this in time,

All this, you’ll find if you stay on the line

All this in time, you’ll find, stay on the line for a while

#3

I find it hard to know,

just what direction this call’s gonna go

I find it hard to think just how brave I can be when I’m fuelled by a drink 

Chorus

All this in time,

All this, you’ll find if you stay on the line

All this in time, you’ll find, stay on the line for a while

Bridge

Operator can you instigate a little call you later gotta see how I’m doing

Operator can you arbitrate a little call, what went wrong

Double Chorus

All this in time,

All this, you’ll find if you stay on the line

All this in time, you’ll find, stay on the line for a while

All this in time,

All this, you’ll find if you stay on the line

All this in time, you’ll find, stay on the line for a while