You’re Going To Be Ok – Song and a Chat

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Episode#129: You’re Going To Be OK (Song starts at 3:06)

Welcome to another episode, I hope you’re having a great day wherever you are n the world.

I am, living here on the Mornington Peninsula in Melbourne Australia – it’s a busy day, plenty on.

I mention this because no matter how busy I get, I have a sort of a pact with myself that whenever a feeling that a song may be coming through, I’ll stop whatever I’m up to, go to the piano and see what’s on offer.

I had the feeling a song was ‘coming through’ the day I wrote the lyrics for ‘You’re Going To Be Ok’. The image of ‘running along a beach, pretending for a moment you’re a bird’ came to mind as I picked up my pen. ‘Fair enough’, I thought. I’ve learned not to edit what comes through, initially, just go with the flow and see where it takes me. Often it’s not evident for a few lines, or even halfway through the song as to what a song might be about.

The words came quickly, as they do for me. The same with the music – for myself – and for Paul Dredge, the co-songwriter of what turned out to be track number 6, the first single of our new folk rock album ‘The Untrodden Track’.

On this episode I look at the way ‘You’re going To Be Ok’ came together. I’ve included snippets of recordings to illustrate the process, isolating my parts and Paul’s and then showing how they came together.

In a nutshell, I came up with the lyrics. Then I composed the music to the verse and mid-section. I stopped there and, as planned, didn’t continue, because I’d earmarked this particular lyric for a co-write with Paul.

I sent the lyrics and an mp3 of the verse and chorus (piano / vocal) to Paul. He then came up with the chorus guitar and vocal, and sent that back to me. One Sunday evening the bridge came through and it seemed to me the song was going to work.

It was great to be able to write and arrange this song by sending wavs back and forth via Dropbox on the internet. I cover some of this on the episode.

It is such good fun. The instruments are arranged in a way that’s best for the song. It seems an obvious thing to point out, but with songwriting, it’s really about finding Melody and chords and instrumentation that gets across the feeling and the message of the song, best (rather than any tacky /flash playing or complicated chord changes for the sake of it, which can get in the road of the song)..

You’ll hear how the harmonies were added in the chorus, how the song takes shape.

The whole album, The Untrodden Track (streaming now – including on www.petepascoe.bandcamp.com – where you can stream it for free, and download tracks, read lyrics, read about the album., and hear another 13 albums) was recorded in this manner, bouncing tracks back and forth between Australia and New Zealand, where Paul lives.

It works for us, I think, partly -or mostly – because we’ve played thousands of gigs together. We’re on the same page, in many respects..

Ok if you’d like to get more of an insight into our songwriting relationship, sit back. Grab a cuppa and have a listen to see how You’re Going To Be Ok came together.

Enjoy.