Dawn Chorus – Song and a Chat

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Episode #137: Dawn Chorus (song starts at 3:45 & 27:57)

I had a busy today. For a while there, though, I was sitting in my car. So listened to some music.

One of the albums that came on was Tasman Bridge. Written and recorded by myself with Paul Dredge, it’s an album that’s close to our hearts – it was the first time we’d tried to write songs together internationally.

Paul lives in New Zealand, where I’m originally from. I’ve been living in Melbourne, Australia for 20 odd years now. After having played live together for years – thousands of gigs – and having written lots of songs, I thought it would be an idea if I moved to Australia.

We really missed writing and performing music together. Eventually we hit on the idea of writing a section of a song and sending it to the other person so he could ‘answer’ with the music for the next section of the song.

To date I’ve been the lyricist for this sort of arrangement.

Sometimes with lyrics I’ve written, I just know they would really suit Paul. It’s instinct, really.

I’ve never been disappointed with what Paul’s come up with, we seem to so much on the same page, it’s amazing.

In this case, Paul wrote the music ( riff / chords and melody) for a verse and middle section, which he sent to me.

I put the headphones on and listened, piano and mic ready to go..and I just ‘winged’ what came to me – which turned out to be the choruses and bridge.

I’ve included a piano vocal version of Dawn chorus, which I recorded as part of this episode. At the end of the episode, you can hear the album cut.

You’ll hear Paul singing his parts and then I take over lead for the parts I wrote. It came about that way, as when it came time to record, we only had about 6 evenings to learn and record each other’s parts. In fact, it was really as we were recorded that we learned how the songs were going to go, so it made sense to sing our own parts.

Dawn chorus is an inspiring, brief part of the day where all the birds seem to decide to sing with one voice, seemingly just to ‘greet the magic day’ in celebration.

I love being out in nature. It inspires and energises me.

As usual, on this episode, I talk about how the words came together, and then on to the music. It’s fascinating for me to be talking like this. In the process, I’m discovering wha sort of things make me click as a songwriter.

I write for the joy of songwriting. So does Paul. We have a few albums you can find online at www.petepascoe.wordpress.com and most are now on Spotify and Apple Music, etc

We have a new album The Untrodden Track out now. I listened to this again today and messaged Paul to say how entertaining and relaxing I found it to be – again… I’ve been listening on the headphones, often in the evening before bed, it’s a pretty chilled listen.

Anyway if you’d like to hear how we write a song together. Sit back and have a listen. I hope you enjoy the song Dawn Chorus (both versions) – and the chat.