![\"Mountains](\"https:\/\/ayearofsongs.org\/ayearofsongs\/images\/blogimages\/MountainsCome.jpg\")
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\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I<\/span>n 1999, I collaborated over the ‘net with an English techno kid named Deakin Scott. He’d heard my trip hop stuff on the old mp3.com and he asked if I wanted to write a vocal part for a 140 beat per minute mix he was working on.<\/p>\n He emailed me a work mix as a guide. I listened over and over, playing with different ideas. Finally, in frustration, I picked up my acoustic guitar and started hashing out some classic rock and roll chords, unrelated to Deakin’s music.<\/p>\n There was, in that first exploration, a kind of teen angel sort of vibe and when I surrendered to that vibe, the lyrics below pretty much came out whole. They play off the teen tragedy vibe, focusing on the protagonist’s feelings in the moment of loss.<\/p>\n I don’t mean to trivialize the emotional resonance of the lyrics for me, though, at all. I really wanted, in my small and clumsy way, to explore the tragic beauty of love and inevitable loss. But… see… you can’t talk about that. Or it sounds like, well, that<\/span>, and, yet, is simultaneously somehow too personal. So I like the ironic distance afforded by reworking a classic form.<\/p>\n The chords I came up with are reflected in the version below, for the most part. The delivery to Deakin’s 140 bpm music precluded conventional singing, so what melody there was was somewhat irrelevant. Nailing the lyric rhythmically at that tempo was challenging, but after much work I came up with a set of vocals I could really live with.<\/p>\n I emailed them the vocals (bare and attached to his mix as an example\/guide) with careful instructions on how to set them on the beat in the mix, since there’s a fair amount of syncopation. Somehow, those instructions must have got lost.<\/p>\n Deakin’s music <\/span>sounded even better than the guide track I’d worked with — but the vocals I’d sent him were dropped in just a tiny <\/span>bit off the mark. I explained my concern to him, but he said he’d fallen in love with the mix just the way it was (which I usually take to be code for I’m working on my next project, shouldn’t you?<\/span>) Anyhow, I can’t make my mix available for download, but broadband users can hear <\/span>it here<\/a> (or at the link below).<\/p>\n You’ll find a link for a ‘studio version’ as well — that’s my music and vocals — and while the chords are essentially those I use in the AYoS version, here, the production and arrangement are considerably different… so three three quite different versions.<\/p>\n Today’s acoustic version:<\/span><\/p>\n\n