Here’s a recording of a song I wrote and started to record last year, but the recording process stalled. I have spent my spare time in the last week or two finishing it off. I used an interesting new recording program, REAPER this time, instead of SONAR which I normally use.

The lyrics are taken from a Celtic prayer that Scot McKnight posted on his blog. It is called “Expressions of Faith” and is about trusting God for the future based on his faithfulness in the past. I’ve made it into 3 two-part verses, and added my own chorus to give it a bit more of a song structure.

You can listen to it here

Lyrics

Lord you have always given
Bread for the coming day
And though I am poor
Today I believe

Lord you have always given
Strength for the coming day
And though I am weak
Today I believe

All Sufficient One
I believe in you
I put my trust in you
Never failing God
My life is in your hands
I need nothing more than you

Lord you have always given
Peace for the coming day
And when I’m tempted to fear
In You I believe

Lord you have always kept me
Safe through each passing day
And when I’m facing more trials
In You I believe

Lord you have always marked out
My path for the coming day
Yet when the way seems hidden
Still I believe

Lord you have always spoken
Just when the time was right
Yet even in the silence
Still I believe

Recording Details

As I said, I used REAPER, which has some great audio features, although lags behind SONAR in terms of MIDI functionality.

Vocals – I am singing on this one, and Steph sang the backing vocals. It is actually the first time Steph has sung on one of my recordings, and she did a great job (you should have heard my attempts at harmony!). It was also nice that I finally have written a song that she likes enough to want to sing! Even my children sing along to this one.
Acoustic Guitar – This is my Yamaha APX-4A recorded direct from pickup. I am not pleased with the sound I got out of it. I was having some computer problems at the time of recording which meant that my focus was on successfully recording anything without pops and clicks.
Electric Guitar – The electric guitars made use of the built-in effects in my new Line6 USB audio interface.
Bass Guitar – this is my Yamaha bass compressed with Kjaerhus GUP-1
Piano – this was my home-made Yamaha P200 soundfont. If I had been using SONAR I would have recorded quite a few more takes of the piano MIDI as my playing was fairly ropey.
Organ – Organized trio VSTi again – this is becoming a regular feature on my tracks
Drums & Percussion – I used EZDrummer and the EZX Percussion expansion for the drum sounds, and played the drums in myself on the keyboards before fixing them up and adding fills in REAPER’s piano roll view.
Mixdown – I used a Sonitus multiband compressor to even out the EQ a bit and then Kjaerhus classic master limiter to get me up to full scale (and a very small amount of limiting in the loud bits)