I’ve cleaned up the song a little from the previous version, and added a small keyboard solo (I admit to having edited the 32s in the matrix editor). I might remove it later, because I’m not so certain about it. The vocals and lyrics are, of course, still fake. I do like the melody, however, so unless the vocalists have a better idea, it’ll stay that way. Also, I temporarily suspened the chorus, but it’ll be back with a vengeance. Or just be back. However, the very calm synth part you hear in the end is intended to be the bridge/middle part and it’s not going to stay in this place. I’m going to insert another verse, and perhaps some instrumental thing right before it.

I pulled some bass from the intro part via EQ automation, because the toms were booming like mad. Afer the intro, the bass is put back in. It’s not consciously noticeable, so you’ve gotta take my word on it.

The song is not actively being worked on at the moment, though, because I recently decided to work my way through the album chronologically. So it’ll be quite some time before the next version of song 15 will appear here.

Perhaps you’d like to listen to it after all? It might be a long good-bye!

Yours truly,
don’t sue me,
Helge

In october 2006 I bought a nice software instrument that faithfully recreates the sound of a Mellotron. I zapped through the tape banks and let my hands more or less fall on my keyboard, producing this sequence of chords:

That had a quite sad ring to it, so I saved it as “Brennan’s Death”, and made a mental note to use it as an intro to song 8, in which Elena receives information about her friend’s death. After saving the song, I forgot about it for the time being.

In the meantime, Sven had started composing a cool piece of music for exact the same spot on the album, so I was reminded of the Mellotron chords. I dug them out, and after careful consideration, reassigned them to song 15, “Final Part 2 / Bravery Of A Saurian”.

This song, together with the preceding “Final Part 1 / Hero From Afar” is to be the climax of the album. In it, the protagonists escape the patriarch of Nif-Nakh, to be eventually saved by a heroic effort of their saurian friend, Nopileos. He destroys a pursuing jet fighter by crashing his own, unarmed, spaceship into it, which then crashes into the jungle, burning.

Anyways – those Mellotron chords from october were not played very tightly, so I started by fixing the timing. Then I added a concluding chord to the end of the second cycle. To make it sound smoother, I compressed the Mellotron a little and added some reverb. An ugly reverb, admitted, but I don’t have anything better right now. I think the guys in the studio will have the right stuff. Here’s what the Mellotron sounds like after the modifications:

I don’t want the intro to become too long, however, starting with a few bars of acoustic guitar noodling might be nice. So I did that (sounds somewhat like Iced Earth, doesn’t it?), and also added the first few bars of drums:

Perhaps we can have a few lines of vocals here already. I need to think about that.

I have a relatively clear vision of where this is heading. The song will become much faster. I’ll be adding some crushing electric guitar mimicking the rhythm of the drums, and then fall into some instrumental thing before hitting the first vocal part….

But that, kids, is a story for another day…