Dedicated to Delia Derbyshire
1937 - 2001

Also dedicated to anyone touched or inspired by her work, there's more of you out there than you might think.

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i was messing with softsynths on the laptop, I'd gotten a nice bassline going on and written a lil melody riff on the bass guitar to go with it (which ended up as the "flute" riff on the chorus), i recorded a repeating version of it, with the melody every 4 bars or so, added a bit of speech synthesis singing a few words in french, gave it a working title of D.M.A.E.M... and sent it to bagi... bagi liked it and so i ditched the speech crap and wrote some proper words for it, in english, in one go, on 7th feb 2007, which was 7.2.7, which pleased me no end, not only cos of the palindrome thing which i love, but also cos Delia, I'm sure, would have loved the numbers thing too... (in the final mix there is a bell in a 3:2:1 arrangement, 3 times before the first chorus, twice before the 2nd chorus, and once before the end)
After writing the words, i altered the music, adding more drums, programming speech synthesis for the repeating "..delia.." parts, i then attempted a test vocal track and found that i'd completely forgotten the vocal riff i'd had in my head when i was writing the lyrics, after some mild panic i sent the revised music and lyrics to bagi, with a plea for vocal melody...

Over to Bagi...

Well like bobbi said, he sent me a groove test of DMAEM (which I actually rather liked with the french synthesised speak that got ditched). bobbi then re-did the groove test without the french bit and sent it to me, along with the words, and the comment "be interesting to hear how you visualise the words fitting the music... if you get ideas then please record thems and share :-)" Well there's a challenge if ever I was poked in the eye with one. So I listened to the music and grabbed my plastic ou (open university) mic and just sort of did it. This was one of those times where the melody seemed to just 'become'. There wasn't any conscious thought or careful planning, I just sang it. bobbi said he did a kevin. (ever watched Home Alone?)

Then I sang it properly with my new AKG Perception 200 mic which FINALLY arrived (not being the one I originally ordered, and then getting lost in the post *shakes fist at courier company who shall remain nameless* and requiring a replacement to be sent. I know I digress but tell you what, that mic is about the most coolest thing ever! I mean, I can hear my house just existing!) ok so the mic arrived and i did some vocal tracks. And I finally chose vocal 4 and bobbi duly spent hours doing the wizardry and voodoo on it and made an excellent mix. At which point I did do an Andy from Little Britain and went all petulant and said "i don't like it". And decided to re-do it altogether in pursuit of perfection. And while vocal 7 is perhaps not the ubervocal, peut-être<parfait, I was much happier with it than vocal 4 lol. So bobbi had to mix and mix and mix and mix but the final results are, imho, fickin ace :-)

Once I'd got the vocals we needed, i started to dissect the music, adding the "and then... silence" sample to the end... adding layer upon layer of sequences for the choruses... adding percussive sequences... adding 4/4 timing synth sequences to the 6/4 main sections (at least i think they're 6/4, i make these things up as i go along, so i could be wrong, might be 16/12 or some other weirdness)... altering structure and feel to match the final vocals... altering synth melodies to create harmony parts and compliments... and finally doing mix after mix after mix to try find the one that worked best... the "delian mode" sample was added after the final submix of our parts, it gives a lovely intro and grounds the entire thing... I was sort of reluctant to use a sample, partly cos it's sort of cheating, but also cos i didn't want to disrespect the effort that Delia had put into creating the piece in the first place... But the thought of having the spirit of Delia living in the song was enough to override any doubts...

btw i think it's in 12/8 :-) - Bagi

btw it was City Link - bobbi