The lyrics for this song come from a four-stanza poem written by George MacDonald.
My original plan was to the "A" music for stanzas one and four, and then use the "B music for two and three. However, after hearing it this way I felt that the "A" music needed to be heard twice before moving to "B". But because I wanted to end on the home key, I added an extra "A" by repeating the final stanza, creating an AABBA structure
Unfortunately...
After waiting 2.5 hours for the video to render and sitting down to watch the final result, I realized that after stanza three I should have gone straight into the guitar solo, thereby saving the final stanza solely for the return of the "A" music. Oh well, can't win 'em all.
I must say that tuning English vocal synths is far more difficult than tuning Japanese vocal synths—Japanese moras are very convenient for music.
In terms of mixing/engineering, this is my second track done in Reaper, and it went by quickly with satisfactory results. Once again the SSL E-channel is used on every track, and all amp sims use OwnHammer IRs. (Both rhythm guitars are quad-tracked, and the lead guitar is single-tracked.)
TDR plugins were used for mastering, in case anyone cares.
Silly bonus fact: All lines have eight syllables, except for one where Mr. MacDonald snuck in nine. (Or did he make a mistake?)
