When Someone...

I don’t often share my demos. Only the band ever gets the hear them usually. By the time we play them live the demo is long forgotten and the song has often evolved far away from where I started with my bass, writing in my room.

This is one different, I may actually develop the bass version to perform it solo one day; yeah I’m definitely thinking about an arrangement that could work.

The inspiration to write it came from this.

Last year in June 2022 I lost my eldest brother.

I won’t share too much about that as we all have our personal moments and I’m yet to work through mine. It was a tough time because, in the same week, my good friend and band guitarist told me he was leaving the band to go to Australia. Although I think he planned on returning to the band after a gap of a year, realistically that wasn’t going to happen as I wanted commitment from a new guitarist and I wasn’t prepared to put in a temporary band member.

So that period I was in a bit of shock. I had only just started my crowdfunding campaign and had invested in recordings, a photoshoot, and recording a video to promote the band. On my small budget, I was really in a tough spot. Also, who was I going to get to take over the guitar, and co-writer spot and would also want to join the band? My saviour appeared in the form of Nick Linnik who had appeared on my radar only the month before and has since turned out to be a superb replacement being such a great musician and he’s a producer also - so that all worked out for the best ultimately.

But at the time back in the summer of 2022 I was a bit grief-stricken and I couldn’t articulate my feelings very well. Instead, I wrote the piece in this post. “When Someone…” It is about loss and sadness but also there is optimism in the 2nd section around perseverance and fortitude when faced with adversity.

The piece is finished now. Hamish and I worked through some of the changes in the 1st section and the main melody is played by Nick on guitar. It also has a 3rd section where we get a bit heavier with the rhythmic expression and Nick (always) takes a blinding solo.

The demo version attached is how I wrote the piece originally - on bass with the chords inferred by the low notes of the bass with the melody complementing the harmony I heard in my mind. It’s often how I write, with just the bass and the melody although I do record some guitar to fill out the middle harmony on my demos sometimes.

I share this here because I don’t have any plans to release a solo version and this demo may be the only time I record the track on bass, so I’m happy you guys will get to hear it in this form as I do love the song and this is how it began.

Music is often the way I express my emotions and sometimes that can turn into a song. That’s why music means so much to musicians at times, it can express moments in our history or how we felt when we wrote it. If we’re lucky we can communicate that back to the listener also and they may connect in a meaningful way with what we write. That is a beautiful thing.