Building the frame for my cover of Torn by Natalie Imbruglia

First thing to do -

First thing — get the whole song down, top to bottom. Follow the original's skeleton for now. I came into this with a style in mind, so now I'm going to track the whole song in sections using just midi - with MIDI even standing in for the vocal for now.

https://plyr.fm/embed/track/1161

Next — play the original and write the parts down as I hear them. Total free form stream notes in realtime as I listen. I'll then use this as an informal checklist to build the first draft frame of the song in Ableton.

Listening notes on composition by section

Intro section -

chords. Not same chords as verse.

drums

V short

Verse 1

Comes in fast

guitars

Voice

Organ pan thing

Bass comes in halfway through the verse

Prechorus

Bass is doing sick runs

Chorus

Lots of ahhhhhhs behind lead vocal

Strong harmonies. Really strong harmonies.

Harmonies hit harder in the beginning of each line. That's kind of wild.

Verse 2

Back in immediately

Half the length as the first verse

Suddenly we have guitars hitting aggressive panned riffs

Prechorus 2 -

Same as before - just now with guitar riffs

Chorus 2

yeah, wow. Harmonies and ahhhhs only in the first half of each line in the chorus. I can't believe I've never noticed this.

Wow, those chorus vocals HIT.

Bridge

Chord change

just Hooooooos

That was honestly pretty lame

Chorus 3

Immediately back into the chorus

Still on this harmony first half totally solo second half.

ahhhh yeah here it comes - that powerful end section

Wow, it's really just a chunky guitar laying on two notes, with some vocal support

Ta ta for now

Tomorrow I'll start scaffolding the rest of the song.