Turn Back The Clock (First Demo)

Hey guys, here's the first demo with vocals I did of my song "Turn Back The Clock". The final version was released on my 2020 album All Systems Go.

I love the retro vibe of the demo of this song. I remember challenging myself to write this song using emulations of the hardware available in 1987, so it's basically all Farlight, DX7, a Juno 60, and a Jupiter 8 (although the Jupiter 8 wasn't used as much at that time due to the advent of digital keyboards and synthesizers, which were cheaper and more stable, less prone to detuning or failing due to weather or humidity). I recorded the first draft on March 31, 2019 and recorded this first vocal demo from April 2 to 3. I ended up recording many demos of this song, 8, with different structures, adding more layers, synths, etc., but in the end this one captures the essence, and in my final arrangement (done after I finished all the other songs for the album) I went back and simplified some of the synth layers to get closer to this.

If I had to produce this song again, I think the sound would be closer to this demo, similar to what I did on the song "I Want You Now" from my last album "8 Days In A Bear's Life", which was produced exclusively with Farlight and some touches of a synclavier and a classic vocoder. I've always had a tendency to complicate my arrangements, building baroque walls of sound, something I'm trying to get rid of nowadays. Edit, edit, edit. ☺️

The song itself is an attempt to put into words what it means to get older, the temptation to look back and think it was better (newsflash: most of the time it wasn't), the inevitable moments of self-balancing you have as you approach age landmarks like 40 or 50, and the mellancholy that comes with many of the guys who go through it on their own and feel the pressure of accomplishment when they get there. It has a little bit of me in it, but it's 90% about two friends of mine. I wanted to do this to talk about what I saw them go through. If you're interested, I'd tell you the same thing I told them: learn to be in the present, enjoy the little things and moments that happen every day, let go of the past and just breathe, you're only responsible for yourself.

Have a nice Sunday 😘 ☺️❤️

Additional note: I forgot to mention, the artwork on the cover of this demo is a close up to the first page of the comic Marco ByM did to illustrate the song, that was included on the All Systems Go - Listening Companion book (available on Amazon).