Let the Crow Soar

Let the Crow Soar represents my singing debut (no laughing allowed). The title is a play on the former Attorney General John Ashcroft's Let the Eagle Soar but the resemblance to that classic stops there. It's just that I thought crows needed a song too. Why should eagles get all the glory. My crow actually doesn't do much soaring, mostly he grabs shiny objects and pecks at roadkill but, hey, that's what crows do.

Before this tune, I hadn't attempted to sing anything since, like, grade school (not even karaoke). So I used every trick I could think of to make my voice at least listenable. I have an electric piano backing the vocals note for note to help with the illusion that I'm hitting the notes (or at least near missing). I've also pumped the vocal track through a software amp, eq'd out some of the low end and added compression and reverb. I just got a new reverb plugin for Logic from a company called Wave Arts. It sounds pretty good. In this case, I was going for an outdoor feel and I wanted to keep it rough on the edges.

Another thing I did to get the best vocal performance possible was to sing one line at a time. I would loop the backing tracks, sing the same line about a dozen times and pick the one that sounded best. Then I pieced the lines together.

The other melodic elements are electric guitar, bass and electric piano. I spent considerable time working on the sound. I wanted each to retain some kind of character of a crow squawk. The electric guitar, however, is the real squawker.

I brought in a couple of friends, Kim and Greg, to sing backup vocals. After a few glasses of wine, I managed to get some pretty good stuff from them. No golden voices but this isn't a song for golden voices.

I built the song around a couple of drum loops, but once it was arranged, I played the drums straight through. Admittedly I did a little splicing and editing but mostly it's a single performance.

Here are the lyrics:

Black, black in flight
A shadow in the air
Here it comes, diving down
Snatch that ribbon from her hair

On the wing, pressing up
A talon clutching gold
Flying high, headed home
But there’s something in the road

A plunge, a swoop, a dip
Alighting on the ground
Pecking flattened furry meat
Dancing all around

With a steel smile and glowing eyes
A roaring monster comes
Flapping hard, a blast of smoke
The crow was nearly done

Chorus:
Tumble, flail, squawk
Rolling in the wind
Tumble, flail, squawk
The crow takes flight again

Refrain: Pecking flattened furry meat, dancing all around