music by Chris May, lyrics by Tom Sanderson

I sit and look at the stars with you there
Morning is coming around here somewhere
Shadows move and fade away
Slowly comes the break of day

You put your arm around me while I say
words of my feelings inside me today
Shadows move and fade away
Slowly comes the break of day

And oh the night seems much too long
without your loving arms

I watch the smile on your face at sunrise
Colors reflect from the gray in your eyes
Shadows move and fade away
Slowly comes the break of day

And oh the night seems much too long
without your loving arms

About:

Recorded October, 2023. Tom: vocals and instruments. Music written December, 1992. Lyrics written July, 1996.

A 16-year-old keyboardist/vocalist/arranger named Chris May wrote an instrumental some decades ago. It features an amazing chord sequence, quite a refreshing departure from the three or four-chord songs I was writing at the time. I think it appealed to my teenage self because to me it feels moody with its sharp juxtapositions.

Chris and I played on the original recording which was written shortly after Chris purchased a Tascam 424 cassette tape four track recorder, an upgrade from the standard cassette decks we had used previously. Reviewing the old tracks from a recent mix, I think our approach was to fill up three tracks with instruments, reduce tracks 1 and 3 to the fourth track, keeping the primary instrument (piano voice) on track 2 and continue the process until no empty tracks remained. Chris played all the keyboards and I played bass, acoustic guitar and keyboard percussion. The melody was played by Chris using a cello-type keyboard voice on the Yamaha PSR-150. For reference, please listen to the original instrumental below:

I often listened to the recording of “Break of Day” and a few years later I decided to try my hand at writing lyrics using Chris’ original melody. I recorded a rough acoustic demo and did not revisit the track until many years later when recently it has come into my head again. I felt like I should document a few of my ideas without the limitations of instruments and recording equipment that accompanied the previous recording.

From an arrangement standpoint, both the original and this new interpretation seem to have some influence from mid-1960s pop. I can hear a bit of Wrecking Crew, Motown, Baroque Pop and even a bit of psychedelic pop in here but it really feels like its own concoction. On the 2023 recording I performed / sequenced a majority of the backing track on the Roland FA-06. In leu of having a marimba or trombone on hand, the patches were a pretty convincing second option.

On a Tascam 24 track machine I overdubbed electric guitars, bass, ukulele and acoustic guitar. I tried a new technique this time which was to import only a rough submix of my keyboard sequence to the Tascam machine instead of the individual tracks so I had more empty tracks for overdubbing. The bass track was a composite of bass guitar and bass keyboard (I can’t yet play James Jamerson type riffs at this stage in bass skills). I again used the Mosaic pedal for some 12-string guitar emulation via my 6-string Fender Stratocaster – it isn’t perfect but is a passible alternative for not having 3K to purchase a Rickenbacker 360.

I also added several vocal tracks. Some of the backing vocal ideas were ones I had in the attic of my head for decades (I’m surprised my neurons could retrieve the data). Chris’ melody idea and the bits I added to it after writing lyrics proved rather difficult for me to sing this go round, perhaps because of how much it moves around. I am happy with the outcome, “warts and all” as they say.