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.

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.