Here’s the link. 

I started writing this song on the Power Tab software in March, 2012.

At the time, the song title was just the number 1. That version was finished on 7 March, 2012.

By 11 December 2012, I finished writing the song and it had the title “1.4 – Links In The Chain”.

I started recording the music in the studio on 30 December 2014.

The first official cut with guitars and rough drums was finished on 21 February, 2014. At this time the song was just known as “Creating”.

On 19 September, 2014, I wrote lyrics for the song and I called it “Don’t Stop Creating”.

On 10 January, 2016, I re-wrote the lyrics and the title also changed to “Freedom (Who We Are)”.

And the song then remained dormant.

I wasn’t happy with the Chorus riff and the vocal melody I had for it. I wasn’t happy with the vocal melodies for the verses and the words I was using. Everything I did for it, sounded great on paper but terrible on Logic.

So it remained there while I wrote and wrote and wrote.

Then on 24 May, 2020, I really started working on it again.

I changed the whole Chorus riff to what you have now. I wrote a Chorus melody that I was okay with, but it’s not the one that I ended up keeping.

And the guitar melody you hear after the Chorus, well, that was also part of the Chorus vocal melody, which went, “Creating a change, a change to believe in”. But I struggled to sing it. And I got used to hearing the vocal melody guitar lead played on its own, so it grew on me.

I redid the drums.

I added vocals to the outro and some more guitar melodies. I added some solos and redid the bass. By the end of it, I had recorded 78 tracks. Mixing it was a nightmare and I’m crap at mixing as well.

I was inspired but I still struggled with the words. The song wasn’t saying what I wanted it to say. So I kept on re-writing the verses until I was done and okay for it.

I hate singing. I’m terrible at it. But when I write songs, I always have a vocal melody and lyrical lines to go with it. So I persist. Maybe one day, all those crappy attempts at singing would end up being worthwhile.

Maybe, just maybe, I would have created a change.

Did I mention that mixing was a nightmare, but I was too burnt on the song to care. I’ve lived with this song for almost 9 years in various formats. I’m also pretty amateur when it comes to mixing, but hey, if I don’t practice, I can’t get better. Most of the literature I have read says that you should never mix your own music.

Well I don’t really agree with it because in the past when I was recording in studios, I wasn’t turning the nobs, but I was still there in the mixing room, advising the engineer or producer on what I wanted to hear and if that was okay or not, etc.

So I’m a nutshell, artists are mixing their own music in the end. And that is what creating a change is trying to say.

When it comes to musical norms, they are put there because people who create nothing, want to make money from you. There is no right or wrong when it comes to writing, recording, producing, mixing and mastering your own music. If you don’t want to use another person to mix your song or master it, then change it and do it yourself.

You can only get better at it by doing it.

So let’s create a change.

P.S.

This was the cover that I had quickly done on a scrap piece of paper and Ditto refused to release it because it didn’t match the title of the song. But that was intentional.

Because change can take different paths.