Dreary Summer Day - AlexGB231 ft. Nadia and Sheena (The Big Return)
Channel: AlexGB231
Date: 2022-01-21

So... this song is quite a big one, isn't it? This probably could've been the title track as it's the most ambitious song in the whole album, but nevermind.

It started off by featuring just as a part of a bigger composition called 'The Major Journey', where I wrote a piece that passed through every major key at least once. This piece was the E major section and it was the second part of the second section. I liked it so much, however, that I decided to turn it into a full song, and I did! If you want to listen to 'The Major Journey', here's the link: https://youtu.be/zdrXv45eNtY . The corresponding section appears at the 2:14 mark.

Now, perhaps the biggest feature of this song is that I had some singers to help sing the melody here. I thought that the instrumental was very good, but having some vocals would take it up a step, so I asked Nadia and Sheena to help me with those. I tried my best not to ask them to re-record too many times, as I know that gets tiring after a while, but there were times when I had to, particularly if they were singing incorrect lyrics, for example, or if I wanted to assign the parts differently. They provided multiple takes for me to choose from anyway, but there were times where I asked them to re-record because I wanted to steer them in a different direction. Overall, they did a great job, there are some really nice moments that I really enjoy with the vocals, my favourite part probably being the bridge, with the intensity constantly building as it goes on. It works a lot better with the vocals!

With all that said, here's what Sheena had to say about this: 'Working on this pushed me out of my comfort zone. When Alex showed me the score, I was initially sceptical because I knew what I was used to singing and this was definitely different (Dreary Summer Day). That being said, I'm glad I did it - it's so catchy! And it really made me focus on how to manipulate my singing.'

As with 'The Big Return', I'll talk more about the chord progression in the instrumental version's description, it's just a 4-chord loop but there might be more to it than you might think...

But for now, enjoy!

Download 'Dreary Summer Day': https://drive.google.com/file/d/13ae3o1wXQaXD4JL-pXLF8eHWk4l2yvSG/view?usp=sharing

Download the entire album: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1rrNp879YcbzDAHIp5wCKwSazaCdl3g5Y?usp=sharing