It was a bit of a surprise when an old song I had written way back when the dinosaurs still roamed the earth came into my head yesterday and wouldn’t get out. Much to my amazement, when I pulled out the guitar, the chord progression and rough playing style came back to me almost instantly.
For a bit of perspective, the song, “May Faire” has never been performed. So, it’s not like I spent uncountable hours rehearsing the song. I may have toyed around with it whenever I could not come up with something new for a few years, but it was not on the forefront of my thinking.
Why? Because it was too short and I ultimately decided it was a nice filler tune if I ever got around to making a folksy-sounding cassette demo, something to break up two more driving songs, perhaps. Maybe not even showing up in the track listing, just something tacked on to the end of the previous song. It was always meant to be a short instrumental; unlikely to ever be performed on stage.
may faire
by michael raven
michael raven
This is back in 1989-90. When I wrote it, I had just started learning how to play guitar instead of bass. I had finally purchased my own acoustic guitar to play instead of the one I acquired that some guy loaned me and forgot to tell me how to get in touch when he moved so I could return it (he eventually accused me of stealing it and I reminded him that I am hardly psychic and could not know how to reach him if he didn’t share that information; so much for that semi-friendship).
I was heavily invested in playing a folksy, renaissancey, neopagan sound at the time, and this was my attempt to sound like a courtly troubadour.
Trigger warning: theory and technical stuff ahead. Scroll past me to the next bold part.
In retrospect, I didn’t do half-bad, considering that I hadn’t much of a clue as to what I was doing in terms of music theory or guitar playing at the time. This is largely in the key of C major/relative A minor:
Verse: Am/C/Dm-Dsus4/Em/Am/C/Dm-Dsus4/G (x2)
Chorus: C6 (add 9)/ G6 (add 9)/Dm-Dsus4/G6 (add9) (x2)
This was all by ear, i.e., what sounded “right” to me. That’s as opposed to figuring this stuff out ahead of time. I just liked the way it sounded.
I sat down to record this, but was reminded that arthritis makes doing such things nearly impossible anymore for me. However, I am not above using sequencing tools to try to recreate the sound I used to get from my latter-purchase of a 12-string guitar (even more impossible to play at recording quality anymore).
So I loaded up a suitable emulated guitar sound (with heavy reverb and chorus to get at the 12-string guitar effect) and programmed the sequencer to play this song much in the way as I did back in 1990 — a combination of strumming and picking. It’s pretty close to the original, but I think I was sloppier back then. Finger style playing was not one of my skills at the time, so I faked it more often than not.
Another quick note about the composition: I didn’t know I was writing a song in 3/4 time signature at the time and would have been surprised if anyone said something to that effect.
Okay! No more technical stuff, y’all can come back now.
I thought it would be nice to add a bodhrán to this version of the song, so I faked the feel of the traditional Irish drum both in rhythms, rim shots and tone. It’s not perfect, but it will do.
Because I always envisioned this being played in a meadow, maybe on the outskirts of some local festival, I decided to add a drone element and some ambient birds (this is a heavily-modified nature sample).
The name of the song actually has a source beyond my silly brain. It was about the time that The Witching Hour by Anne Rice came out and I immediately glommed onto the Mayfair Witches as being an awesome name, once I removed the “Witches” part, separated the first word into two and added an “e” to the end so that Mayfair became May Faire. I didn’t necessarily want it to be associated with the novel, I just thought it would make a great song title. If I recall correctly, this was also originally written around Beltane, and I was giving a nod to the holiday.
While I was trying to find a good emulation for the guitar that you hear in this song, I came across a sound that has more of a mandolin character, so I did an alternate mix of the song with that sound. In case you are at all curious and not yet burned out on May Faire, check it out below.
Comments are always welcome. Drop them in the space after the alternative mix.
may faire (alternative mix)
by michael raven
michael raven
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