A New Year by Shane Beales and Sam Jones
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52 bars of 7 (+1) makes 365 beats for 2011.
The song.
This song was conceived on a cold day in November. What started out as a vague idea to do something for January 1st quickly evolved into a whole musical concept about time and the way it is measured through the days of the year, coupled with lyrics describing the typical aspirations and resolutions that accompany the fireworks and festivities. There a few references some key events I knew were coming up this year. Others are becoming more and more relevant as the year goes by… It is an unashamedly optimistic and hope filled song that still resonates six months into the year!
Once the song was sketched out, I quickly made arrangements to go up to Manchester to record in a day with Sam Jones at his home just before Christmas. Sam is a talented composer and producer/engineer who also happens to have wonderful upright piano full of character in his front room.
It was recording that piano and hearing its richness in tonality that really got the day off to a flier – and we kept up the momentum to complete the recording of the whole song within a few hours.
Sam then completed the mix over the next few days with much email communication and negotiation over the inclusion of that ‘SaturdaySundayMondayTuesdayWednesdayThursdayFriday‘ vocal loop!
The video.
The idea was always to make a video to accompany the song and with the completed mix delivered on December 29th, I commenced making the video, completing it the following day. After much careful planning, December 30th was the day the video was created. In the corner of my living room I set up a camera and calendar and proceeded to take 365 photographs of drawings and lyrics designed to synchronise with each beat of the song.
Most of the style and design of the photographs was spontaneous. The collage moments in particular were a lot of fun to put together! Finally, after about 8 hours of kneeling on the ground the photographs were all taken. They were then combined with the track, which thankfully had a steady pulse so it was possible to calculate how long each photograph needed to be shown. (I think it was 0.64 seconds?!)
As a final task, the newly designed cover (put together by Jon Lockhart) was added to the front of the future – and by some stroke of coincidence or telepathy, he decided to make the cover yellow – which fitted neatly with the colour of my first photograph. It worked so well it looked like it was intentional!!
Since launching the video on Youtube on January 1st, it has been very warmly received and shared by those hoping for a Happy New Year. It is also going down well with audiences whenever I play it live, so it may well be in sets long after this year has become next…