This song is about riding waves, whether water or snow or the surprises that come at you every day in life, and the recording studio.

I started working on it in June 1998 when my son pointed out that one of his CDs said it had a bunch of free samples on it. The CD was by a band called PitchShifter, and I grabbed all the samples off the CD into my computer (an Apple Macintosh Centris 660AV at the time), and was really inspired when I had both a rockin' drum loop and a sample of water trickling at the same time. The combination made me hear more of a rhythm and melody in the trickling water. It sounded cool but didn't progress to become something original until 4 October 1998, when I sat down with an acoustic guitar and figured out how to play that melody I heard when the drums and water looped together. That led to some really nice accompanying chords, which I recorded in a couple of tracks. I then took two copies of the water samples into a program called SoundEffects and changed the sample rate information to 22 kHz on one and 11 kHz on the other, then brought them back into my DAW software, Deck II at the time. This caused the water samples to play back at half- and quarter-speed respectively, and the rhythm in the water trickling went half- and quarter-speed respectively, and the melody in the water trickling went down one and two octaves, respectively. Those got layered into my composition in progress, and some copies got reversed for additional variety. That was really cool, but I needed another part! In December I messed around with the arrangement and recorded a bass part. Then I was playing around with the D/Bb/F chords and realized they were really pushing a 3/4 feel over the 4/4 of the rest. So with two more acoustic guitar tracks, and a waltz-feel bass part to go with it, I had a better bridge. I wrote some lyrics on 7 December 1998 with a rather unusual ABCDBEDF rhyming pattern (see below). With lyrics written, I could arrange all these loops into a final structure. On 18 December (Ayman's birthday and the day Nokia acquired my employer Vienna Systems), I recorded some extended guitar solos over the bridge music, and comped them down to the best bits. I finished it up on 21 December 1998 (sixteen years ago today!), with a day recoding vocals and backing vocals and mixing.

This ended up on the album solar.

Thanks for listening!

-Andy

ride it

sailing
on the wind
riding
on the waves
	on the wind
	sun and water
	on the waves
	sun and snow

riding
down the mountain
spinning 
off a wall
	down the mountain
	sun and snow
	off a wall
	sunny day

feel it
on the wind
ride it
balancing
	on the wind
	snow spectacular
	balancing
	snow and sun
	
balance
on a fall line
sailing
through the air
	on a fall line
	snow and trees
	through the air
	snow and sun

flying
through the air
feel it
underfoot
	through the air
	jump the wake
	underfoot
	jump the wave

underneath
feel the energy
ride it
all the way
	feel the energy
	sun and water
	all the way
	sunny day


Andy Wyatt - December 7, 1998
©1998 by The Andy Band