I don't remember exactly when I started doing it, but sometime in the late nineties or early aughties, I started taking my old, beaten up Yamaha acoustic with me on my long walks in the woods with my dog, weather permitting. That guitar was originally my older brother Doug's, but sometime during the mid-eighties he handed it down to me. It had a bad puncture wound on the soundboard near the bridge, caused by an accident involving a metal post on his bed at Cornell's U-hall, if I remember the story right. [The square scar is still visible in the picture here: the Yamaha's in the lower left.] I got the awesome guys at the Ithaca Guitar Works to glue that up and put in a pickup under the bridge so I could play acoustic with my band E.B.A. sometimes.

Anyhow, my long walks in the woods with my dog and an acoustic have led to the discovery of many new riffs and tunes over the years. When inspiration strikes, I try to record it as soon as possible. At first I had a little dedicated voice recorder, then after it died I'd call my work voicemail, then once I had my first smartphone (a Nokia 9290 Communicator!) I'd record the idea into a voice recorder app. This is one of those tunes that came to me out in the fields and woods behind our house in Danby, NY, just south of Ithaca. The title and theme might be a bit cliche, but I was really feeling it. How you perceive and pursue your life is all in your head. If you focus on how desperately messed up the world is, it's easy to get despondent and messed up. If you focus on beauty and love, it's easy to fill your head and heart with beauty and love.

Recording notes: this started with a canned drum loop of real drums, then I recorded the acoustic guitar part. Then I deleted the drum loops from the beginning so the drums don't come in until the first chorus. Next was bass, plugged directly into the computer audio interface, which was the M-Audio Duo at the time. Then I did a clean Strat track with a glassy chorus, then another Strat track with distortion that doesn't come in until the third verse, driving the climax of the song. The electric guitars were direct through a Line 6 POD 2 and the Duo. Last was the lead vocal and four backing vocal tracks. Recorded with Deck II on a 233 MHz bondi blue iMac.

This ended up on my 2005 album babble on.

Thanks for listening!

-Andy

life is what you make of it

walking my dog
strumming away
I try to do this 
almost every day
an attitude
a point of view
take it or leave it
it's all up to you

   over and over again
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it

so I stumbled along
and found this song
watching the clouds
as the sun went down
it's either the same thing
again and again
or the most 
beautiful thing in the world

   I'll tell you again and again
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it

I want to know 
I want to see
but sometimes I have to
just let it be
day after day
trying to get along
what is the point
of a simple song?

      over and over and over again
      life is what you make it
      over and over and over again
      life is what you make it

pull out the stops
don't hold back
this might be the one chance
you'll ever get
day and night
over and over again
never the same
but it never changes

   over and over again
   life is what you make of it
   I'll tell you again and again
   life is what you make of it
   don't you know, don't you know
   life is what you make of it
   oh yeah, ooh yeah, ooh yeah
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it
   over and over again
   life is what you make of it

©2004 by Andy Wyatt