“Walking On Air (Songcraft Mix)” And The Story Behind The Song

Things just seem to be getting more and more interesting at Songcraft!

I guess the whole “Songcraft” vibe seems to be rather conducive for musical creativity to flourish.

Firstly, take a listen to one of Ivan’s recent songs called “Walking On Air (Songcraft Mix)” here: Walking On Air 2008 - with Friends from Songcraft

(The term “Songcraft Mix” is just my own terminology I’m giving it. Ivan calls it something else.)

Anyway, here’s the interesting story behind the song:

Ivan’s first composition in 2007 was a piece named “Walking On Air”. In his own words:

“Actually it was composed on 30th Dec, but I completed this on 1 Jan 2007. Had plenty of time over the super-duper long weekend/ holidays. It’s titled “Walk On Air”, to mean “In a state of extreme happiness”. It sounds like a happy song, so I thought the title matches.”

I personally though it was a very uplifting song. Full of brightness and sunshine. It was largely an instrumental piece at that point in time.

Next came a “music video” version, which I felt was an improvement. The added vocals at the end “Can you feel, can you feel that I’m walking on air…” were a fantastic touch! I loved it.

Then most recently, Ivan had the bright idea of getting us Songcrafters to record sound bites (i.e. just a few spoken words) on what “Happiness” means to us.

His earnest plea to all the Songcrafters through email was as follows:

“Instead of singing and adding lyrics to the song (which Betty once tried to do, if I recall correctly) I thought of inserting sound bites. As the song plays along, I thought there could be different people saying words or phrases that they associate with “Happiness”.

e.g. “Ice Cream”, “Taking long walks in the rain”, “Sitting down with a cup of coffee and reading a book”, “singing”
(I’m also looking for some words and phrases associated with sadness)

I was thinking that each of the songcrafters can say a line. Record it as MP3. Email me and I’ll try to piece them together in time for our Mar meetup.

I’m not sure if you understand me, so if at least 2 persons can record their soundbites in MP3 (you can say as many phrases or words as you want), I can do a demo segment and might be clearer for the rest to chip in.

OK, crossing my fingers to see if anyone responds. :)”

And in typical fashion, his email plea for volunteers fell largely on deaf ears.

The only kind soul who took it up was Betty, who faithfully recorded some sound bites and sent the files to Ivan.

Then came our next Songcraft session back on 14th March, and I guess Ivan decided it was ”no more Mister Nice Guy” and turned it into a turned into a “I’m-making-everyone-do-this-right-here-right-now” thing at the session tonight.

So we all obediently listened to the GarageBand guru and took turns recording our sound bites as we passed the digital voice recorder round the group.

Which was a good thing too, now that I think back to it!

Take a listen to the final end product: Walking On Air 2008 - with Friends from Songcraft

I thought it was a fantastic job by Ivan! 

Love the way he so expertly meshed all the different quotes into the music piece, such that it became a musical “collage” of voices.

It’s wonderfully done. 

Well done Ivan. I guess it pays to be a dictator sometimes.

But don’t do it to us too often. =)