This is a self-penned song which was never professionally demoed. I recently found it on a not very good, under-rehearsed cassette home recording. Some may remember that there was later a T.V. series with a similar name.
Attachment:
goodfriends.mp3
It is too late to have it professionally demoed now but would have liked it sung in an Elaine Paige style.
As I wrote my songs on my own, I needed to get them into a fixed form on manuscript paper and also on a rough recording.
When the compositions were new, even though I had written them myself, it still took time to get the feel of the song in some cases. Because I knew I would be taking a lot of the works to a professional studio for instrumental arrangements and for other vocalists so as to achieve a very good recording, I didn't spend a lot of time on my home recordings. They were just a means to an end. Therefore, my home recordings may be simply sketches for me to refer to and to take to the studio to work from.
The demo was a luxury I looked forward to, knowing that, if the song sounded of a good standard, I had a recording to help promote the song.
Writing on my own meant I was composing the words and the music. As many of my songs were meant to be for male vocalists, my first home-recordings before going to the studio were obviously sung by me with lyrics which had to be interpreted as being sung by a man.
When I recorded at home, initially, I had to quickly play a simple arrangement on the piano, work out suitable chords then try to sing my new song. I had to try to write in a key with a suitable range for me but sometimes it didn't work out that way. My songs decided their own key, depending on the mood of the song, and that meant that when I tried to demonstrate my song, I found that some notes would be too high or too low. If I had been intending a completed recording at home, I would have made several recordings, and got into the song more comfortably. But, very often, I was completing the song the day before going to the studio, and so I would take my fledgeling recording and luckily, the studio engineer was only interested in how the song was going to be arranged and recorded. The vocal quality was not important as long as the song was heard and understood.
My most amusing recordings I took were when I had to sing too high and it was remarked in good humour that I sounded like Hilda Ogden. I didn't mind because it was all for a good cause and the key would be sorted out to suit whoever was going to sing the song. When I listen to the first recordings now, they are like a diary of the times of my life when I was going through different moods of worry or happier times. The worrying times were helped for me to get through by writing songs and music, but, at the same time I had to sing to record them. If I was very upset, singing was quite difficult, but I knew that what I was doing was therapeutic, and so I tried hard to reach my goal. It was quite a good feeling when I arrived home with my finished professional recording and was able to listen to a song which was no longer a fledgeling and ready to be promoted if I had the time amongst the other responsibilities I had.
Once I was at another stage with my compositions, the first home recordings were stored away and only used, perhaps, for copyrighting.
The recording of Just Good Friends was one that stayed as a home-recording.
Edited 11th June to delete the home-recording for it to be returned to storage. With thanks for the comments and interest.