I Thought I Could Fly

The song started life as more sonic doodles using the Numanesque 1979 synth emulators – so if you think it’s 80s, you’re a year out!

Was also working on transitions from verse to chorus (as I’ve listened to too many fawmers doing this rather splendidly) – chords and dynamics, that sort of thing.

Tech Notes
⚠ Warning: do not operate heavy machinery whilst reading
The retro simulator VSTs are from fullbucket.de – they’ve been nicely stable within Cubase (I’m a bit precious about polluting the DAW with rogue plug-ins).

A Paralogy emulator mimics a Crumar Trilogy in the intro; the sweep sound is the Ny simulator (Korg Lambda); A Korg DW-8000 emulator (FB-7999) fills in the chorus bass line. There’s a Reason synth bass (Europa), and UAD bass (PolyMax) in there too. The bass components are largely side-chained from the drums to keep them under some semblance of control.

The resonant sweep melody is from Reason’s Thor; pads from PolyMax and Cubase’s Padshop. And Retrologue.

Vocals from Vocaloid (Taku and Jessica) … with a smidgen of step-filter.

I had hoped to use the Drumtraqs emulator (also fullbucket.de) … but they didn’t settle 🤷‍♂️ … so swapped for Backbone soundset (and “impact” noises from there too).

Lyrics

I’m not sure that you’re ready
[Ooh]
I’m not sure that you’re ready
[Ooh]

I thought I could fly: now I know
I’m landing on the motorway, like Gary
I thought I could fly: now I know
I’m landing on the motorway, like Gary

I’m not sure that you’re ready
[Ooh, let’s go]
I’m not sure that you’re ready
[Ooh]

I thought I could fly but now I know
I’m landing on the motorway, like Gary
I thought I could fly but now I know
I’m landing on the motorway