Turn of the Tide

24.2.2018

I wrote the song Turn of the Tide already back in the 80s. At that time still as a drummer for the band Backstage.
Originally I thought of the song as a breakup ballad and composed it on the piano or DX21 respectively. The song came in the style of a rock ballad at the time, and I personally (as a drummer) had a lot of fun with it, especially with the chorus and the powerverse.

Turn of the Tide, reloaded

When I started making music again around 2005, I reactivated the song as part of a band workshop with my singer at the time. Since the breakup topic was a little flat, I wrote another verse and lyrically adjusted some passages. The song was meant to deal with the phases of grief, which of course can be found in the single passages of Turn of the Tide.

The song in symphonic-prog guise

The song structure has actually hardly been changed. I only rewrote and greately expanded the intermediate part and added the final part. The Powerverse has been given a slightly more complex guitar riff than in the early years. For the final part I experimented a lot and also discarded it again: from organ to Tubular Bells back to the piano, however, we changed the metrics to a 5/4 beat to give our signature style its due 🙂.

Production infos

Our singer Alex has reinterpreted the verses very tastefully. He recorded the song with the RØDE NT1-A microphone. All keys, strings and synths come from Komplete 11 by Native Instruments. The choir is from EastWest and is called Symphonic Choirs. With Wordbuilder it is possible to put words into the choir's mouth. The whole thing is a hell of a job, you work with phonemes, which then change with each keystroke of the keyboard. But when it works out and sounds properly, it's also pretty fun. For the drums, I have since switched to Superior Drummer 2 and use the Metal Extension here.

Author: Leo Kapfer