happy tunesday! un-grand canyon

"Un-Grand Canyon" is another in the series of recordings of songs that I wrote or co-wrote, which will appear on the album by "The Marc Whinston Project" (or whatever "group name" I choose to brand it with).

But this is unique. Most of the songs for the project were written only by me. There are also a few songs that are primarily mine, but that have coauthors. For the most part, these involved a little wordsmithing (by others) on a song that was almost completely written by me. I still think of those as "my" songs.

But "Un-Grand Canyon" is different. This is Christina's baby. It started with a poem she wrote, and I tried to turn it into a song. There was some restructuring, and I changed a few words. But the lyrics are hers. I set it to music -- the first time I had ever done that for someone else's words. That was a new challenge, as I really wanted to capture the drear that Christina wrote about.

I think I succeeded, but Toby's arrangement and Eytan Mirsky's vocals did a lot of the heavy lifting.

I am really looking forward to putting this on the upcoming album. I never could have written her lyrics; they are in a style that's alien to me. And the finished product is very different from anything else in the album project. The closest to it is "Five Missing One," but this sounds much better. It also mines a topic that I really haven't approached at all on my own, so in that sense it contributes to variety. Plus, it was my first attempt at setting someone else's words to music. And I am really pleased with the results.