"There is a Man"

 

Background

This was the first song I wrote with lyrics. I was dating a girl who didn't seem to appreciate me as much as I thought I should be appreciated (again, the ego thing). The approach in this song's lyrics for the singer of the song to describe this third person who is the girl's admirer (who is actually the singer himself) was not an original idea on my part. It was suggested by a thank you note I read that was written to a group of people who saved a young man who had blacked out in a swimming pool. The writer of the note thanked the group of young people for saving the young man's life, and then stated that he knew the young man was lucky to have such good friends because he WAS that young man.

 

Instrumentation

There were different secondary parts for each verse. In the first verse, I played a unison Flugelhorn and Flute line (overdubbed of course), in the second verse I played three moving flute parts together (overdubbed of course), then in the third verse had three different string sections come in contra-position to each other. This gave the effect of increasing intensity with each verse.

 

Behind the Scenes

The high falsetto doubling of the lead vocal in the first two verses came about as a joke when I was showing my then-fiancée (now wife) Ann the studio and was demonstrating playback and recording. I was fooling around and recorded the falsetto part making fun of one of the current top-10 songs that had a falsetto lead vocal. When I played it back we both liked the effect, so it stayed. To give a larger spatial effect for the three different string section parts in the last verse, I panned one to the left, one to the right, and the last one in the middle.