about

"Hard to Say I'm Sorry" is a classic soft rock ballad originally performed by the American rock band Chicago. Released as a single by Chicago in the summer of 1982 as a precursor to, and then appeared on, their album "Chicago 16." It marked a pivotal moment in the band's career as they transitioned to a more pop-oriented sound. The song was co-written by Peter Cetera, Chicago's bassist and vocalist, and David Foster, a renowned songwriter, composer, and producer.

I've never tired of listening to this song ... it has a magical combination of lyrical rhythms, chord progressions, arrangement and production. It also sounds good on a single acoustic guitar. Rather than do a simple direct cover, I tried to concoct some additional/unique elements and came up with the finger-picked acoustic start which, lyrically, forms a prologue to the main song. In addition, I've added elements at the very start which reflect my own preoccupation with the passing of time, but it also 'fits' (in my mind at least) that the protagonist of the main song is reminiscing about lost opportunities in his earlier life. I could not find a way to resolve the oddity at the end of the main song where, after admitting to being repsonsible for the relationship ending, declares to the girl that if she comes back "You're gonna be the lucky one". What pomposity!

As usual, once the song's outline (and key for singing) was determined, I laid out the structure in Pro Tools, used the click track to record guitar, sang against it, then started layering in the various MIDI instruments ... drums, bass, violins, cello, horn, flute. As a template, I used the performance cover by 'Leonid & Friends' (a Russian tribute band) ... their video make it a lot easier to pinpoint how the arrangement is layered (you can SEE when they come in).

Due to the chosen key, my harmonies were too low to stand out. Old friend Martin Hale used pitching software on my main vocal to create the harmonies, but I never felt comfortable with this ... the vocal texture was too similar. Eventually I asked the good folk at BigNote Productions to sing them and they sent me the results to mix back in. And after all this work and listening, I still like the song!

MUSIC CREDITS

  The 'familiar' song was written by Peter Cetera & David Foster

  Lead guitar break - Martin Hale

  Harmonies - Paul Harris and Jennifer Matthews (BigNote Productions)

  Originally arranged - Chicago (1982)

RELEASE TO STREAMING PLATFORMS. Unfortunately I've hit what looks to be unsurmountable hurdles. The apparent rule is that if you have made significant change to the arrangement, music or lyrics, permission to release is required from the song's owner/publisher. These entities have been impossible to identify and neither APRA (the artist umbrella in Australia) nor CD-Baby (my US-based aggregator service for streaming releases) have been able to assist. One can pay a service fee to a third party company which supposedly covers things, but there is a lot of fine print which I don't believe would 100% cover me anyway, and the fee would require a million listens to offset. So it looks like it'll never happen. The stupidity of the system is that I CAN release it on YouTube!!

THE VIDEO. All the pictures of "the guy" were my earliest testing of AI image generation with character continuity (using Midjourney). Reasonably successful, I felt sufficiently confident to subsequently embark on the big two - 'Human Stain' and 'Agincourt' (from The Flat White Album) - for which there was never appropriate/satisfactory stock imagery.