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A small house, or perhaps a tiny church, skylined by a hint of fading sun, stars, and maybe a bit of aurora borealis. Silhouettes of a few people are standing to the right. Image courtesy of @NiwlCraft@mastodon.art, CC0.
A small house, or perhaps a tiny church, skylined by a hint of fading sun, stars, and maybe a bit of aurora borealis. Silhouettes of a few people are standing to the right. Image courtesy of @NiwlCraft@mastodon.art, CC0.

Home (When Shadows Fall)

Venya
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Home (When Shadows Fall) (2025)

Venya

Originally written in 1931 by Harry Clarkson, Geoffrey Clarkson, and Peter van Steeden. In the public domain as of June 3rd, 1982. Image courtesy of @NiwlCraft@mastodon.art, CC0.

I first heard this song about thirty years ago from my grandparents when I was a teen. Somewhere exists an audio tape of us all playing it together on piano, saxophone, and clarinet in Dad's living room. It took me a long time to find it again since I couldn't remember the full title and "home" is a remarkably useless search term; once I did, I discovered a lot of great musicians have covered it. I never heard a version quite like what I had in my head, however, so we decided to give it a try.

Arranged and tracked by me, it features:

  • Devon Steele on vocals
  • Max Woolery on acoustic guitar
  • Isaiah Evans on drums
  • me on bass guitar (later in overdubs)
  • MIDI piano because none of us know all of those chords

Track 1 is with the "main" mix with vocals and some modest filter effects. Track 2 is a render without the filter or vocals so you may better appreciate Max's guitar part. Track 3 is a pre-production demo with just MIDI piano chords and solo bass melody (on my Ibanez SRC6MS crossover bass). We left the first half of the repeat open for an instrumental solo, but never quite made one, so you can just enjoy Max's rhythm guitar or feel free to add your own.

On the downloads page you can also get a MIDI file and a PDF of the sheet music and lyrics. It's a lovely song; feel free to make it your own. Reach out if you would like my MuseScore files. There were some slight changes made from what was written in the course of performing and we added a little bit of vocal harmony late in the game, but I think the chords are 99% the same as what is on the MIDI and PDF.

Additionally, Max and Kendra Sorani were amazing as assistant engineers on this project, which was tracked in Studio D at Nashville's Blackbird Studio on January 25, 2025, as part of my student project. They are fantastic to work with and I expect great things from both of them.

Some linkage:

Recording and this arrangement of the music licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Go nuts.

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