Well, I’ll get the lyrics part out of the way first:
(I want) a wonderful time
(To be) going on
I want a wonderful time to be going on (repeat)
I want a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, wonderful time (repeat, etc.)
[and at one point:]
I want a wonderful time to be going on
I want a wonderful time, good God, come on!
As for the recording of the piece, it occurred to me on a lark one morning in July of 2020. I’d thought of something: what happens if you try to play the melody of “Wonderful Time” as if the song is in B minor? So that the chord progression just goes Bm, E, Bm E, back and forth, such that the chorus now becomes I and IV in B minor as oppposed to II and V in A major?
That’s where “Wonderful Time, Part 2” comes from. I came up with the piano part based on that idea. And then, not long after that, I thought about what to do for a second verse, and I decided to see if I could teach myself the same melody and harmony on classical guitar.
That’s where “Wonderful Time, Part 2” comes from. Then I got the idea of writing out all the orchestration as software instrument tracks and keeping it around as a demo for about a year and a half after recording the first few base tracks. It’s actually very easy to tell what was recorded when: I started growing my current beard in the Fall of 2020, so anything where I’ve grown a beard is from sessions that took place in the Winter of 2021. Those sessions took place while I was recovering from a particularly bad knee sprain and was receiving workman’s comp. (It was the most pain I’ve ever felt.)
Here’s me playing most of the instruments on “Wonderful Time, Part 2”: drums, timbales, bass guitar, synthesizer, classical guitar, piano, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, trumpet, and trombone.
