New York Harbor Channel is proud to present our first Docu-scensory of 2021; which takes us on a journey to see the Behind The Scenes Making Of Ascending A Ladder To The Stars. The players who collaborated to produce the new release, “Ascending A Ladder To The Stars” tell the backstory of the song as well as discuss the musical composition and recording techniques. With the combination of Marc Hittner’s lyrics and guitar foundation, adding Joe Mayer’s instrumental expertise playing classical folk styles, and Vinny Pedulla’s ear and musical background, they layered the tracks and pieced together the finished product.
“Behind The Scenes Making Of Ascending A Ladder To The Stars” not only gives viewers clear meaning to the song lyrics through images and narration, but it also gives us an interesting inside look on how it was created in the studio. Pedulla, who is the audio mixer says “I tried to get a nice foundation and Joe filled in the instrumentation. It was nice that we were able to use the B3 and the fender Rhodes through the Leslie that added a nice kind of vintage vibe to it.” Pedulla, who is also visually impaired uses a screen reader to help lay the audio tracks for the song. You can hear it 8 mins and 40 seconds into the video. Joe Mayer, who is the melody composer, focuses on his choice to use the mandolin, fiddle, and organ as the instruments to be used in the the song ; “What I tended to do was take the chords structure and I just kind of like to move around with one or two notes within those chords, slide them up and down and then I just hear something in my head and I try to follow it.” True words of an artist!
Singer, songwriter Marc Hittner, explains, “I wrote this song to pay tribute to the workers of New York Harbor.” His reference to “A sister’s acrobatics trapeze, backflips of the gymnast” depicts the everyday workers who literally bend over backwards to do their jobs, such as ship painters dangling off the sides of ships too boat pilots climbing up accommodation ladders; workers we often tend to forget about. The song also focuses on the dangers of the accommodation ladders that ship pilots need to climb up in order to dock ships.
Ascending A Ladder To The Stars is available when you click here for streaming platforms of your choice. NYHC intends to feature a new artist every month with these docu-scensory videos. Want to share your songs backstory or even need help recording a song? Look no further because NYHC is here to help. Reach out to our content department at [email protected]. Of course, the musical themes should be marine related to appeal to our water-loving audience but we are always open to creating content for any musician.