GEDALYA – WAKE UP

Monsey (US) artist, Gedalya, has just released his latest track, Wake Up, and we’ve been taking a few listens here at the Send Me Your Ears studio today.

Wake Up is a song aimed at encourage everyone to go that extra step in finding their best self and to live with more self-awareness. With a simple melody, familiar feeling chord sequence and accessible lyrics, Gedalya’s 2 minutes and 40 seconds of acoustic folk is an indie folk call to action to the listener to follow their true path and be their best self.

There’s some great percussion (congas?) in the distance in the opening sequence with a clear and driving beat that puts you in the mood for the song. Feeling a little like a Bob Dylan track, this is a song that we could see sitting well around a late night campfire session. Gedalya mentions that he sometimes busks on the streets of Brooklyn and we can see that that is where he’s picking up both his inspiration and his performance chops.

There’s some great, subtle use of extra vocals in the choruses that make the song feel like a great singalong number. Gedalya’s voice is warm and inviting and his positivity for life really shines through.

Gedalya is making his way through prisons and rehab centres with his music nonprofit ‘A New Song USA’ trying to give hope and inspiration to others. We truly commend his work.

From a production perspective, the vocals are very up front and in your face. Whilst this means that every lyric is very clear, we feel that it could do with being brought back in the mix a little, allowing other aspects of the song to be more audible. The track is very bright and clear so in our opinion needs very little EQ adjustments if at all. A high-pass filter set around 50Hz would remove some low rumble in the sub bass and allow the thump of the percussion more space. A slight boost around 2.5kHz and a slight cut around 8kHz would balance out the top end nicely. A light compressor / limiter to cut the ‘tips’ off the percussion transients would allow room for a little make up gain to make the song a bit warmer and bring the volume more in line wth other similar releases.

Gedalya’s, Wake Up, is a warm, positive burst of folk music that will brighten your day.