"Ray of Light"

I wanted to cover Madonna since I saw the episode of that show about her. You know, the show with the singing teens? I think it's called The Sopranos*. Mainly I wanted to do it for the contrast of it, similar to why I did some of my other covers, but I also think Madonna deserve more respect than she actually gets. Even when complimenting her, most people talk about her image or her celebrity status, and ignore the fact that she's actually responsible for some pretty good music. It's especially odd when someone does basically the same thing (hint: rhymes with "maybe lava"), and gets lauded as the Greatest Artist of our Generation TM.

As with Hallelujah, this song was easy to write (it took about an hour to work out the chord placements), but hard to play. Madonna's original "Ray of Light" is already hard to sing; this version is even harder, because of its unusual chord progression (which is either I-V-vii or vii-IV-vi, I couldn't figure out how the key worked) and lots of variations. Most of my early takes came out as vague grunts or psuedo-drunken slurs or Billy Corgan impressions. I actually changed parts of the structure of the song after taping this, but couldn't get a decent recording of the new version, so I had to stick with this earlier take instead.

Random Bull---- (he said, pronouncing the dashes effortlessly):
-At one point I was going to change the lyrics more, but I think what I was trying to say with the song works without all the changes. I sort of saw this version as being about losing someone (where Madonna's is more about going towards something), so lines like "faster than the speeding light she's flying," end up meaning very different things in the two versions.
-Recording this was a lot like recording "Hallelujah," but with a few differences. I spent a lot more time here trying to nail down the singing style, and playing in every conceivable key, in an effort to avoid the headaches the last song gave me. I failed, though this one did take less time, perhaps due to lower standards.
-This song was completely finished (by which I mean written) in May, but was shelved until recently because my attempts at recording it back then were about as successful as my attempts to record it now. Except for I gave up sooner, and I was less desperate.
-I decided not to listen to the original at all until I finished recording, so that the two versions would sound more different.
-Because I'm proud of them (and because they're nothing like the original), here are the chords in standard tuning (I played it three steps down):

Intro:
(D A C G B F Em D)

D              A     C       G
Zephyr in the sky at night I wonder
G              Em       A                C
Do my tears of mourning sink beneath the sun
D                   A             C
She's got herself a universe gone quickly
C               Em      G               A
For the call of thunder threatens everyone


A     D     A             C
And I feel like I just got home
D           A             C
And I feel like I just got home
Em    G    A  D
And I feel
D              A      C          G    Em
Quicker than a ray of light then gone
D              A      C          Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light then gone


D               A        C           G
Faster than the speed of light she's flying
G             Em     F        Am    C
And I don't remember how it all began
D        A     C      Em       G
I had myself a little piece of heaven
F               Em        Am                D   A
Waiting for the time when Earth could be as one

(verse)

G A B C D Em F G A

A     C     A      C
And I feel/ And I feel

D              A      C          G    Em
Quicker than a ray of light then gone for
Am                  Em
Someone else should be there
Am            Dm    Am A
Through the endless years

A     D     A             C
And I feel like I just got home
D           A             C
And I feel like I just got home
Em    G   C  A
And I feel

A                   D
She's got herself a universe
A                   C
She's got herself a universe
A                   D
She's got herself a universe
A                   C       Em G A
She's got herself a universe

A     D     A      D
And I feel/ And I feel

A C G B G F G Em G A Em

D              A      C     Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C     G     Em
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C     Em    G
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying
D              A      C           G  Em
Quicker than a ray of light she's flying

A D A C G Em

*In all seriousness, I've wanted to write about Glee since it started--it's not always a good show but there's always something to talk about--but I didn't want to start TV blogging again (too much work, plus I wasn't that great at it), and it seemed weird to only write about one show.

"Hallelujah" in G Major

Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" is possibly the greatest thing ever put to record. It's so good it's almost insulting to call it music. It's less a song, let alone a cover of a song, and more this secret little world that you get a glimpse of for a few minutes. It conjures something from nothing with just sound. It's light and darkness at the same time. It's pure passion, but it doesn't sacrifice structure or logic. It is perhaps the closest thing I've ever seen to something truly supernatural.

But it's not the whole story, nor should it be. "Hallelujah" is so widely covered because it's so ambiguous (unlike a lot of widely covered songs like "Yesterday," which are done because they're so universal). It can be sarcastic or achingly sincere, dark or redemptive, subdued or screamed, total crap or the greatest thing ever put to record (it also helps that you can pick and choose which parts to sing, and everyone including me seems to change the words). Even something as great as Buckley's version can't tell the whole story.

[In fact, I've written at least three different covers of this song, and every one of them is completely different. But more on that if I ever finish them.]

With this version I wanted to do something fairly dark, almost minor-key in the way it's sung (especially on the choruses, which are meant to sound pained and defeated, literally "broken"). In all honesty I probably bit off more than I could chew. I picked this version out of the three because I thought it would be relatively painless. Three weeks, fifty takes and one-and-a-half panic attacks later,* I was proven wrong. This was without a doubt the most difficult and time-consuming recording process I've ever had. The end result (for now at least) is what you hear now, which is successful in some ways but certainly isn't nearly as good as it could be.

There were basically three problems I had when recording this. 1.) Learning how to sing it. This version is a little talky, mainly so you can make out the words but also because I kept losing the good parts of my voice, and this was a decent compromise. Goddamn cold season**. 2.) I made a lot of mistakes. It's tricky chord progression, and it's hard to remember the third verse, because the best lines are at the end not the start, so you're always like how does the holy dove verse start oh shit I can't just keep playing people will realize it's cause I forgot the words better start over but now I'm rambling. 3.), and most annoyingly because you can't do anything about it, is volume. My setup has always been lo-fi, which a lot of people think is a good thing because they think it's what the music is supposed to sound like. It's not. Lo-fi in this case means that you can barely hear the quiet parts, and the loud parts hurt your ears and have all kinds of clipping problems***. For a song like this, which has lots of dynamics changes, it's basically a death sentence. In particular, the intro had to be changed from an arpeggiated part (which sounded sort of like Pachobel's canon, actually) to the more lamer thing in this version. I actually tried to dub over it with an electric guitar part, but it just sounded worse, though it did give me the idea to do the solo.

*Sadly neither of those is a joke.
** I'll probably, talk more about this in the "Ray of Light" and "Watchtower" posts, so I'm just giving you the Cliffs Notes here.
***For one take, I set the recording levels to "automatic," which gave me headaches to listen to. It's especially bad since it was otherwise probably the best take I did, much better than the final one, and I spent a week and a half trying to get something even close to it.

"♦+Noise"

UPDATED, 12/28: I can't remember exactly when I decided to finish the suite(s). I think the idea occurred to me sometime around finishing Spades, but I didn't actually know what they would sound like until this summer. I went with the laziest possible creative choice— basing what the song would sound like based on the title (it's a surprisingly effective strategy— see "Programming," "Insula," "AAAAAAAAA"). "Clubs" was obvious, but "Diamond" can describe a lot of things (one of my rejected ideas was to do a math-rock song). In the end I decided to go with a lush, string-and-horn heavy style, sort of like you might hear in a Bond movie (with a healthy dose of Phil Spector in there, too).

As it turns out, that's not an easy style to imitate. And it was especially difficult to reconcile a cool, slow ballad style with the chaotic nature of a "___ Noise" song.

The key was nailing down the drums. [Hint number 1: play slow. Play like you've never heard of Keith Moon. There are no such things as 8th notes. Hint number 2: use a tambourine. I played mine by sticking it on my right foot, which also why there's no bass drum in this song. Hint number 3: use brushes. this will also make hint number one easier. Oh, and hit the cymbal, not the hat]. I basically recorded a completely different song, then had to redo almost everything once I figured out the drums.

Other things:
-Expect a lot more synthesized instruments in these later songs. That's partly a consequence of the kind music I was writing, mostly due to having a decent MIDI controller now, and almost entirely due to the fact that I had to record almost 20 songs without anyone complaining about noise.
-The "deflating horn" sound is caused by hitting a chord and then hitting a blue note at lower volume.
-There are, actually, vocals in this song, though I never intended there to be words. I was never able to really get the sing style right, so it's mostly "ooh"s and "ah"s.
-Garageband 11 actually has a guitar setting called "Spy Movie." A heavily modified version of it appears here.
-This is the first song I've (successfully) written in 5:4 Time.


DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I cloned the drum track to change the panning, and made the 2nd guitar louder.

"Sunrise"

This has been up for a week but I haven't blagged it for a good reason: the recording quality is about the opposite of what it needs to be. It should be a lot more aggressive and "hot" (hence the title), and instead it sounds like it's underwater, and I've already done that song. I'm hoping to rerecord it if I can find the time.

Plapljwsijvklsjdnfiouwhu! Iuytfvsdg!

It's the End of the World as We Know It:


Minor Thing:

I don't really have anything to say about these, which is why I'm bunching them together. They're both ideas I had a while ago: the first is about a year old, the second I probably came up with around the beginning of last summer (which is probably why it sounds a lot less finished, but I was trying not to over-think it). Here's some facts:

-"End of the World" has a really long coda that I cut for it-sounding-terrible reasons. I left the first line of it as the last line of the song, if that gives you some idea.

-Great Big Sea also covered "End of the World" at a faster tempo. Their version is actually the exact same length as mine--for some reason iMovie always makes my songs a few seconds longer.

-I recorded all the "Minor Thing" piano parts with a Rock Band 3 keyboard, which works pretty well except it doesn't have instructions, and also that I'm a really shitty piano player. In retrospect, I probably overused the pitch-shifty thing.*

-"Minor Thing" is the first song of mine to take more than one day to finish recording, due to interruptions.

-I forget.

*Here is my review of it:

"If Rock Band 3 was just 'Space Oddity' and 58 Nickelback songs, and I'd probably still give it an A minus. The fact that there are least five other songs I might have used instead in that sentence is proof that it's the best thing the music game genre has ever produced."
They should put that on the box.


DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I took out the problematic ending, mainly because I couldn't figure out how to fix it.

"Would?"

Usually I try not to do more straightforward covers; my opinion has always been that if people want to listen to the original song they can (and will) just listen to the original song. So even if I'm not doing something radical, I try to change the aesthetic or the tone of the song, usually to see how that effects the meaning.

But something with this one just seemed right. Even though it's basically the same as someone else's song, I sing it or play hear it and it feels like one of mine.

Also I knew it would be simple enough that I could finish it pretty easily.

[Clever joke relating to the name or subject matter of the song, or to my recent lack of blog updates]

"Insula":

As always, I will put words here at some heretofore-unknown later date. Probably in a couple hours.

Update, A Couple Hours Later: At some point I'm going to have to stop doing this reverb/surf type thing. Probably right after someone comes up with a name for it.

I think I've tried to record every day this week. I spent more time on Sunday playing with guitar effects than it took to write, record, and publish this whole song. My version of writers block is instead of not getting ideas, I get a thousand ideas, all of them shit. I think I broke through it last night, but by the time I could play anything (this is a fancy way of saying everyone else in my house was asleep) I had forgotten what I wrote. I'm pretty sure it wasn't that good anyway.

The reason I'm posting these rambling and incoherent* thoughts on writer's block is that I don't have much to say about this song. I like it. I like the ghostly sound of the steel guitar (that'd be the thing that sounds like a dolphin screaming). I like the way the static sounds like waves, which was actually an accident from when I made the track louder. I like the atmosphere, how it's somehow an idyllic island paradise and dark and creepy at the same time, an idea I totally came up with before anyone else.

*Those two words tend to hang out together a lot, don't they?


DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: More of the steel guitar, louder overall.

Here's a thing you probably didn't know but also probably should.

No blogging for a while

Right now I need to be living in the real world. Depending on how that works out I might start posting again next month or so.

UPDATE 7/8: Worked pretty well.

I feel bad for pushing that .GIF off the front page

"Reaction"

For some reason the title of this song reminds me of another song, which is going to be stuck in my head for the next week. Thanks a lot, me. (More words later)

UPDATE 6-3: First of all sorry I haven't been doing more of these. It's been harder to make time then I thought it would be; I keep sleeping weird hours-- Monday I went to bed at 1 AM and woke up at 4 AM; Tuesday I went to bed at 1 AM and woke up 4 PM; four out of the last six days I've still been up when the sun rose (it's 5:35 AM as I type this). So figuring out a time to make a lot of noise when you won't be waking people up requires a small amount of planning & a much larger amount of luck.

As for the song itself, here's what I like:

-The contrast between rough heavy metal and shimmery shoegazey textures. The guitar somehow manages to switch between sounding really clean and really distorted and back again almost within a single note. Part of this was accomplished by setting my Expensive Whammy Pedal to harmonize a fifth below; mostly it was just raw natural talent. The drums are really cymbal-heavy, but then there's that breakdown at the end with all the off-beat hits (originally I was going to make the guitar part go crazy here too, sort of like "I [spade] Noise" or the end of "22 Minutes," but I like that it stays into that three-chord pattern). The vocal part is ragged and shouty, but it's mixed so low that at barely registers that way. Speaking of which...

-The low-mixed vocals. I wasn't going to do vocals at all, but my instincts suggested listeners need something to sing along with here. The words are pointless--they actually make sense and are internally consistent, but mostly I just needed something with "Reaction" in it, since I had already figured out the title (those instincts again). So I sort of shouted them away from the mike, almost like someone was just listening and started singing along. Plus that way you (hopefully) focus on the melody and emotion of the singing, which is more important than the words anyway. I seem to be doing this trick a lot-- see also: "Toybox," the aforementioned "22 Minutes"-- so my next song will probably have to have really loud vocals so I don't look like a one-trick miniature horse.

-I forgot what I was going to put for this one.

-Another contrast: the simplicity of the arrangement vs. the complexity of how it fits together. I used the White Stripes band setup, plus a clone of the guitar track so I could add a phaser (phasers are cool. They make me feel like I'm living in what people in 1975 thought 1999 would be like. For more cool phasers, see "Taps"). So there's no bass, no keyboard (speaking of which*), no cowbell. On the drum part a I don't even use the high-hat. The guitar is just three chords (Cb, A, and G, but the harmonic effect makes it a little more complicated). For almost half the song all you hear is that rapid bass drum pedal. But at the same time it's an insanely fast tempo, a weird key**, the rhythm is constantly shifting around (at one point the guitar rhythm is identical to "Duel," which is, sadly, unintentional), and at any moment it might stop or start up again.

-Which is the thing I don't like. This song is hard to get into. Once I finished it I wasn't sure if it was actually a good song or just one that was fun to record. It only after two or three listens that the groove of it made sense, and I was sure that it was worth doing. And I wrote the damn thing. Of course, once I got into it, I really got into it, and now I've listened to it maybe more than any other song of mine I've recorded in the last two years (though there are some unfinished songs that get stuck in my head a lot). So give it a few chances. And if you still hate it, lie and tell me how right I was.

*And speaking of that, between the bass pedal, the simplistic guitar part, the atonal singing, and all the empty lpace, I think I've written the least fun Rock Band song ever.
**It's possible I just don't understand key signature, but I believe it's played mostly in G but resolve on A.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: This one's exactly the same.