"♣ Noise"

With all the "___ Noise"s, I tried to create something completely different, but at the same time I wanted there to be elements that were common to all four--basically a "spirit" that justifies the hyperlinked titles. While each focuses on one element--Hearts on the way the tracks are layered, Spades on how effects change the sound, Diamonds on balancing order and chaos, and this song on playing different textures and styles against each other-- they all have this thing that unites them, which is that they're all almost something, but not quite. They're supposed to be sort of deconstructed, "wrong" versions of what they're sound like they are. Hearts is almost, but not quite, pure noise--everything still fits together in some recognizable way even as it clashes at the same time (compare to "Insanity," which uses noise more as an instrument in itself, rather than a result of the composition and how the instruments are used). Spades is almost a straightforward rock song, but the rhythms and scales are all off and for some reason there's an all-sped-up version. Diamonds could be pop, but the vocals are just an inaudible moan and the horns sound defeated, and some of the other instruments aren't even paying attention to what the others are doing. This song has the synthesized sounds and mash-up aesthetics of modern dance music, but it's near-impossible to actually dance to.

This song has probably the most uniquest (take that, grammar Nazis) structure of any of my song, one which I don't think I've ever heard before. It's a refrain/solos structure similar to jazz, but there's no refrain, just a series of consecutive solos (bass, ukulele, piano, and acoustic guitar) played with barely any breaks between them. The rest takes a sort of A-B-A form, but the second "A" section isn't really all that similar to the first, and adds a new motif (the 10:8 guitar/drum breakbeat) which gradually takes over the whole song.

Other things:
At one point (around the end of July/ start of August), I spent most of a week trying to figure out how to get the guitar sound on this--something that would be simultaneously atmospheric and musically dynamic--but gave up, and the next day ended up writing "Insula" in less than an hour*. The final sound is me playing weird rhythms on an A Minor chord, playing a wah pedal with my left foot and a whammy pedal with my right foot, which is essentially the same as something I made a joke about a long time ago.

It's probably fitting that my attempt to write electronica has the most metal riffs I've ever written.

The screeching noise that ends part one is a triangle scraped with a drum brush. I used the same effect on it here as I used to create "Insanity in 9:8"
Initially I tried to write around the bass and drum parts, and recorded a bunch of additional "solo"parts to use later. Everything but some minor percussion and the two electric guitar parts was thrown out and ended up rerecorded.

As I said above, this song, like "Diamonds" has a 5:4 beat (really more 10:8, which i actually use a lot but not in anything I've recorded yet). I want to use more weird time signatures going forward--so far really all I've done is the 3:4 parts of "Rise"-- but I especially like how it's used here because everything else is still 4:4. Other weird key and tempo stuff-- the song is mostly in A minor but the piano and uke are in C**, the bass in f#, and the guitar breakbeat in G.

The guitar breakbeat uses the A, G, and E power chords, the same chords "Ray of Light" is built on, and has a similar circular pattern to both "Reaction" and "Watchtower."

The endless coda to this song isn't some bold artistic choice, it's a mistake, caused by me setting something wrong and then not bothering to listen to the song before posting it.

Out of all my songs, this is the one I'd most like to see performed live.

*To be fair I also figured out structural elements like the piano solo, and the pattern for the breakbeat, then played on cymbals.
**I later went back and made some minor changes, the biggest of which was writing a different piano solo which is in A Minor

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: See ** above. Also I used a hard pan to put the acoustic guitar on the left and the rock guitar/drum breakbeat on the right. Also the ukulele is a little quieter I think.

"The Cove"

After those last two songs (and the first few recordings of "Watchtower," and trying to get "♣ Noise" and "Angels" started, and a bunch of stuff I didn't finish, and, you know, real life) I wanted to do a song that was just fun to play (out of anything this is probably my favorite song to just pick up and play). Ironically, I picked a song I previously gave up on for being too difficult. It's all relative.

It took me a long time to learn to write mandolin songs that weren't just variations on "Teardrop." By which I mean it took until I figured out this song, which basically meant figuring out this one chord. Which is more or less but not exactly a B minor. I think this song suceeds where a few of the other instrumental songs failed, in that none of the parts are inessential to the song, and they flow into each other without dragging or any of those weird pauses where I tried to figure out the next part. I've been trying to rerecord a few of the older songs, and this helped a lot with the new version of "Grace" (though I still haven't quite nailed it. There's a lot to get right and a lot that can go wrong). Speaking of "Grace," I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the only song of mine with more notes than this one. Of course, it's five times as long, so...

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

"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.