"Morning in America/ Out to the Street"

wanted to do a double song for a while, even recorded another. these two were recorded separate, but were turining out similar in theme (plus both were in c) so saw chance. wanted third, called "breakfasttime," but couldn't figure out how would sound in time (these were very last two songs recorded, on Sunday night).

Morning in America:
arose out of me fiddling (pun) w piano, and getting this riff i liked because it reminded of Copland (see, i know real things about real music*). in contrast, this very urban and modern where he focused rural. A lot of my instrumentals are trying to conjure a place and time as well as a mood, and this really gets all three.also like bc where a lot of these last few songs are backward-looking,this is something i haven't done before. some previous helped, though contrapasso, dread, helped w strings (in turn this helped strings for dread rewrite)

Out to the Street
originally not intended as a double song, but like the way they contrast, with morning all get up and go and street more reserved, unhurried, but both having same urban/early morning feeling. opening strings based heavily around tone clusters (slam hand on keyboard--which is what i did). horns written similar way, sax synth, played four/ five notes together and rocked hand back and forth. easier than trick i used in diamond. also used clusters on piano for percussive sound. interesting how same technique comes out three very different ways.
Original title (when just strings, before finding whole arrangement) was "inverted rainbow," but sounded somehow homophobic, then "inverted halo." latter is good, might still use for something.


*Speaking of modern composers, anyone who thinks my music is weird should check up on some of those guys. "Rise" could be The Beatles compared to "Ancient Voices of Children." And compare "Insanity in 9:8" to "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima"

[eh, that's good enough. you can understand it]

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Rerelease Notes: Both of these are the same. Which was lucky, because I don't think I could have had just one of them.

"Doctor Who"

I forget when I had this idea, but it must have been fairly recent, I think either near the end of Series Five or right after it ended. It's a simple idea but I like it because The Doctor's basically a cowboy anyway.

My playing on the lead part sounded fine on the GarageBand file but here seems.. not that great. This is a fairly common problem--a lot of songs lost volume and/or quality when being converted. I might retape it or just try and fix the mix pretty soon.

Special thanks to the youtube commenter who pointed out The Doctor HAS been to the wild west (and of course, as I just found out a couple days ago, it looks like he's going back there). maybe they can get someone talented to redo this for that episode.

"Hayao"

Over the last summer, I was having a lot of problems with my mood. I wouldn't say it was full-on depression, because I know it wasn't because I had some of that too, but later. But I'm not going to write about that, because it's not a very interesting story and also wildly off-topic. Maybe some other time. Anyway, one of the things that helped was that I got to see all the Miyazaki movies for the first time (the other thing that helped was Calvin & Hobbes). I'm not very good at explaining it, but there's something about even the darker ones that just makes you feel better about everything.

This song isn't really an StL song, but it is soundtrack-realted (similar situation with "Grace", but that's a different long story). Basically what happened was I just had this scene in my head, and I heard this music under it, like a waking dream almost (or am I the only one who writes music in their sleep?). And it reminded so much in spirit, and setting, and style, that I hummed it into my computer and gave it this title in homage.

The main thing with this guy is that it sounds like a Joe Hishashi-style piece, but somehow doesn't resemble any specific one, either in terms or melody or arrangement. [Or it's an exact copy and I'm in big trouble. I've never done pastiche before, so these problems are new to me.]

"Alabama Frog"

This was the first song I wrote after getting back from Europe, around the end of June, which is a long and involving story that no one but me will find interesting. Anyway, probably as a result this is the most American song ever.

Originally (shot) it was just the one guitar part; the second guitar was added as a test. In retrospect it's maybe more electric-sounding than I'd like, which is mostly a mixing problem.

I have no idea where the title comes from. It just seemed to fit.

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Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

"Untitled, No. 61"

This was a test of MIDI instruments and Apple Loops. I completed most of it inn about 15 minutes, on October 29. I know this because I know it was a Friday, and Rock Band 3 came out that same week.

I wanted to write a song called 52. It would be the last song of Song of the Week Year One.

For obvious reasons I didn't do that, but I revisited the idea and decided to do a song called 61. Since that's where about I was at that point. Sort of, but "60" and "62" both sounded wrong.

I wasn't going to post this originally. I thought of it as too much of a joke, and was going to have it as a bonus track or such. But since I already had a title, and it's kind of a fun listen, I figured "can't hurt."

Though it was finished sooner, this song was probably partially inspired by "Club Noise", in terms of structure. Along with that song, this is the one I most want to see performed live.

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Rerelease Notes: This one's the same.

"We Used to Be Friends"

Trivia: did you know "We Used to Be Friends" is a total ripoff of this song?

If you don't know why this song is short you fail at everything. (The correct answer, by the way, is that it's because I'm more a TV geek than a music geek. Also I think the theme song version works better because of how it builds to a single, perfect climax, where the original comes off as a little more draggy and repetitive. I was going to write a blog post about it but couldn't think of enough other examples).

For this song I wanted something more "live" sounding. I was sort of inspired by the AV Club's Undercover series. That's why this song features only voice, uke, and handclaps, even though I originally wrote it with more backing tracks (of course, it also helped me record it faster).I used the uke instead of guitar because I want a cleaner and brighter sound. I did try to add backing guitar and vocals, but I didn't think it added much. Maybe I was just doing it wrong.

I'll admit I wasn't entirely sucessful; it's surprisingly hard to make something look easy without it just seeming half-assed ("Effect & Cause" has the same problem). I probably also ran into singing problems after changing the key.

"Reveille"

another sequel, this one to "taps". wanted more shoegaze sound where that was surf rock. took 15 mins to learn, 10 mins to set up and play, 1 and a half hours to mix and master.
reveille is this song, which you can almost make out in final recording. i played it more or less right, but like 2.5 octaves down (from b to e)
got to play with gband 11's electric guitar settings. used three modified tracks, then had to include a clean track to make melody recognizable.
this was song where i finally figured out how to mix out static. it involves an eq setting.

[that makes sense, I'll just leave it like that].


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Rerelease Notes: Mixing. Can't remember.

"Spellbound"

This last grouping of songs is full of intentional reprisals and sequels (obviously Diamonds and Clubs noise, but also "Sunrise" vs. my first Bass Solo, "The Cove"/"Teardrop", "61"/"Mixology", as well as, slightly earlier and less intentionally, "Reaction"/"Duel" and "Insula"/"Hawaii"), as sort of a "look how far we've come" statement. This song was also written, about six months ago, as a response, though not, as you might expect, to "Rose", but to "Heavy Wood". It's meant to be equal and opposite-- where "Heavy Wood" used the textures and playing styles of metal but less of the melodic content or instrumentation, "Spellbound" uses metal-style scales and tonalities but is played in a different style altogether. Does that make sense? Probably not, but whatever.

Like "The Cove" and "Ray of Light" this idea that was written recently but shelved; unlike those I rediscovered it on accident when going through my GarageBand files. All i remembered was the basic concept, the overall Spanish guitar style, the use of diminished scales, and that it was about 2 and a half minutes long.

The song is based on a diminished scale which I'm pretty sure goes like this:

D|-0-1-3-4-6-7-8-9-12|

Music people will note that this scale has one too many notes. Whatever.

"Contrapasso"

Another "title inspired" song. I picked contrapasso because it sounds like a music term but actually translates to something like "punishment that fits the crime"--it's mostly related to Dante's Inferno. From there I got the idea to write something more classical-sounding but simultaneously hellish and scary, with this sort of theme of descent.

It's the key of e-flat minor, chosen because so far few of my songs are in sharp/flat keys, and because it uses mostly black keys, which let me reference the pentatonic scales scales used in a lot of religious music. I used a church organ for a similar reason. The only instrument that I allowed to play out of the scale was the piano, both because I wasn't good enough to play the whole thing in key and also because I think it makes things more chaotic as you head toward the end.

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Rerelease Notes: I think I made the flute a bit quieter. I can't remember.

"Angels Dressed in Black"

Soundtracking Your Life Part Eight--The Last Stand*: There's a specific moment in a lot of movies, when the female lead enters and one of two things happens. In the first she's shot from behind, then turns to reveal she's The Most Beautiful Woman He's Ever Seen (TM). This is generally accompanied with strings, or perhaps a harp, and may or may not be in soft focus. The other way of doing this usually shows up in Badass Movies That Don't Play By Your Lame Rules, Old Man (TM), so of course it's the more common of the two. The girl walks into the room as the camera pans up from her feet to reveal She's A Sex Bob-Omb (TM). The music in these scenes is usually "Bad to the Bone" or "Born to Be Wild" or one of its cooler offspring (Wolfmother's "Woman" is a good choice), and may or not involve a wind machine.

My idea was to marry the two, hence the title. It sort of moved away from that to a more generic "entrance theme", but that was my starting point. This was actually (albeit accidentally) a pretty good idea, as it gave me a good way to do an instrumental verse-chorus-verse structure. My initial plan was to have each "verse" end with a guitar solo, then go into the chorus, but the rock guitar solo is sort of my Kryptonite, because my normal playing/writing style is so different from it, so there's only one solo now, and as a result the "verses" (especially the second) ended up a lot shorter. I decided instead to end them with the noise blast you hear at the beginning, which is a tone cluster on a guitar synth played 2 octaves below a guitar's natural range, then I set the volume to fade in, then back out out quickly (I changed this part when I was remixing stuff, so it's wrong here but right for the later version which no one but me has heard).

I always knew the song would have this riff, but learning how to play it took a long time. It's actually two guitars, one playing the chords and one playing the response. I used a borrowed wah pedal (thanks, Tito!), and the overall sound is played by working the pedal while scratching the pick one the strings. I actually got the riff wrong-- I worked so hard trying to get the sound right I forgot there should be two dead notes at the end of each bar. This is basically the definition of missing the forest for the trees.

The synthesized vocals were played once (actually, I think it took about four takes), and then I used lots of copying and pasting to get them to sound at every vocal range, for a choral effect. I wrote them on piano and then had to basically custom-make a synthesizer that sounded just right. I originally wanted to use an organ, and add a bunch of harp and string sounds on top of it, but the fake choir just sounded more "clear," I guess.

*It's not the last StL song, just the last that you'll see on the blog. At some point in a million years or so I want to do a proper album of it, possibly with real musicians who can actually play guitar.

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Rerelease Notes: I wasn't able to fix the riff, but I did fix some mixing problems, mainly changing the way the noise blasts are used and making the bass louder.