"Beatbox 2"

:)

UPDATED 1/3: Some Notes on the Future of Song of the Week: For a long time I had sort assumed that SotW would end here, and I probably wouldn't do a year 3 (I'm not saying I would quit music entirely, just stop with the weekly schedule). I'm going away to school and probably can't take most of my instruments, and I don't know if I'll have time to record. Plus for a long time when I wasn't doing music, the stress of missing the deadline was getting to me, and I figured it would be better to quit than to have to keep to it. Having said that, doing so many songs in such a short time was a lot of fun, especially some of these smaller, less stressful songs from the second half of the week. And I still have a lot of unused ideas, so who knows? Maybe I can find some time to do something.

Over the last few weeks I've been remastering, editing, and rerecording (what a weird word) most of the SotWs in preparation to do some kind of downloadable album release. I've done most of them at this point though a lot of the most important ones (which of course are the ones that are the hardest and take the longest). Still aren't done yet. And I have three days, and I have to spend a lot of that getting ready to go. I guess we'll see.

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

"Lower"

UPDATE SOMETIME BETWEEN XMAS AND NEW YEAR'S, THEN REWRITTEN ON 1/3, BUT IT'S AFTER MIDNIGHT SO I GUESS 1/4: Originally (woo! plastered!) I wanted to end with a different song, which was I project I'd half- recording a long time ago (beginning of this year, I'd guess). It was much wordier, loop-heavy, and very "controlled"-sounding. I gave it up because I couldn't get the old and new guitar sounds to match. I tried going to drop-d, but it still wasn't right, which got me here. In the end this is almost certainly a better fit anyway, what with being more spontaneous and longer and stuff.

One thing both song had in common was this intense, dark, manner to them. It's basically metal but much different than than heavy wood or dread or 22 minutes--the first song (which never got a name) was more trip-hop, where this is more prog.

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



In the end really happy with how this turned out. It's almost fully improvised, and it feels loose but not shaggy or foot-dragging like "Grace" (or some parts of "Testify"), and it's alternately contemplative and violent, but still has the right energy that the fast and slow parts feel like the same song.

I had my guitar amp and my computer on the floor and just used the Mac's built-in microphone. Because I was standing, the mike was about six feet away (probably more, I wasn't standing on top of it). As a result the lyrics are probably a bit hard to make out. Although, the fact that you can make out anything should tell you how loud I was singing. It's not a complicated story, basically a cross between Paradise Lost* and "Viva La Vida"; I wanted something epic but also uncomplicated, and just sang what the title suggested to me.

Lyrics:
I thought I had it all (xseveral)
My kingdom, my kingdom, on fire
My body, my body, in chains
But the only thing
The only thing I missed was you

*If you had told me at the beginning of year one that I would have songs based on both Paradise Lost AND The Divine Comedy, I would have assumed you were joking. People change, plans change.

"All Along the Watchtower"

Part to the reason there are so many acoustic song near the end here is because I wanted more songs to play live. In fact I wrote this to play live and didn't originally (bang) plan to record it. Ironic because Hendrix's version of the song is probably the best example anywhere of using the recording studio as an instrument.

And speaking of awkward segues, let's talk about my favorite song ever for a minute*. I love Hendrix's "Watchtower" because on top of everything else it has this unique sort of surrealist atmosphere, which for lack of a better description I'll compare to the "Space Coyote" thing from The Simpsons. You can hear a lot of techniques from that song in my songs-- panning, guitar effects, a lot the vocal styles (both Hendrix's "talky" style and the "ooh" and "aah"s from the intro). Of course, this is the rare "Watchtower" that's mainly a cover of Dylan instead of Hendrix. I actually put in some changes, like the increase in volume between verses, to make it more differenter.

I avoided some of the hurdles of the other acoustic songs by recording the guitar and voice parts separately, and thus insuring there was only one thing that could go wrong on each take. Of course I did a bunch of takes before I figured that out. This song, like some of the other recent ones, is very hard to sing, especially as it goes on (I'm actually getting pretty good at the first verse). Some takes had the last verse as the same as the first, and some had it even louder, but those tended to be more shouting or yelling than screaming (yes these are all different things).

Leftovers:
As with "Hallelujah", I've written several other covers of this song, including one very close to Hendrix but in a slightly different style.

This song is also keyed down, quite aloo actually, from C# to F#, basically by playing the Bm, A, & G chord shapes in a lower tuning. I used the same technique as Reaction of only playing D/G/B strings of the chord (not coincidintally, they have same I-vii-vi progression; this song was "written" slightly before that one).

*Note that the two songs I've listed so far as favorites are both covers--which probably says more about my work than my work itself does.

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door"

Another song picked out of "unfinished" pile, mainly because I knew I could do it well, it wouldn't take long, and it would complement "Watchtower."

Digression: I like GNR's versions, but it's probably less "good" and more "so bad it's good", mainly for how much it ignores tghe whole point of the song (of course i've done that, to a not as good song). They took a song about a man literally on his dying breath and tried to play it as fun and triumphant, and it just doesn't work if you actually listen to the lyrics for ten seconds.

More movies: this cover was conceived as the song that plays during the sad part of the movie. Or maybe the credits (not all my ideas are all that brainulated).Then I saw I'm Not There (of course, Dylan's original was written for a movie, too).

Like Hallelujah, this was keyed down five steps from it's original key (here from g to d)

"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]

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
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.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
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.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
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.