The Infinite (The Blog Post)

The Infinite (The Song):

So I knew I wanted to do something special for the 150th post, and the idea of writing a title track for a website just seemed hilarious for some reason. I had no idea what the song would actually sound like--among the discarded ideas were a mock-epic about how awesome a blogger I am and a music video, which I couldn't do because of technical difficulties (I don't have Movie Maker inntalled and iMovie is a pain in the ass). I eventually latched on to the idea of Infinite as "like echoes or something" (I didn't want to overthink this), and grabbed my guitar. I didn't even really care if it was good; mostly I just wanted it to be loud.

Inasmuch as there's an influence here other than "make a lot of noise", it was probably Sunn 0))), which takes itself to such an extreme it's barely even music anymore, and can get so loud (that's not a good word for it, but it's the only one I can think of) that the room will start shaking*. I tried to do the latter by playing with a sub-bass that GarageBand has built in, but I'm not sure how well it worked. Either my laptop's crappy speakers can't do those frequencies, or they can and it doesn't do anything. Someone with a good sound system will have to tell me.

I kind of failed at the "barely even music" part, because there's definitely some kind of rhythm or riff or something. It even has chords--one of them is G, and another is so obscure it's not even on this list (it's 022010, basically a modified E chord), and the other one is just whatever it's called when you don't fret any strings (hang on...apparently it's known as both Gm6add9 or Em7add11. Hooray for ctrl+F).

By now you've probably heard the banjo-ey (banjaux?) part, which was based on the idea that if this is the Song of the Blog, it should reflect the blog: long stretches of almost nothing broken up by ridiculous ad nonsensical torrents of whatever. I came up with it last weekend and put it in this song more or less accidentally: what you do is, you make an open-G chord shape, and you move it up and down the scale. It only works at certain frets (3rd, 7th, 10th and 15th work the best--something to do with pentatonic and major and something), but it's worth it if you want to make your guitar sound like a banjo (like for example, if you're really really bored).

In the spirit of "Mixology" (which inspired my "just play something and hope it works" approach to writing this, albiet not the song itself or its sound), here are them sped-up and slowed-down versions, the latter of which is not for the faint of heart impatient. Seriously, even I'm too busy to sit through the whole thing. I dare you. Do it.

fast version:


slow version**:

*or maybe I was shaking and the room was standing still...mind successfully blown.
**I like to call it "The Infinite...Amount of Time You'll Spend Listening to This Song" and then I laugh and laugh and then I cry a little.

DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: The drums aren't processed, some synth tracks were added.