"22 Minutes Before the Wall Fell":
UPDATED 4/22: Sorry it took so long I always seemed to have something more urgent to do anyway here's post:
I got the idea awhile ago to do a cover by request (bear with me it'll make since in a minute). Since it was my friend's birthday I asked him or a song. His first two suggestions were jokes. His first real suggestion I spent a day and a half on and couldn't get to work, which is a shame because I actually had really good concept. So I asked for a different song, which as it so happens is on my list of "songs that I will never cover because they're about something that really happened."
The fifth song was one I barely knew. I thought this would make it easier, since I wouldn't try as hard to copy the original. I tried a couple different concepts and ultimately decided to do sort of a slowed-down, atmospheric take on it, with lots of echoey vocal effects 'n' shit. But that was never really working, and somewhere in between the first take singing and the first instrumental track it turned into this metal thing, and then I realized I should delete the vocals and write something original on top of it (for about ten seconds I thought maybe it should be an instrumental, but some songs basically have to have words). There's a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe "creativity is weird."
As for the song itself I really like it. I especially like the way it ends, where it threatens to go into this kind of Zeppelin thing for like ten seconds, and then just stops dead. That was basically an accident of the way I write (I improvised all three tracks, drums on top guitar on top of bass). The noise after that, which is me hitting the microphone and knocking it over, required more forethought. The guitar parts were epspecically fun to record because I got to play with my new expensive toy, and just switch it back and forth on the "detune" setting, which is sort of like a chorus pedal on a rocker switch.
The one thing I'm not in love with are the lyrics, despite the fact that I somehow snuck in a reference to John Cheever's "The Swimmer" (required reading ftw). I'm a perfectionist when it comes to lyrics, which is one of the reasons try to avoid them*, and these lyrics are...OK. There's some good lines, some themes I kind of like, they sort of tell a story, but I don't know that they fit together all that well. Improvising usually works well for the instrumental parts of a song (or even the screamy parts that aren't words). I don't know that it works so well with the words.
*The other is I tend to write ten lines and then forget eight of them, so those songs end up perpetually unfinished.
DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I made the vocals louder, but decided to keep them low enough to be unintelligible.
I got the idea awhile ago to do a cover by request (bear with me it'll make since in a minute). Since it was my friend's birthday I asked him or a song. His first two suggestions were jokes. His first real suggestion I spent a day and a half on and couldn't get to work, which is a shame because I actually had really good concept. So I asked for a different song, which as it so happens is on my list of "songs that I will never cover because they're about something that really happened."
The fifth song was one I barely knew. I thought this would make it easier, since I wouldn't try as hard to copy the original. I tried a couple different concepts and ultimately decided to do sort of a slowed-down, atmospheric take on it, with lots of echoey vocal effects 'n' shit. But that was never really working, and somewhere in between the first take singing and the first instrumental track it turned into this metal thing, and then I realized I should delete the vocals and write something original on top of it (for about ten seconds I thought maybe it should be an instrumental, but some songs basically have to have words). There's a lesson here, but I'm not sure what it is. Maybe "creativity is weird."
As for the song itself I really like it. I especially like the way it ends, where it threatens to go into this kind of Zeppelin thing for like ten seconds, and then just stops dead. That was basically an accident of the way I write (I improvised all three tracks, drums on top guitar on top of bass). The noise after that, which is me hitting the microphone and knocking it over, required more forethought. The guitar parts were epspecically fun to record because I got to play with my new expensive toy, and just switch it back and forth on the "detune" setting, which is sort of like a chorus pedal on a rocker switch.
The one thing I'm not in love with are the lyrics, despite the fact that I somehow snuck in a reference to John Cheever's "The Swimmer" (required reading ftw). I'm a perfectionist when it comes to lyrics, which is one of the reasons try to avoid them*, and these lyrics are...OK. There's some good lines, some themes I kind of like, they sort of tell a story, but I don't know that they fit together all that well. Improvising usually works well for the instrumental parts of a song (or even the screamy parts that aren't words). I don't know that it works so well with the words.
*The other is I tend to write ten lines and then forget eight of them, so those songs end up perpetually unfinished.
DOWNLOADABLE VERSION:
Rerelease Notes: I made the vocals louder, but decided to keep them low enough to be unintelligible.
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