a bitter taste
March 31, 2008
so this was going to be the “what a disaster this song was” post but I think I may have eecked out an ok song after all.
Download the song now!A Little Background
The Historian: A Novel.
So I hate writing lyrics and really have nothing to say to anyone. So I decided to write songs about the books I was reading. In the past I have blogged about “closed circuit” and “break you down” — both songs in the series. (look for “a week in the always” shortly)
This song may have killed that project.
Enjoyable enough, the novel “The historian” was a vampire/dracula novel that was kinda like the “davinci code” for Vlad the Impaler. How do you write a convincing song about dracula? Well, I tried.
Music
The verses are in sets of three’s with each pass building. It’s in standard tuning (sort a). I tuned the low E up to F on this one. The verses are all anchored in A. Primary changes are between A and F by inverting two notes / fingers on the guitar. Then comes some diminished chords and a Dminor thown in. All still anchored by that A bass note.
Then comes the chorus which has my favorite chord to date (the second one). Something like a C#7, not really sure. There is a move between Fmaj and Dmaj and I emphasize the F -> F#. Then comes the second part of the chorus which is half step walk down from C with some math rock timing. — Did I mention this is a ridiculously ambitious song with a gazzillion different parts all working together?
after the chorus you got the RAWKIN Bam bam bam… bam. I did some noodling in there. I wanted it to be sloppy but ended up just sounding clunky so I added the two wailing guitars to distract from the clunkiness.
The ending goes on forever, but I like it. It builds to a really simply little melody that I thought called for repetition. I actually really like that part.
I also added a bunch of midi tracks. The two most important are the pianos. I did my little trick of panning two tracks and playing the three notes that make up the chords in different orders.
What doesn’t work…
The singing. It is beyond my capabilities. In fact, my only goal in the second attempt was to not mess up the vocals “too” bad. It was a challenge. The first attempt at this song, they were so so so bad. They ended up (not horrible) although I am way out of my comfort zone.
Maybe a sign of “bad songwriting” but I find that if something is not working, you can fix it by just layering X number of tracks on top of it. That is what I did at the end. I wanted a nice symphonic ending but it just kinda sucked! So I added guitar after guitar.
The final melody which is a simple one relying on some diminished notes, just wasn’t coming across. That was fixed when I added two distorted guitars with reverb to the end to emphasize the melody (one in each speaker). Although I was just making up for the lack on good arranging, it seemed to work.
I also tried to add this really dissonant in the section right before the second verse that just sounded stupid. (more on that in the what works part)
What works…
I still think after all, that given a gifted sound engineer and someone who could sing half decent, this could be a killer song! I really like the use of diminished chords. The melody (although challenging) is evocative. There are some nice moments. Overall, i am actually pretty pleased with the “song” despite the lyrics.
I like the build. I like the semi-abrupt changes, especially in the chorus. A couple of my failures, turned out to be successes. Two specifically. In the “bam bam bam bam” section (that would be the technical name) I layered a couple of guitar wails over the clunky noodling. which I think worked together really well. The dissonant part that I mentioned earlier. I buried it but you can still hear it. That, I think, turned out well. And even though it was due to serious throwing more and more tracks on, the ending works for me.
There are some odd timings thrown in (which required me to re-record the entire thing due to completely messing them up the first time).
In the end…What we have is a silly song, based on a silly novel that (like the novel) has some potential. There really are some elements that I truly love in this song, but it’s also too big for my little talent or recording skill.
Hope you enjoy!
