a bitter taste

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.

Download the song now!

Hope you enjoy!

Bury It

This songs comes to us from yet another novel. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is a tale of an autistic kid who finds the neighbor’s dog murdered (with a pitchfork, no less) and his attempt to track down the culprit, Sherlock Holmes style. Although it sounds gimmicky, the book is from the perspective of the autistic kid and is extremely sad, funny, and enlightening.

Listen & Download Bury It

This song is also my rediscovering standard tuning. After years of almost always screwing around with my strings, this is the first of several (more to come soon) songs written in good ole EADGBE.

Lyrics

Leave well enough alone and drop it
If you knew what the neighbors know, you would drop it

Machine hum in head
Reading letters from the dead
Machine hum in head

Liars lying low
Criers crying home
Liars lying low

When you found it all alone, and you carried it
If you knew what the neighbors know, you would bury it

Liars lying low
Criers crying home
Liars lying low

Origins

So some of you are [ familiar with/actually in ] the detholz!. A primo band from chicago. beside being a good band with good songs, they have a special talent at deconstructing bad 80’s songs and reconstructing them into horribly complex and, well, good songs. I have a deep love for reinterpreting, in a semi ironic manner, popular songs as well (more on that some other day). Anyway… I got the idea of taking detholz songs that tend to be more complex and good, and turning them into simple and bad pop songs. I think i have successfully done that to one of them. Sometime I do plan to commit my singer/songwriter version of “behold the man” to .wav

Anyway I had the idea (and it sounded great in my head at they time) to turn the song “sunburned in the sun” into a green day song. When I sat down and tried to get it working, well…, it didn’t… at all. So I ditched that. But immediately came up with the guitar part for this song. It’s in Eb and even has a G drone through a lot of it ala SITS. Other than that, the song doesn’t sound anything like it or have any other similarities. But that is its auspicious beginnings.

Music

The song starts with a muted plucking of the primary chord. Between each verse and between the various later sections, it keeps returning to it. It ends as well, just as it begins, with a muted guitar playing that chord. The song wanders off a bit in the second half so that was a way to keep it anchored.

There are a lot of half steps in this song. The chorus melody is mostly half steps by using augmented and diminished chords (i think that is the technical term) as well as at one point going from Em to Eb. From verse to chorus, it goes from G# to G, another half step. At the end there is a guitar line that walks up mostly in half steps. Can’t say I planned all the half steps. But as I have listened to it, it’s something I have noticed.

The verses have a distinct progression but the notes (in the first part of each verse) are all part of the Eb scale, so in the second verse, I decided to pound out the single chord on top of the mix (the C chord (pattern?) up on the 6th fret has a real nice sound to it with doubled notes.

The drum sequencing in my songs tend to leave a lot to be desired. I am a really bad drummer and tend to be over ambitious in sequencing drums to fit the specifics of a song. But in this case, I think the drum track actually adds to the song, giving it a good groove with its particular bam-bam … bam pattern

The mid section. I wanted to do two things. One is to have it be just a single chord (back to Eb) and have it be a groove. I was thinking Talking Heads (early stuff) like found a job where they build this great vibe with very little complexity going on.

I also had in mind to build it up (which i always seem to do) with a progressively noisier sound. I actually ended up playing one guitar part with a phone just to get a cool sound out of it. The little melody that starts off the mid section is another nod to the detholz.

At the very end, I start playing full chords (of the verses) with a melody over it. Second pass through, there is another guitar line (i mentioned earlier). I ended up turning some chords minor where it would be natural to be major and also the other way around, which actually allowed me to do that half step walk up I mentioned earlier. It did not affect the melody of the song, so I could still sing the same thing over it.

The last half of the song sort of juts off into its own territory without returning. That was inspired by the book. In it, without getting into details, the kid starts investigating the murder of this dog, but in that, other secrets are discovered and his search goes somewhere completely else and the murdered dog turns out to have nothing to do with the second half of the book. I was attempting to do the same in the song. Although, I ended up putting the vocal parts at the end to tie it up and as it turns out, is my favorite part of the song.

Listen & Download Bury It

4 Responses to “Bury It”

Song #1: Closed Circuit

I’ve been going back and forth about what should be the first song to post. I have a couple of new songs that I have just finished. I have one that is almost done. Although that made sense, I decided to go with a song I recorded about 6 months ago. Why?

Download Closed Circuit

Closed Circuit captures pretty clearly where I am with writing songs right now. My “way of doing things” can be heard pretty clearly in this song. It’s also one of the first songs of recent times where I can honestly say I can’t think of any influences.

So, “my way of doing things”?

I will expand on these themes with other songs but here is a brief explaination.

Tunings: I generally write songs in alternate tunings. Not sure why. Part inspiration for my favorites artists like pavement, american music club and others. Partly boredom with standard tuning. This song was the first song written using FACFAE.

Exploration: With wacko tunings, comes the idea of songwriting as exploration. I basically made up the tuning as I was writing the song. eventually settling on a odd open F-ish tuning. One thing that i like about alternate tunings is that you rely more on your ear than your head. You listen and mess around till you come up with something interesting. There are some chords that I still don’t really know what they are. I don’t really care either. This song has a single note drone through almost the entire song.

Atmosphere: The song consists of three sections. Each section begins as basically a single guitar part, and as it progresses, crescendoed into a multi layered mess with multiple parts intertwining.

Lyrical content: I hate writing lyrics and honestly don’t have much to say to anyone about anything. I have relied on books for content lately. This song is based of the first 50 pages of “The Painted Bird” (Its as far as I could get due to the graphic cruelty of most characters). Its a murder ballad really. The novel is about a backwards inbred community and the horrendous things the do. The song is something of a reflection on the dangers of not engaging in those that differ with out. Maybe an issue in today’s culture?

Download Closed Circuit

So have a listen and please let me know what you think.

kebab

One Response to “Song #1: Closed Circuit”