That's about when the dismay hit.
*sighs* I began to realize just HOW craptacular my electric guitar is. The humbucker is falling apart, the intonation has been problematic for most of the time I've had it... It's amazing that the thing managed to service me through 3 years of NYC.
No, I really don't know how. Maybe just 'cuz I didn't do enough electric guitar work.
Anywho, I got the parts mostly down eventually. Some of the takes are horribly out of tune. But at least they're there so I can start to work around them.
The song started getting long REALLY fast. It's amazing how you have this thing in your head and you don't realize just HOW long it is. I'd gotten up to the second chorus and was hitting 4'30".
Daaaamn. I mean I know I tend to write on the long side, but... I still wanted to get in another chorus, an instrumental section, and an outro...
Yeah. Whee!
Anywho, I got the skeleton shaped out - cut and pasted bits into a whole. Took one of the verses and copied that for the bridge. Tossed the third chorus in. Spliced in a bit of a cadence for the end of the 4th verse. Then spliced out two bars and basically looped them for the outro.
(The end of the song will reference another song of mine - trains - which is actually about someone who has just died and is watching their body being taken to the grave. I wrote it a couple years before Karl passed.
Personally they're not connected. I'd hate to think that anyone thought I was making a point about Karl. I'm not. But the artistic/thematic/musical connection is just to spot-on to pass up.)
Personally they're not connected. I'd hate to think that anyone thought I was making a point about Karl. I'm not. But the artistic/thematic/musical connection is just to spot-on to pass up.)
So at that point I started going back and thinking about what I had and how the shape of the tune was progressing. There's a lot of dense, strummy, jangliness and I felt too much like the energy of the piece just really going anywhere.
At 5'36" that's NOT a good thing.
So I started playing with the textures a bit - dropping down to just bass and drums at the 3rd verse. Took out the main acoustic part here and there to thin it down and allow the electric to take over the texture and thus change the timbre.
I still need to get a couple layers of keyboards on there but I think that what is there is mostly sufficient. They'd definitely help, though - especially in keeping the timbre constantly changing and evolving.
After that I started looking back at what I have in progress. There's roughly 30 minutes for 8 or so tracks. Not too bad. None of it is finished, of course.
Not terribly coherent musically. They shift pretty drastically from the completely electro beats to the almost completely acoustic ballad. From country-ish, to electro, to ... funk/R&B-ish. Though the acoustic ones *DO* rely rather heavily on a V-IV-V-IV-V-IV sort of chord progression...
Ah well. I guess continuity would be a bit much to ask from me. *HEEEE*
- RPM'09 Track Listing (in alpha order, most recent mixdowns)
- E Major 7ths
- Give You A Load/Second Chances (still debating title)
- beat (forward)
- beat (reversed)
- Midnight Train
- Too Close
- upbeat tune
- 40 Days/40 Nights
No comments:
Post a Comment