Hello! I haven't posted in a long time, but I think I'd like to post more regularly. I'm even thinking of picking one or two days a week for "regular" updates. But anyway, I'm back now, and I've been on a little bit more of a creative wave. Figured I'd post some stuff about it.
I just posted a new track to my rarely used music Facebook account, which I will try to use more as I try to do more stuff musically. I posted that and two more "demo" songs on my Soundcloud page. I call them demo's, as they're basically just scratch ideas that may or may not be dropped and never touched upon again. Anyway, I'll start with the facebook post, and then talk about the other two newer ones. Read about it as you listen to it!
"Still" is a song that I initially made for an incomplete set of EP's called "Children as I was" that basically were about the role of pessimism in the human experience, and the perpetual struggle to overcome it. The first EP (which this track was to be on), was focused on childhood nostalgia, and this song specifically is about the ability most people posses in youth to overcome negativity.
The song is divided into two halves. The first, a nice little acoustic lullaby type song, is supposed to retain a sort of simplicity, and have a calming quality to it. In my head, I imagine it being sung from the perspective of a mother comforting a child. In the second half, with the child being reinforced with this positivity, they light up, and everything is light and playful once again. I decided to go with the bells for this, four of them doing simple arpeggios. I channeled half of them to the left, and half to the right. Two of the arpeggios are in 4/4, as is the entire song, and the other two are in 3/4. This is suppose to create a certain instability, and to produce an energetic and swirling sort of experience. I don't know if I hit the mark, but that was the intent.
The song extends pretty long with the various parts fading out until it's just a single bell track. This is a technique I've seen many times before (the repeating part, not necessarily the fade out thing). Most notably, I heard it in "I want you (she's so heavy) by the Beatles. I just like getting wrapped up into an atmosphere and letting it take over. I've also seen the technique used by bands like Mae with "The sun and the Moon" and Sufjan Stevens in "Vito's Ordination Song."
I bridged the two halves together with a simple wash that's consistent through the background, and by having a bell track play the guitar melody from the first half of that song. I hope this song did something for anyone other than me. But still, I've ranted enough about this. Onto the next two! Note: These ones are far less complete sounding.
This is my most recent creation. I made it just this past Saturday, so I guess I'm not that objective to it yet. Anyway. The writing process kind of went like this: Hmm, I need to write a song in 3/4. How do I do that? Let's loop an Arpeggio that's comprised of triplets! Hmm, that sounds cool, but not cool enough! Let's add two more on top of this!" I like looping a lot, as you can tell. Well, then I laid down some power chords and instantly the song was sounding pretty anthemy (and 4/4y, oops!)
I started doing some basic chant vocals with nonsense lyrics, and it sounded pretty good, but on my own it wasn't quite right, and no way could it be complete, so I layered a higher harmony over it to sound a little more full. It sounded so good, I did it two more times! And repeated the entire part twice! Go figure!
But nonsense lyrics, as it turns out, are hard to remember, and it's not always worth the effort. So although these lyrics may sound like nonsense to everyone but me, I rewrote them to actually have meaning, at least for me. Basically I figured with the group vocals the song needed some sort of universal meaning. I know a lot of Epic poems begin with a call to the muse to give inspiration for the piece that follows. Long and short of it, that's what these two verses are, a call to the muse. Pretentious? I was worried it might be, just a little bit, especially since the lyrics are nonsensical to anyone but me, but that's your problem, I like it. :-)
Adding in a nice little instrumental break between the two verses, I was struggling to think of where the song should go next. What I basically concluded was that if the first song is about waiting for artistic inspiration, the next part should be about NOT getting it. If you're a person who likes being creative, this should be a familiar experience. I modified a picking pattern that I've only ever used in 4/4 to work playing along with the triplets from the beginning. I layered another guitar on top of that, and wrote more abstract lyrics!
Anyway, this part of the song isn't done yet. I wrote lyrics about feeling useless and wanting to give up with being creative entirely. I think I came up with a melodic vocal line, but I'm not exactly satisfied with it yet. Anyway, I need to come with more harmonies, and I was thinking of adding a layered ebow part in the back to sort of fill out the atmosphere. But all of that has to be put on hold until I get my computer fixed and can access the file again! Until that day, you can enjoy and critique this demo!
This song was an attempt at creative a four song EP with my good friend Sam, also known as Cannonball Kid. We challenged each other to write two songs, one about anxiety, and the other about distance. We were going to write songs based on these prompts, and put them on one collective EP, just for kicks. Anyway, I don't know how far he ever got with it, but this is about how far I got!
This song is a song that was the one built on "anxiety." Lyrically I focused on the issue of dependency, which is something that makes me more and more anxious as I struggle to get a steady cash income, whilst bracing to start getting hit with college loans. The song is about the constant fear of everything going to collapse beneath you, and being constantly reminded of it.
I felt the song would do best structurally if it didn't end with some big dramatic collapse, and just left it open ended. So with that in mind, I basically just played simple power chords on an acoustic guitar put through a cheap distortion unit. The song is particularly melody driven, though I didn't want to just stick with straight chords. I think that with unresolved chords there's a little bit more uncertainty of where the songs going melodically, and gives more freedom for layers to go above it.
I really like the chorus, and the bell/guitar section at the end. Instead of giving it a sort of plot climax, I gave the character a sort of realization that they'll never "make it out alive." I thought it would be interesting if they're was some comfort in that, not to get too depressive or grim, but just the relief of stress that would come with "no matter what I do, I'm not gonna live, there's no avoiding it." Suddenly failure isn't exactly your fault. So I made an interesting layer on top of that, flashed it back to the opening verse just as a nice little way to tie it all together and finished the song.
Anyway, that's the least complete song of the three. There's even a little instrumental break in there that's just chords repeating for something intended to go over it, like a solo or something. Not sure what yet, but there ya' go! I think I picked three pretty different songs, hopefully one grabbed your interest. So, let me know what you think!
~Chris
(Oh, and if anyone ever makes it to the end of these things, post a comment to let me know!)
