Closer to All - First Rifts

So, here's what happened. The last two weeks we haven't really been able to have rehearsals with our drummer preparing for final exams. We've had various numbers of people turn up, and been trying out a keyboard player to one day replace our wonderful current keyboard player. (It's an amicable split, with almost a year advance notice - she will leave sometime before next year, depending on our state of readiness).

That means the two demos I have started making have been put on hold. In addition, we talked about broadening the reach with our band and adding more upbeat songs into the setlist, so I have been trying to play around and see what I could get running. For the first time in a long time I picked up my bass guitar, and I've got to say that the first thing it does is force me into a different writing style.

So this is a bare rift draft to give me some structure to play with and play around with the guitar later. It's always a bit difficult, because I'm stepping into our bass players territory, but the idea is to create a rhythm draft that will hopefully inspire something to play on guitar over the top. That means I can't get to attached to the bass lines I write.

Breaking it down:

Tempo - 120 Bpm
Key - Em (well, at least its not Dm)

0:00 - 0:31  - Intro
0:32 - 1:19 - Verse
1:20 - 1:34  - Pre-chorus
1:35 - 2:08 - Chorus

Intro

I plan to build this up more in the next draft, and I was going to cut the drums into two different sections (rushed for time tonight). I like the general bassline, and its a little similar to a song I wrote with a previous band. You'll probably notice the rhythm is slightly off skew - this is intentional, but hard to coordinate with set drum loops. Actually I kind of like it weaving in and out of the standard 4/4 beat...

Verse

So this is an example of how my writing style changes when playing on bass instead of guitar. Not sure I like it that much, but I'll see what happens on guitar before I consign it to the scrap heap.

Pre-Chorus 

First thing you will probably notice is the lack of flow with the drums from one section to another. This time its a result of switching from midi drums to drum loops, so before next demo I will play around with either loops or midi to get a smoother flow.

This is, of course, the return of the into rift, but the idea will be to push a different rift on guitar over the same rift and create a different feel.

Chorus

And here we get the hardest piece of the puzzle. One problem with drum loops is that the tempo can drastically change depending on what tempo they were recorded in, but I kind of like the idea of a slower chorus over a upbeat verse. The Chili Peppers do it in a few of their later songs, and while they're not my favourite Chili Songs, I like the dynamic it builds.

Closer to the Sun - Inception

So its been a week, and things are in a holding pattern with the band because crucial members of the team are neck deep in exams. As a result its been hard to move forward at the moment. Add to this we are recruiting new musicians, as our keyboardist will be leaving us soon.

So walking home from work a lyric started banging in my head.

That which brings me closer to you

Brings us closer to God

Now, normally I'm not a fan of being blatant with lyrics, and although I believe in God I've all but sworn off using the word because of the misconceptions it causes. Those of certain religious traditions immediately associate the word with their definition of God, while many of my closest atheist friends are turned off by the word altogether. My own belief is that we often talk about the same concept and then fight over the word we use, so I've been kicking around other words for the lyric - the all, the universe, the force...

For now I've settled on the sun and the One for the rhyme scheme it creates, so here's mark two for the chorus.

What brings me closer to you
Brings me closer to the sun
What brings us closer to each other
Brings us closer to everyone
And closer to the One

I played around with chord progressions and actually recorded something, but I'm going to sleep on it for a night and see how things look in the morning.

Update

OK, so I showed both songs to the band last night and they seemed to be more interested in Fall than Seed... which just happens to be the song that needs more work, so I will be playing around with it more. I'm thinking of setting up the songs that they are not interested in as a separate project.

When I played Seed in the room, the verses sounded a bit like one of our other songs, but I wonder if that's just how I played it without the demo on hand. Here is the demo without vocals, which I posted for my band.


I'm also going to be dusting off some of my old demos and trying to remix / rewrite some of them, so it will be a chance for some before and after moments.

Seed - (Structure)

I've got this to about as far as I want to take it without taking it into the band room, and maybe beyond what I'm comfortable sharing, but here goes nothing.

So, what you're listening to is a first rough draft of the song, complete with the major sections I want to contribute, a rough vocal guide and a fairly complete first look at the song. So, breaking down what's new:

Vocal  Track

This is something I rarely do, and with good reason. What you are listening to is not my regular singing voice - this is me sitting down in front of my computer singing quietly into my computer's built-in microphone.

Why?

Two reasons:

My kids are asleep, so I cannot belt out at my regular volume without disturbing family and neighbours. This is all recorded in the storage room at the entrance of our apartment, so no way am I going to be able to deliver volume.

And the inbuilt microphone? Because all of my microphones are sitting at the bandroom. I considered buying a cheap karaoke microphone just for home, but I do this so rarely I didn't see the point.

So why do it at all? I think for my own curiosity, to see how it all sounds together. Forgive of the vocal performance - this is nothing like what it will sound like at the end, when I get to add range and dynamics to it.

Also notice, the actual lyrics are not yet complete, as the third verse is just a repetition of the second. I am considering adding lyrics after the second chorus to do something different structurally.

Structure

I am shocked at how short this is, clocking in at 3:19, and there are more than enough rifts to extend this song further. I dare say when the rest of the band begins to mold this (again, with the understanding that they may just say 'no') we'll see it extend, but I actually like the idea of keeping it fairly short.

Hell, it's even a slow tempo, at least by my standards (90bpm - and the Fall demo clocks in at 150bpm and lasts 5 minutes), and has 5 different rifts in it, so who's to say its not designed to be a short song.

Bridge

 Ok, considering I'm already very happy with 2 of the rifts in this piece (the transition between the verses and the heavy rift in the chorus) I'm pretty impressed with the two rifts I wrote here for the bridge. I can't help feeling some level of deja-vu, and I suspect I'm rewriting one of my own rifts here (check the chorus from Formaldehyde for what I mean) but the second rift is one that I'm pretty happy with.

Hopefully, if we do extend it, these sections can add some sources to break us out of our regular verse / chorus / verse / chorus / bridge / chorus / out structure.

Seed - (2nd rifts)

OK, so sat down with the guitar to try and put the music and lyrics together, so this is it so far.


OK, so lets break it down a bit.

Intro (0:00 - 0:20)

OK, so this survived almost unchanged. The tone is much better, though, after spending about 20 minutes fiddling with nobs.

Let me reiterate what I said earlier - I hate the pods digital tones. What I hate most is the lack of natural sustain that you get through an amp,  so its not really the pods fault, more the recording process.

Verse (0:20 - 0:42, 0:53 - 1:14, 1:47 - 2:08)

This time I took the background rift and brought it forward. I did this mainly because I wanted to create the guitar parts that I would play in the song, but then found my playing got sloppy maintaining the speed of the rhythm, so my playing will have to change again on this one.

Transition (0:43 - 0:53, 1:35 - 1:46)

This was originally meant to be a bridge, but I liked it so much I moved it into the verse to break it up and play with the structure a bit. It was a bit hard to swing back into the verse, but I liked it so far.

One big problem was that by breaking up the verse, I have forced myself into the position where I have to write more lyrics...

Chorus (1:15 - 1:35, 2:09 - 2:30)

Bigger change here. I  have moved the whole chorus down to C - which I thought was going to be a pain in the butt because I was trying to move from the transition straight into the chorus. Then I realised I could go straight from the verse and it worked... sort of. Because the note is heading down I'm not sure if it stands out against the rest of the rifts.

Having said that, I really enjoy the second part of the rift when it returns to D. I think the rift might be a little too familiar at the moment, and as I can't quite put my finger on it I can't say whether I'm accidentally plagiarising someone like Korn, or whether I'm cannibalising one of my old songs.

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What next? Well, there's still more to go on this one. I will have to extend the song and build out the ending. I will be adding further lyrics as I go, and this is all before it gets played in the band room.

Seed - (Lyrics - First Draft)

OK, so this is an odd moment where I managed to fire out a first complete draft of the lyrics so early in the process. Normally this comes only after I have a working demo of the complete song to work with, but I think the concept helped me form this, and once the images were in place this fell together fairly quickly. There are still some clunkers in here - the use of the word 'quest' for example just seems out of place, despite the imagery - but it has a beat and scheme of its own. 

One problem is that vocally (and you have to trust me on this one because this is still in my head at the moment) the chorus is in the same vocal space as the verse, so look for a demo tonight where the chorus.

A landscape of giants

Your reach seeks the distance

Your eyes burn with twilight

But you're still a little boy

You wrestle with dragons

You burn with impatience

So small but you hold

The secrets of gold

In the caverns of your soul

OK, so I love this imagery. My son is into everything fantastic - super heroes, dragons, monsters - he gets it from his father. I love how the imagery comes together on this. 

I'm not completely sold on the rhyme scheme, but we'll see how it turns out when I put it together with the rifts. I like the move away from the typical AABB rhyme scheme.

You're the seed of the sky

Made from the atoms of the stars

How beautiful you are

How powerful you are

I've already talked about this in the last post, so I won't go into it again today.

You leap without seeing

Fall without fearing

Land without slowing

And we all hold our breath

Will you stand without trying

Lift your eyes without crying

Find the horizon

As you face your tests

Ride forward on your quest

Like I said, I'm not sold on the last line here, or the entire second half of this verse, to be honest. The first half, though, is a fairly true what I'm trying to express. I'll reevaluate that second half of the verse.

OK, so I'm going to reevaluate the rifts I wrote and see where it goes from there. If my kids get to bed on time, I expect to get a new rift track done by tonight and get this one rolling as well.

Seed - (Concept)

OK, so, after listening to Project Target today, I realised that I could quite easily sing the lyrics I came up with earlier today over the chorus, with a few minor alterations, so Project Target has become the song Seed, at least for now.

The updated lyrics are:

My seed of the sky

Made from the atoms of the stars

How beautiful you are

How powerful you are

Again, all things are subject to change, but it became clear this afternoon what I want this song to be about. I try to keep my songs personal, even when I'm saying something more generally about our society or the world we live in. 

My family has featured in a couple of my songs before. Stay is largely a song about my relationship with my wife (although it is far from the one great love song I owe her) and was inspired by a time she and my daughter were on holiday and I was left in Macau to work. Blacksand (and forgive the poor state of the recording - I asked the sound engineer for a decent clean tone and this is what I got) is a song dedicated to my grandmother, and also features a shout out to my daughter within it. 

The one person I have not managed to connect with my music is my son. He is, if you had to describe him in one word, mischievous, or perhaps even impish. He is the type of kid who tests where the line is by throwing his ball over and running to chase it. I don't think that side of him will ever change. 

But of course, defining a person by one word is like defining a country by one person, and he is much more than that. 

One thing that strikes me about him is his doggedness to stick up for himself. He is resoluteness. As the youngest in the family, I know that he has a hard time because he is the voice least consulted. There are rules and lines and promises that one day he will have the freedoms he doesn't have now. And, of course, too often our conversations are about the rules and what he did wrong, and not enough of them are about how much I love him, and how, for all the nuisance and pain, I wouldn't trade that for the world.

I heard that (and physicists, feel free to correct me) that because of the big bang, we are literally made of stardust. I want this song to be that message to him.