by clinton » Wed Mar 02, 2011 10:17 am
Thanks for asking Christian...
This song was a weird one since I was in such a time crunch (my wife and I bought a house this month and I barely had time to blink). Generally I start with a chord progression and a melody and generally there is some lyrical idea or concept that will present itself that I can build on. With this song, the first and second verse came almost complete with the melody and since I didn't have much time to figure out what it was I was trying to say, I went with the imagery and wrote the last two verses based on that. I knew that I couldn't get too adventerous with the arrangement since I had two days to record, mix and release the song. So I avoided a drumset and bass guitar for this one (I think the song called for a simple arrangement anyway).
What I was hearing in my head was a lush base for the song to sit on, something that would compliment the dreamy quality of the lyric. I knew that Chris Braydon was very interested in loops and ambient music from having done some instrumental things for fun with him over the past few months. What I wanted from Chris was a lush arrangement with little-to-no attack (almost like aggresive strings). Once Chris had his loop, we complimented his track with another track of volume swells panned opposite.
At this point the track was basically complete but I wanted to accent the minor chord change and so I recorded a bass drum tuned as low as it'd go (it's an old 28" Ludwig marching bass drum with a single ply uncoated head). I knew I wanted to pan the bass drum so I complimented it with a scraping noise panned opposite (it was a finger nail on a banjo head ran through a delay pedal).
The vocals were the last thing I recorded and I used my old trusty Rode NT3 microphone. I sang the song three times and let Sean Boyer chose which performance he liked best (I'm least confident in my vocals as a rule). As always, I was recording into my Boss BR-532 digital recorder (though I would like to use my cassette four-track for something on this project).
Sean mixed the song in about an hour and that is what you hear. The whole thing was done in about three days total which is extremely uncomfotable for me since I like to sit with songs for a few weeks to make sure they're something I love before anyone hears it. I think the nature of this project will force me to get over that and trust my instincts more....I hope so anyway.
"I came unarmed, they've all got knives, how can this song survive?" - Ron Sexsmith (Blue Boy)