mp3_002.

So some time ago I posted an MP3. I think it lasted a few hours. Then I deleted it. And now I am trying again. Maybe it will last longer than a few hours. The one thing this has going for it is that it is a complete song. Not just a clip. Not a final mix by any means though either. But a complete song. Needs a singer. Though I hear his voice in my head. A tenor. Rising higher and higher and louder and louder during the crescendo of a chorus no way I can attempt it. Mostly recorded one night a week or two ago. Finished late tonight because everything of any substance always happens late it seems. Nothing more than a snapshot of something I fumbled on the piano one day a couple of months ago now digitized.

File linked here if the player does not work in some browser or other ...

another day.

2 a.m. last night playing piano some progression or another out of nowhere that I really fell for and played for a bit then recorded today just the idea started in Logic do not think this will go anywhere but I like it all the same and it is surprisingly simple (instrumentation will be light–I just put a slight tremolo on the piano lines) and I have no idea just a working title for now (based on Julian's suggestion when I asked him for a song title of A Black Day cos he thought it sounded minor and dark – despite the fact there are at least as many major chords in the progression as minor but maybe he's picking up on the overall feel to which I jokingly responded everything I write is slightly minor and heavy and dark) but lyrics to go with the chords might be something like but never will be these cos these are scrawled out way too fast to myself really nothing and so not worth posting but will continue to work on it all though I know it ends with the line

and I will wait for it I will wait for it

as the last low chord on the piano resonates and fades away

against the grain.

Finally getting a handle on Logic's Arpeggiator (which is apparently not nearly as intuitive as Ableton's and some other DAWs – and although I haven't used Live, I must say Logic's is sort of a pain in the arse) but from some forum posts it looks like its output can in fact be recorded to a separate MIDI track albeit only with a bit of a workaround in the Environment (rather than being forced to bounce tracks down in realtime instead of offline). Anyways, the Arp is incredible and listening to some demos online makes one realize how often this tool is used (the first thing that came to mind was the synth intro to Muse's Bliss).

So the next song I am trying to assemble (of course before actually finishing any of the others that I have started) is actually the first song I wrote for this project long before I knew it was going to be a cohesive thing something it seems like maybe three years ago. It was sort of my response to Suede's Trash and/or Chemistry Between Us (or perhaps both) and trying to capture some essence or other that I could not seem to grasp. I sort of cannot believe I have held onto this song and this idea for this long.

there in a space somewhere in time

the light that held the scene

i knew the end you saw the cost

holding on to what soon would be lost but for now

i held your gaze you held my hand

and we knew we stood against the grain

silently stand slowly we fade

held to face the strain that would tear us away

why can't we stay?

it seemed to stretch to end the day

cast off to find a way

i had in mind this look in your eyes

when we lay stretched towards the sun

distilled through the blinds frozen in time

left to chance left to be everything now lost so it seemed

hold out your hand turn back the time

to when we fell against the grain

silently stand slowly we fade

eclipsed by Fate that forced the strain to fade away

the farther we come the harder we fall

only to fade away

why couldn't I say?

I will no doubt rework the lyrics but that is what I had scrawled in a notebook pieced together over a few years. Three-fourths of the way through the song it stops abruptly, then arpeggios – first on the guitar (distorted and sustained), then the bass joining it and finally the thundering piano before the drums re-enter at twice the tempo the vocals rising above everything to repeat the chorus and it crashes and crashes and crashes through to an enormous ending, fading out the same way it faded in – an arpeggiated piano line sustained then fades away ...

substance.

So after building that template I have begun to populate it with, well, an actual song that I sort of came up with the other night and have been going over in my head for a few days now. I started with a simple drum line – hi hat, then added the kick, then the snare and looped them all (for now). On top of that a pretty simple guitar line for now with some nice effects (namely, a fairly distorted sound routed through the Guitar Amp Pro plug-in and some tremelo). For a little more substance (albeit somewhat thin at the moment) I layered in a synth, then a bass line and an arpeggiated piano riff in the upper register. I am just looping the twenty bars I have right now, thinking of other things to add while I am stuck in my living room for the time being with an eighty-eight key controller and Logic.

In time I notice my intentions fail

and science turns its gaze to mine and I have no explanation why

this time it seems to close its hand and I drown

in fear of space I cannot define you here

on my mind

time stands still.

And then it hit me. I had come up with the melody of the verses for this song years ago but it had a very dour lyrical approach which I wanted to revisit and rewrite completely new but out of nowhere the melody hit me tonight and then as I went over it in my head I came up with the chorus which sent me rushing to the little corner in my living room to fire up my Mac and get this idea on tape (or, in this case, hard disk) before it escaped me for another couple of years. It is like everything driven by a very heavy, dense piano line and is a song as I hear it still in my head that builds and builds until it reaches the first chorus, then keeps that level but builds more upon the second chorus, then keeps that, then crescendos unbelievably with the third chorus and the end. This is incredible and a song that over the course of roughly fifteen minutes went from an age-old idea in my head to something of substantial worth that will be developed at all costs! Lyrics are lame at the moment but trying to wrap my head around what it is I want to write hopefully ambiguous of course and then will figure out how to write it. The idea is what I will fall asleep with in my head tonight, better that than this pounding music.

And time stands still

Must all be veiled? Unseen?

Where "and time stands still" starts out on the third of a C♯ minor, then rises to an E major then a B major then a G♯ minor with an enormous crescendo at "unseen" but rising still higher to end back on a C♯ minor an octave-and-a-half above and at least a few dynamic markings higher than where the phrase started and then an enormous ending and silence and in fact the whole song is hugely-intense and very heavy-sounding with quite phenomenal and enormously difficult guitar and piano lines. But regardless, it will be something else entirely to find someone who can sing this that I hear in my head.

the one that got away.

And to think I was just about to head off to bed when this song came to me and so I rebooted my Mac and fired up Logic to figure out the chord progression and it is quite awesome in B♭minor and I quick scrawled down some lyrics that maybe I have used part of before I am not sure right now but I will look into it typing furiously after recording a few bits my playing horribly sloppy but just so it hasn't escaped me when I wake up tomorrow something like

I silently staggered under the stars

among the covers I tried to hide

until one day I woke up to find

you were the one that got away

and it starts out I think just an acoustic guitar strumming away somewhat furiously the time signature is 3/4 and the tempo is something like 140 bpm which is quite fast and I am becoming more used to the entirely different sensation of listening to my own playing while not playing so I can concentrate more on what was played but anyways that is at least how I have recorded it for now which I can change later if needed but it just builds and builds for most of the song these huge chords until the end when those lyrics come in and then overdriven far beyond clipping two guitars furious arpeggios on one the other furious chords the acoustic still strumming away a low bass line arpeggiated drums furious too cymbal crashes on the downbeat of every other bar (not sure about an enormous piano line yet but probably if anything sitting off in the mix arpeggios up high in the treble) until it just ends and the overdriven guitars are left to pan back and forth out of sync with each other until they are cut off by a mute to the master fader and that is that.

i fall away in c# minor.

For now just a crude recording in Logic before I leave for a few days to come back to and work with. An old idea that I never really developed trying now not to make it too wholly tragic but tragic enough. Not sure where it will go but I like the chord progression quite a bit all of a sudden out of nowhere walking around house then rushing to piano quick before it escaped me a faster tempo than I recorded for sure. I love late night (preferably middle of the night) recording sessions cos the best stuff seems to happen late late at night though not sure why. I am in love with the idea that I can record anything I want whenever I want. What is terribly difficult actually is coming back to these ideas now because I have moved on with writing but I know I really cannot until this earlier stuff is totally developed and so somehow must figure a way to make sure it still works writing it now without making it sound like what I am writing now. The rising chords are fantastic.  The bass notes on the piano are heavy and enormous. The change to A major is incredible. It starts out with just this deep piano sound chords huge with lots of reverb at a slower tempo and possibly a different time signature then after an intro of I don't know forty or fifty bars the guitar comes in very very noisy with the drums and bass and furious arpeggios on the piano then the song really begins. Of course I see a photograph with this as well that I cannot capture at the moment so a lame screenshot and crude lyrics will have to do while I listen to the fifty-some bars I recorded cycling over and over and over.

your face your gaze your eyes have come to pass the time away

and I compare my stand my Fate with what I find in those I've known

my time has gone and I fall away I reach for you and empty sand and fall away

parthenon crumbling.

I re-figured out a song tonight that I had written a while back (in this case, written meaning came up with in my head, transposed to the piano without ever actually writing any of it out and then promptly forgetting the chord progression while only retaining the key – in this case, B-flat minor). The trick is the change from the inverted B-flat minor to the inverted D-flat major but the whole progression is quite good. In any case, scrawling half-thought-out lyrics except for the line at the end (which I came up with at least a year ago) ~

like granite in time and marble walls I will fall

I will fall

I will fall

I will fall

I will fall for you

Maybe limestone in time .... (and of course that is sung with a rising crescendo as the music gains momentum and dynamics until it nearly literally explodes the piano massive fortissimo arpeggios big fat chords the guitars insatiable chords and arpeggios the bass arpeggios fuzzy and distorted the drums just for lack of a better term insane and the singer above all how he falls over and over and over). And I will continue to work on lyrics tonight.

And I received Logic Pro on my front porch tonight. And I am about the most excited I have been in a very very long time. And there are two manuals each about the size of a phone book. And I will be bringing both of them with me to Phoenix to read on the aeroplane. And my uncle may sell me his dual 1.25GHz mirror drive G4 if anything to use as backup (Logic Pro 7 is coded so that it can actually perform distributed computing and use CPU strength from across a network not to mention it was written for the G4 CPUs though granted trying to do a 64-track mixdown with each channel having a bunch of effects going all at the same time and bouncing that down to stereo might be tough .... ). And once I transfer the contents of my current Quicksilver G4's hard drive onto the new RAID I will set up once it arrives in the next day or two along with maxing out the RAM capacity on the Quicksilver, I will do a clean install of 10.4.11 before installing Logic. And yes this is all quite exciting. And yes I still need a USB MIDI interface and a pair of decent mics. 

last night on earth.

For whatever reason, trying before going to bed to nail the idea of a song from two years ago and figured out from my head it's in the key of C# minor (I think – either that or I just wrote something else which could totally be the case .... ) and jotting down quick lyrics ~

silence again brings us closer all the same

close your eyes feel the weight of my hands sustain

turn back the time if only we could stand again and stay

here in my head you in my arms unrestrained

decay.

For some reason knowing I must backtrack and pick up pieces where I've left them be, find time to write from notes a year or two old because before the metaphors of space and Andromeda and Voyagers and galaxies I know there was something else that I've wanted to write and so in the dark at the piano this rhythm just seems to work perfectly and surprisingly I find it easy to jot down notes to go with this in C major where I hear an enormous grand piano and a guitar with a very strange delayed effect not at all unlike the sound of a Leslie speaker  that reverbs and cycles and reverbs and cycles in harmony with the piano and maybe underneath it all a low sample (or electric bass indistinguishable) and then the piano ends and the low sample fades but the guitar reverbs and cycles and reverbs and cycles and I walk away all the while this voice in my head only partly saying ~

I have tried to find a way

to start to say that I have tried to know the pain

to know the scene that you portray

the smile the lines designed to say

how I have felt for all this time the same

and I'm surprised that here I find it says again

that time has passed away and lost in space I cannot say

why it too cannot pass away

no matter your gaze your pose your stand

I've felt this way I've crushed the sand

and know it has to be this way

impossible to decay

Maybe some day I'll have a chance to go through old pictures and scan and crop and convert and post something here that fits the idea but for the time being it's just this everything in my head and now this old, crumpled notebook scribbled to death (and too I guess this blog).

collide.

I must lie .... I must lie among the covers

under the stars I try to hide

but like protons and electrons we must collide