Wednesday, August 28, 2024

History is written by the writers

Here’s a brand new song. Written and recorded in my usual fashion. Recording started on Saturday afternoon, finished Sunday morning. I’m not sure if I’m totally happy with the vocals, but I can always retake them later if I want.

This is the third song I’ve completed since the album. (The other two: Honey Buckets of Blood and Raccoon Tour) I would like to pick up the pace of my production, but find myself diffusing my finite time and energy across collages, writing, and performing. No regrets. We built this city on the day job.

This song started as a two-chord rocker, recycled from an old Grappling Snark novelty song that was as close to a love song as I’ve ever been able to manage. As I began to repurpose the chords, I saw myself slipping into well-worn melodic grooves. Nothing wrong with that, but I wanted to shake it up a little. I moved the key around. Tried subbing in some chord variants. Stumbled into a shifting rhythm along the way.

The words came first and as the melody coalesced and the rhythm locked in, I rewrote to make syllable counts scan a little better. This is the first time I’ve used the bass vi I’m building in a recording, and I really like the bass line. The guitar is fun to play. While the vocals maybe aren’t there yet, I’m pretty happy with how the rest of it hangs together and it’s mostly in-time. The first acoustic/vocal take is still in the mix, albeit buried pretty deeply. I like the repeated single note at the beginning for 16 bars (I think). It kind of seems like the record is stuck or something.

Of course, don’t forget the show on 9/6! Tickets! Will we play this song, Myopic Biopic, almost certainly not, but we’ll play the other two new ones.

Collage of the Day: Down the Shore

Subscriber Collage: Hug Time - I used to hate this one, but now I love it. It’s super weird, like I don’t even know what’s going on. And the rainbow frames it just right. It’s so fun and surprising what spins out when you get the top going.