The last day. Sometimes this is a “he ran out of steam” day, and sometimes it’s a last burst of energy with surprising results. I suppose that’s true of any day in the month, but it’s always fun to see what ends up happening.
I didn’t have a lot of abandoned sketches this year. Often, when I’m writing and something’s got promise but just isn’t working right then, I’ll save it and open a new project. When I start each project, it just has the date as its name, but if I’m starting multiple things in a day, I’ll add a letter to the end. In past years, I’ve gotten as high as E, but there year it never went past B and there aren’t many of them. I was a lot more ready to select-all-delete1Ha! Also “SaD” things this year. If it wasn’t working, I just dropped it entirely.
- Leave The Light On Ray Toler 3:19
This song, though, was one of those ideas that I thought had promise earlier in the month but didn’t want to do it at the time. I wrote the lyrics for the first two verses and the chorus on the 19th. I didn’t have any music in mind, and decided that I wanted to think about whether or not I was going to finish it and record it at all.
You’re The Inspiration
I draw inspiration from lots of things. Most often, it’s the dimly lit corners of my mind. Some are obvious but some surprise even me. One of my overall goals this year, though, was to write from another’s perspective or to at least not require the lyrics to exactly match the situation that inspired it. “Be vague.” “You don’t have to be the protagonist.”
It’s not appropriate for me to fully air the laundry here, but I’ll just sum things up by saying that Mary’s been having a tough time at work lately, mostly (but not entirely) due to being on the road for at least a few days every week. I was fortunate and never really got tired of business travel, but I did more of the longer but less frequent trips. Mary’s out every week, and that can get really old.
I almost didn’t write this one because I was worried that it was too on-the-nose and would depress her even further, but I also knew she would like it and that its a good song that would be relatable to a lot of people. Well, it’s the 28th, so if I don’t do it today, I’m not going to do it.
Time Keeps on Ticking
It’s always a bit easier to start a track if I have anything to work with. A lyric, a melody, a beat… anything that has already constrained that empty project is a jumping-off point. I actually started with the music first, since if I couldn’t find a melody or progression that worked, there was no point writing any more lyrics. I’ve shied away from major seventh chords a bit over the last couple of years because they’re one of my “rut” hand patterns, but they seemed appropriate for this song. I actually began with that opening chime melody, and didn’t realize it was a major seventh until I started putting chords underneath it. I had XO running a basic pattern to riff and sing over and probably meandered down this path or that for about an hour.
By the end of the hour, I had the song structure figured out, though the arrangement and synths weren’t really great. I wrote the rest of the lyrics and recorded the verse and pre-chorus vocals, then did the chorus and the harmony stacks. I’ve also been avoiding those lately, but it was exactly what this song wanted.
The verse vocals are… tentative. I’m not sure I was 100% sold on the melody and timing, and that kind of comes through in the performance. I suspect if I re-record the verses they’ll be a lot stronger. I’ve talked about tuning / autotune before, but this is a good example of how I decide how much to do. Unless I just completely sucked when recording, I do my best to have a very light hand on tuning isolated vocals like the verses. If there’s a note that’s clearly sharp or flat, or I had a great take with one bad subtone or scoop, I’ll fix those. I do tend to go flat with vibrato on sustained last notes – that’s a breath control issue – so if it’s noticeable I’ll fix that as well, but only as a whole. I don’t fix the individual notes, just the overall “average” note that you hear by moving the entire thing up or down.
Big harmony stacks, though? I’m pretty aggressive with those. I used to do these stacks because they are phenomenally good at hiding pitch problems. Instead of being “out of tune,” it’s “rich.” But as my production chops have improved, I’ve learned that if I’m doing a big stack, locking most of the pitches together just creates this amazing cohesiveness that’s missing otherwise and gives the whole thing more power and energy. I’m not sure if this has always been true or if it’s a consequence of autotune having become so pervasive in commercial music. Am I chasing the trend or using a tool to achieve what I wanted anyway?
The chorus is sixteen voices: four parts with four recordings each. The main melody is joined by three harmony lines, and I split the high four into two parts on a couple of notes to make a bigger chord because you’ll hear the high stuff more easily and don’t need all the reinforcement. The mistake I made with this one, and it was almost entirely a time-pressure thing, is that I didn’t map out the harmonies prior to recording, I just started recording parts. As a whole, it sound pretty good, but when I isolate just the vocals, I’ve got some octaves that I’d rather be harmonized. Maybe something to go back and deal with in the future.
Another time-mistake that I made was trying to do too much mixing on the vocals, including setting levels, compression, and effects, before I had any of the instruments actually recorded. When I’m writing and arranging, most everything is going straight to the main output. Once I’ve recorded everything and start mixing, though, I run everything through bus groups. All of the drums go to the drum bus, all the synths to Synth, all the pads to Pads, and so on. These busses are all then routed to the main mix out, where I do my “mastering” EQ, compression, and limiting (plus overall tape effects/saturation if appropriate).
I’ve made this mistake a couple of times this month and ended up with a really weird mix until I record the parts I hadn’t committed to and all of a sudden that mix that was super quiet is now incredibly loud and mismatched. This is an inherent part of the process, so it’s not necessarily something I could easily change, but I did wait too long on this particular song to record the instruments.
Into the Future
The other time mistake I made was going to the neighbors house to watch a movie. We got started a little later than I thought we would, and the movie was just under two hours long. I already had the vocals finished except for forgetting to do the last pre-chorus line, so I thought I’d be safe, but I had a bit more work to do on the arrangement than I though, including adding a couple of small parts, changing the octaves of one of the pads, adjusting some overzealous piano playing in the final chorus, and all of those little things that add up to a lot more time than you think. Plus, you know, I kept listening to the gorgeous chorus… fickle vanity. Setting the loudness was also trickier than I expected it to be, mostly because I’d put off recording the instruments for so long and didn’t have the mix right in the first place.
I did the final bounce at 11:56 and almost got it posted to the site before midnight, but had to retag the MP3, so it didn’t get posted until 30 seconds into March 1.2Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit. Given that I lost at least 20 minutes to socializing before the movie, I’m still saying I got it done on time.
There’s one thing I’ll probably do to the track for my own “permanent” version, and that’s to remix so that the harmonies are a bit more balanced and the chorus a tiny bit louder, but without the verses becoming too quiet. I’m often a “set it and forget it” mixer, but this is one where I think I’m going to end up needing to do a lot more fader work.
I had intended to leave the initial mix posted as a record of progress, but when I listened on speakers today, it was really close, far closer than I thought it was, so I made a couple of small tweaks, mostly fader movements to get the piano and pads out of the way of the background vocals and a couple of obvious omissions that were just me rushing to meet some arbitrary deadline. I fixed those little things and reposted it. I doubt most people would hear what I changed in any overt way, but the overall sound is noticeably improved.
It really reinforces why I like working the night before and doing the final mix in the morning. If I participate again next year (more on that in the wrap-up), I’ll probably recommit to that and try to stick to it. I’ll write the wrap-up post later today or tomorrow, after I’ve had a chance to decompress and reflect a tiny bit, realize that I don’t have to write any music today, but most probably when I’m procrastinating working on my tax filing.
If you’ve made it this far, thank you so much for listening and reading. Your time is the most valuable thing you can give me and I hope you’ve gotten something valuable in return.
Lyrics
Another night, another room
To call home for 18 hours
I’ve lost count of all the
Closets, TVs, fridges, bathrooms, showers
It’s only been a couple of days
But it seems like I’ve been gone so long
I know it’s right but right now I feel wrong
But I’ll see you tomorrow night
I’ll be late but leave the light on
So I can find my way to you
I’ll be there tomorrow night
I’ll be late but leave the light on
So I can find my way to you
I’ll be gone again for a few days
And then I’ll be back home to you
I know you’re there
I wish I were too
Another day, another town
I hate to admit it
But it’s wearing me down
I keep breathing, but some days I think I’ll drown
Colophon
Instruments & Samples
Pianoteq, Diva, Zebra2, Omnisphere, Serum 2, Superior Drummer 3, JV-2080
Effects, Mixing, & Mastering
Valhalla, H3000 Factory, FabFilter
Notes
- 1Ha! Also “SaD”
- 2Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.