Find it in the spaces
October 25, 2008Listening back to what I’ve been working on. Thinking about where it comes from. The final songs sometimes are very far removed from what I originally thought. Even if I was going for a certain ‘mood’ or ‘feel’, how I get there still remains a mystery even to me.
I posted a version of ‘Goodbye’. This is among the first of the songs I came up with for this album. I always loved it. It’s really emotional, big, there is passion and tension, a longing and pulling away in it. The words came very quickly, there are actually very few lyrics, and the chords were there right away. Getting to the version you can hear now though, well, it HAS been 9 months.
This song came to me after something I went through back in February. I already had the music and the words just came out in a rush. Every once in a while that happens: you have an experience, it brings up a feeling and the music is already there. I had come up with the chords about 3 weeks prior to this event. Afterwards, I was feeling the way I was feeling and revisited the chords and click! It fell into place. Now I just needed to get the right feel and mood in the music. I would love to sit here and say it was my genius with sounds and knowledge of music that helped me. Maybe it is and it’s just really invisible to me. But here’s what really happened.
For months I was set on this being a big huge guitar song. Moody little bassline, some piano. Layered screaming distortion guitars because damn it, this is a song with PAIN in it!! I recorded about 7 versions with different takes on that theme. They all sounded alright. But I’m not going for alright. Especially with this song. Over the years I’ve become pretty good at the self-editing process and knowing when an idea isn’t working, or when it’s really going well. This was always one of the latter. My huge powerful electric guitar passion gut busting emotional song. Yet it wasn’t right.
So I tried speeding it up. Surely that was the problem, it was too plodding. Then I tried to edit the length. then I thought about maybe going in a more acoustic direction with a long build to the end. I tried to add some staggered harmony vocals. Finally I just left it alone for a month. About that time I met up with a musician friend of mine and played him a lot of the new tracks. When one of the versions of ‘Goodbye’ came on, I was trying to explain what I was going for. He looked at me and said that ‘this is the new Mike. It’s like this doesn’t belong on the same disc as the other songs.’ Which made me think. In the last post I mentioned trying to talk about your own sound. It’s hard. They’re my songs, so I’m not sure I really even have a perspective on this. But he was right-there was something new about this song. Which in a way is weird to me because it’s really a fairly straight forward song–a basic 3 chord song. No real fancy rhythms, no layered harmonies. The song had something in it, just in it of itself that screamed for the right idea, treatment, to bring it out. I like to call it a ‘huge’ song. In my head it’s always been sort of anthem like, not in a U2 stadium sing along with your lighter way, but more in the way that the arrangement would reflect the feeling and that would give the song the power that was in it. I began to think of what the ‘new mike’ part was.
I pulled up this song a few days ago and listened to what I had. Not happy. So I let myself just let go of the song. I tried to not think about what I wanted, and just let the song be what it was. How do I do that? Now what? The first thing I did was mute all the guitar work I had done and that left me with my bass and drum track. I pulled up a synth patch and played around until I found a funky sound. I totally thought it would ruin everything and I would definitely delete it and move on. It sounded cool. I played this back and immediately went to my piano track. Suddenly I was playing a totally different kind of piano part. This was getting fun. Now, will guitars still work? Part one played. Part two played. Not even close to how I had played them before. Wow. I like it. I sing. I sing differently then I did on any of the other versions I’ve tried. I can feel the song. I can feel the feeling. I mix it down quickly to CD and listen to it and go to sleep.
Wake up. Listen to the mix in the car. Go over the parts in my mind. What’s missing? Home. Turn the mics on. Needs to drop out to an acoustic right here! New mix. I like it.
That’s the version that’s up on the web page. Check it out. I think it’s very different from anything I’ve done before, and I think it nails the mood I wanted.
It’s cool to find things where you don’t expect them. Sometimes letting go of your expectations lets you really get to what is there. That’s what happened to me on this song. I hope you like it.
Peace
