Monday, March 29, 2004
Reynolds
I'm undergoing a major overhaul in the studio this weekend, so I have to go back to some older audio for this week's post. I'm not going back as far as we did last time, but the origin of this one does come from a while back.
"Reynolds" is an interesting piece for me, mostly because it's not truly finished. The song file I have posted is an interim mixdown, but even that is not a complete realization of the work. In reality, I guess you could say I haven't completely written the song.
The summer of 1990 was a busy one for me musically. I was just getting started with Green Chili on a really serious note, and I'd been doing quite a bit of writing, mostly instrumental pieces, because that's what I could put together completely on my own. I'd written a number of rock-esque pieces with some driving beats, and I'd also written quite a few "new age" style numbers, most of which I'm just too embarrassed to listen to even now. But in the summer of 1990, I was struck by rap music, and not because I liked it or was a fan at all. I was beginning to realize that rap and hip hop was more than just a fad and would probably be a force on the music scene for a while. So I decided to see what a Green Chili "rap" song might sound like. The idea eventually morphed into what is now "Reynolds."
The song name is probably the most telling remnant of that inspiration, because as I was deciding how Green Chili might tackle a rap song (in true Green Chili style, the song title always came before the words and most of the time the song itself), I figured that it might be called "Reynolds Rap." Get it? Yeah, I cringe even now, and it took a lot of effort to type the keys to make that appear on the screen, too.
Fortunately for everyone, what started out as a failed attempt to write rap became something else altogether. I went back to my driving percussion standards, but came up with a number of rhythmic bass and keyboard lines that could layer together in a number of ways to get a song that has the same core essentials but is slightly different at each turn of a phrase. Funny, a lot of dance music is doing that today. Hmm.
The really essential part for me was the stereo separation on the alternating snare drum hits. Instead of centering the snare drum in the sound field as is done with 99.99% of all popular music, I had two snares - one for the left channel, and one for the right. Every other snare hit is on a different sound channel. It made a nice pattern, and I stuck with it. Every time I've done a recording of "Reynolds" I've worked to make sure the snare separation is as drastic as possible. Listen to the file with headphones and you'll see what I mean.
The one thing that Reynolds has always lacked, however, was any sort of lead line. I have the foundation fully developed, but it's like delivering a bunch of bricks and mortar to a house construction site. Without a plan or an end result in mind, the bricks and mortar may not add up to an aesthetic work. Two years ago, I hooked up with a friend of my brother and asked him to do some guitar work for some of my music (guitar not being my forte). This was the first track I asked him to work on, because I was needing some inspiration to decide where to go with it. I didn't give Jeff much direction, other than "think Pink Floyd from the 'Momentary Lapse of Reason' CD" and sent him a version of the sound file. Jeff sent back a sound file that I mixed in with my recording, did a little cleanup, and there you have it. Well, if you click on the link above you will.
I got some really good ideas from Jeff's work on this, but I've not been able to hook back up with him to go further, and quite honestly, I think this needs to spend some more time fermenting in my noodle before I get back to working on it again. In any case, the changes I'm making to the studio (more about that much later) should help me get my creative juices flowing again in much less time than it takes now. One of the first tracks I know I'm going to work on at that point is Reynolds. So, enjoy this version, and keep your eyes and ears peeled for more music in the coming weeks.
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE:
There will be no posting next week, April 5, as I'll be out of town for my brother's wedding. Posting will resume as normal the following week. In the meantime, if you get bored, you can always check out what's happening on the Q Continuum.
"Reynolds" is an interesting piece for me, mostly because it's not truly finished. The song file I have posted is an interim mixdown, but even that is not a complete realization of the work. In reality, I guess you could say I haven't completely written the song.
The summer of 1990 was a busy one for me musically. I was just getting started with Green Chili on a really serious note, and I'd been doing quite a bit of writing, mostly instrumental pieces, because that's what I could put together completely on my own. I'd written a number of rock-esque pieces with some driving beats, and I'd also written quite a few "new age" style numbers, most of which I'm just too embarrassed to listen to even now. But in the summer of 1990, I was struck by rap music, and not because I liked it or was a fan at all. I was beginning to realize that rap and hip hop was more than just a fad and would probably be a force on the music scene for a while. So I decided to see what a Green Chili "rap" song might sound like. The idea eventually morphed into what is now "Reynolds."
The song name is probably the most telling remnant of that inspiration, because as I was deciding how Green Chili might tackle a rap song (in true Green Chili style, the song title always came before the words and most of the time the song itself), I figured that it might be called "Reynolds Rap." Get it? Yeah, I cringe even now, and it took a lot of effort to type the keys to make that appear on the screen, too.
Fortunately for everyone, what started out as a failed attempt to write rap became something else altogether. I went back to my driving percussion standards, but came up with a number of rhythmic bass and keyboard lines that could layer together in a number of ways to get a song that has the same core essentials but is slightly different at each turn of a phrase. Funny, a lot of dance music is doing that today. Hmm.
The really essential part for me was the stereo separation on the alternating snare drum hits. Instead of centering the snare drum in the sound field as is done with 99.99% of all popular music, I had two snares - one for the left channel, and one for the right. Every other snare hit is on a different sound channel. It made a nice pattern, and I stuck with it. Every time I've done a recording of "Reynolds" I've worked to make sure the snare separation is as drastic as possible. Listen to the file with headphones and you'll see what I mean.
The one thing that Reynolds has always lacked, however, was any sort of lead line. I have the foundation fully developed, but it's like delivering a bunch of bricks and mortar to a house construction site. Without a plan or an end result in mind, the bricks and mortar may not add up to an aesthetic work. Two years ago, I hooked up with a friend of my brother and asked him to do some guitar work for some of my music (guitar not being my forte). This was the first track I asked him to work on, because I was needing some inspiration to decide where to go with it. I didn't give Jeff much direction, other than "think Pink Floyd from the 'Momentary Lapse of Reason' CD" and sent him a version of the sound file. Jeff sent back a sound file that I mixed in with my recording, did a little cleanup, and there you have it. Well, if you click on the link above you will.
I got some really good ideas from Jeff's work on this, but I've not been able to hook back up with him to go further, and quite honestly, I think this needs to spend some more time fermenting in my noodle before I get back to working on it again. In any case, the changes I'm making to the studio (more about that much later) should help me get my creative juices flowing again in much less time than it takes now. One of the first tracks I know I'm going to work on at that point is Reynolds. So, enjoy this version, and keep your eyes and ears peeled for more music in the coming weeks.
ADMINISTRATIVE NOTE:
There will be no posting next week, April 5, as I'll be out of town for my brother's wedding. Posting will resume as normal the following week. In the meantime, if you get bored, you can always check out what's happening on the Q Continuum.
Monday, March 22, 2004
Left, Two Blocks, Right
For our next entry, we'll step into the WayBack™ machine and visit the year 1986. I was a senior in high school, about to graduate and head off to college. I also had spent several sessions in a local music studio in Lubbock, Texas, where my grandmother, who was in advertising, had developed a long-standing relationship with the owner. At various points over the year, she worked a deal with the owner to let me come in and record some of my songs in a professional studio.
Left, Two Blocks, Right (Intro)
Left, Two Blocks, Right (Sample)
I've broken the recoding into two sections - the intro and a sample from the end. More on that later in the discussion.
This track was a song I had written two years earlier for a friend of mine who was having some trouble with her parents. At the time, it seemed to be nothing more than typical teenage angst, mid-80's style. She was so wrapped up in her fights with her folks, it was really getting her down. As a friend on the outside, I could see that they were just trying to help her get through life as easily as possible, but she couldn't see that. So, in the story of the song, the focus shifts from a person who feels he/she is just being given "orders" from these unseen, uncaring voices to a realization that those "orders" were suggestions from a source of love and support. In a lot of ways, I suppose the lyrics were a reflection of my own teenage journey, realizing that my family really did know what was best for me and trying to help me avoid as much pain and trouble as possible.
As it turns out, this friend never heard this song, and I found out a few years later that she had actually been the victim of repeated sexual abuse by her extended family.
After I had written the lyrics and set it to some music I'd been toying with for some time, I shared the song with another high school friend. We were trying (constantly, it seemed) to put together a band, and just never got it together to any degree of success. However, we had rehearsed this song numerous times, so when I got the chance to lay down the track in the studio, I asked him to come in and do some guitar tracks on the recording. When he came in, I had already recorded all the keyboard lines and the drum machine tracks, so he just added some basic guitar chords though the song and a solo over the end. The last part of the track is where most of the energy of the song is from the way I layered the keyboard lines. That's why I chose to pull it out from the rest of the song.
The intro section that I've posted is still probably one of my favorite sections of keyboard work that I've ever done. It was recorded in collaboration with my producer, Mark Murray, who was also a keyboard player. Mark has much better equipment than I did, and we put the intro together by finding a number of different sounds that we liked and built them up into a mini-climax before the drums and the rest of the song kicked in. On the 24-track tape, we probably used 18 tracks for this intro, cutting them out quickly once the song started so the tracks for the main part of the song had room to fit.
Unfortunately, the only "original" recording I have of this is on a Maxell cassette that was recorded directly from the 24-track reel. Amazingly, the tape has held up fairly well over the last 18 years. When I recorded the tape to disc over the weekend, I had some real struggles getting the "noise reduction" noise out of the mix. There's still some artifacting of the extraction of the noise, and it's pretty obvious at the very end of the sample. The intro translated very cleanly. I did a little tweaking with some of the bass EQ in the intro, otherwise the track has had no significant alteration from the original cassette.
As my lyric writing skills have matured over the years, I've often toyed with going back and reworking this song to make it a little more "modern" and to fix some of the lines that I was really never very happy with but didn't know how to improve at the time. Every time I try to sit down and tackle that, however, I just never seem to get it right. So, you may see a post in here in the future about an updated recording of this song, but it probably won't be any time soon.
Recorded at Caldwell Studios, Lubbock, Texas, sometime in 1986
Keyboards - Eric Lipscomb (now Eriq Neale) and Mark Murray
Drum machine programming - Eric Lipscomb and Mark Murray
Guitar - Erick Kelemen
Engineered and Produced by Mark Murray
Digital Mastering by Eriq Neale at Simultaneous Pancakes Studios in Denton, Texas
You know, I still think it's not bad for a couple of high-schoolers who really didn't know what they were doing!
Left, Two Blocks, Right (Intro)
Left, Two Blocks, Right (Sample)
I've broken the recoding into two sections - the intro and a sample from the end. More on that later in the discussion.
This track was a song I had written two years earlier for a friend of mine who was having some trouble with her parents. At the time, it seemed to be nothing more than typical teenage angst, mid-80's style. She was so wrapped up in her fights with her folks, it was really getting her down. As a friend on the outside, I could see that they were just trying to help her get through life as easily as possible, but she couldn't see that. So, in the story of the song, the focus shifts from a person who feels he/she is just being given "orders" from these unseen, uncaring voices to a realization that those "orders" were suggestions from a source of love and support. In a lot of ways, I suppose the lyrics were a reflection of my own teenage journey, realizing that my family really did know what was best for me and trying to help me avoid as much pain and trouble as possible.
As it turns out, this friend never heard this song, and I found out a few years later that she had actually been the victim of repeated sexual abuse by her extended family.
After I had written the lyrics and set it to some music I'd been toying with for some time, I shared the song with another high school friend. We were trying (constantly, it seemed) to put together a band, and just never got it together to any degree of success. However, we had rehearsed this song numerous times, so when I got the chance to lay down the track in the studio, I asked him to come in and do some guitar tracks on the recording. When he came in, I had already recorded all the keyboard lines and the drum machine tracks, so he just added some basic guitar chords though the song and a solo over the end. The last part of the track is where most of the energy of the song is from the way I layered the keyboard lines. That's why I chose to pull it out from the rest of the song.
The intro section that I've posted is still probably one of my favorite sections of keyboard work that I've ever done. It was recorded in collaboration with my producer, Mark Murray, who was also a keyboard player. Mark has much better equipment than I did, and we put the intro together by finding a number of different sounds that we liked and built them up into a mini-climax before the drums and the rest of the song kicked in. On the 24-track tape, we probably used 18 tracks for this intro, cutting them out quickly once the song started so the tracks for the main part of the song had room to fit.
Unfortunately, the only "original" recording I have of this is on a Maxell cassette that was recorded directly from the 24-track reel. Amazingly, the tape has held up fairly well over the last 18 years. When I recorded the tape to disc over the weekend, I had some real struggles getting the "noise reduction" noise out of the mix. There's still some artifacting of the extraction of the noise, and it's pretty obvious at the very end of the sample. The intro translated very cleanly. I did a little tweaking with some of the bass EQ in the intro, otherwise the track has had no significant alteration from the original cassette.
As my lyric writing skills have matured over the years, I've often toyed with going back and reworking this song to make it a little more "modern" and to fix some of the lines that I was really never very happy with but didn't know how to improve at the time. Every time I try to sit down and tackle that, however, I just never seem to get it right. So, you may see a post in here in the future about an updated recording of this song, but it probably won't be any time soon.
Recorded at Caldwell Studios, Lubbock, Texas, sometime in 1986
Keyboards - Eric Lipscomb (now Eriq Neale) and Mark Murray
Drum machine programming - Eric Lipscomb and Mark Murray
Guitar - Erick Kelemen
Engineered and Produced by Mark Murray
Digital Mastering by Eriq Neale at Simultaneous Pancakes Studios in Denton, Texas
You know, I still think it's not bad for a couple of high-schoolers who really didn't know what they were doing!
Monday, March 15, 2004
Introduction
Every song has a story...
Welcome to Musical Mondays, a blog I've put together to document and share my musical creations. Once a week, on Mondays, I'll post a link to some audio I've put together - a full song, a short song clip, a melodic idea, etc. - and describe the history of the piece. Back when I was writing regularly, I would often get asked about the genesis of the idea for a song. Well, it may be a few years behind the initial requests, but I'm finally going to pull the curtain back on my own creative process.
To start out, I'll present a piece I had linked to in a post on The Q Continuum. The song is titled "Eleven Row Aim" and this link is the latest mix. I've had this piece completed for a number of years, but I really started working on getting a finished mix last year when I added a 24-track recorded to my studio.
"Eleven Row Aim" is one of the first pieces I put together in my post-Green Chili days. It's an instrumental piece, and I wanted to write something that was completely different from anything I had put together for Green Chili. At the time I started writing it, I was giving a lot of play time to "The Light Program," a CD from Asia and Buggles keyboardist Geoffrey Downes. "The Light Program" was essentially a modern, electronic symphony, combining a classical music composition approach with modern electronic instruments. The inspiration I took from this collection was in taking a small number of distinct melodic and structural elements and weaving them together into a single, cohesive piece. I had done some work in this vein with other pieces, but never to this degree.
I've actually been able to perform "Eleven Row Aim" a few times in semi-public venues, mostly college-level talent shows. This is the only piece I've been able to do that with since Green Chili disbanded. Since those performances, however, I've modified and added a few musical elements, and with the 24-track recorded, I've been able to add some elements that I was never able to pull off during a live show. This recorded version clocks in at 4:58, which is significant as well. As I was getting it recorded last year, I was intending to enter the piece in a songwriting competition, but the maximum length of pieces was 5 minutes. As originally envisioned, "Eleven Row Aim" was actually closer to 7 minutes. Still, by trimming down the piece to fit within someone else's standards, I've been able to tighten it up a bit. There's still one section in the middle that I'm not crazy about after I shortened it, but I don't think it's obvious to anyone but me that it's been altered.
Finally, a word about the song title. I've mentioned in other posts in the Continuum that I enjoy a turn of anagrams. All I'll say about this song title is that it is an anagram of another phrase. I'll leave it at that.
Entire contents of this site © 2003-2004 Eriq Oliver Neale/Simultaneous Pancakes Media unless otherwise noted. I hate that I have to point that out...Welcome to Musical Mondays, a blog I've put together to document and share my musical creations. Once a week, on Mondays, I'll post a link to some audio I've put together - a full song, a short song clip, a melodic idea, etc. - and describe the history of the piece. Back when I was writing regularly, I would often get asked about the genesis of the idea for a song. Well, it may be a few years behind the initial requests, but I'm finally going to pull the curtain back on my own creative process.
To start out, I'll present a piece I had linked to in a post on The Q Continuum. The song is titled "Eleven Row Aim" and this link is the latest mix. I've had this piece completed for a number of years, but I really started working on getting a finished mix last year when I added a 24-track recorded to my studio.
"Eleven Row Aim" is one of the first pieces I put together in my post-Green Chili days. It's an instrumental piece, and I wanted to write something that was completely different from anything I had put together for Green Chili. At the time I started writing it, I was giving a lot of play time to "The Light Program," a CD from Asia and Buggles keyboardist Geoffrey Downes. "The Light Program" was essentially a modern, electronic symphony, combining a classical music composition approach with modern electronic instruments. The inspiration I took from this collection was in taking a small number of distinct melodic and structural elements and weaving them together into a single, cohesive piece. I had done some work in this vein with other pieces, but never to this degree.
I've actually been able to perform "Eleven Row Aim" a few times in semi-public venues, mostly college-level talent shows. This is the only piece I've been able to do that with since Green Chili disbanded. Since those performances, however, I've modified and added a few musical elements, and with the 24-track recorded, I've been able to add some elements that I was never able to pull off during a live show. This recorded version clocks in at 4:58, which is significant as well. As I was getting it recorded last year, I was intending to enter the piece in a songwriting competition, but the maximum length of pieces was 5 minutes. As originally envisioned, "Eleven Row Aim" was actually closer to 7 minutes. Still, by trimming down the piece to fit within someone else's standards, I've been able to tighten it up a bit. There's still one section in the middle that I'm not crazy about after I shortened it, but I don't think it's obvious to anyone but me that it's been altered.
Finally, a word about the song title. I've mentioned in other posts in the Continuum that I enjoy a turn of anagrams. All I'll say about this song title is that it is an anagram of another phrase. I'll leave it at that.
