always someone's monster: "it was a pleasure to burn" production diary

I've actually written about this song before, since she was crafted for SpinTunes 4.1. The challenge was two-fold, as always: right about a childhood nightmare and make liberal use of rubato. For this song, I totally nailed the first challenge and totally tanked the second but still advanced to the next round.

'Cuz it's a good song, even if it is in many ways the antithesis to the feel-good pop of Panacea.


my mother was adamant
that woman was made of steel
so one night she stole away
said she couldn't feel

my father wasn't there
his jaw slack, his eyes a-glaze
he awoke hard one day
left the porch, the house ablaze

and i tell you all of this
so you can understand

my mother always said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them there

i am working my way on through
my family tree of twisted branches
climb on down to the tangled roots
find out where my shadow dances

i am looking for the answer
to the question you asked me
if you are always someone's monster
are you ever really free

and i tell you all of this
so you will take my hand

my mother always said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them there

Let's be honest, there's no rubato here, at least strictly speaking. I change tempo a lot, but there's little variation within any given phrase. I just don't have the vocal control to pull of something like this:

Nonetheless, there's lots that I love about this tune, and that's why she's coming onto the album. First, I like the imagery I conjure with these words. Its both quotidian and dark, evoking those shadows we like to ignore on the clean, manicured streets of suburbia. Second, the constant tempo shifts let me (force me to?) make several sections, with lots of dynamics. Like To The Devil (and probably several other tracks, since I love dynamics), this song loves to pause and then rush forward. Third, it defies conventional songwriting structure in a productive way: Verse - Verse - Pre-chorus - Chorus - Verse - Verse - Pre-chorus - Chorus - Coda. (Yeah, that's right. When's the last time you heard a song with a coda?) Like a dream, this composition wanders into unexpected places, pivots and turns at unusual moments, explodes and then drifts away.

The updated mix has a few new touches I'll mention for the archive. I've added some more oomph to the opening with an organ part (there are two different organs in this song). I redid the vocals in the chorus because originally they dipped too far into my growl-voice. I need bombast for that part but not anger. Nailing and mixing those six bars was probably the hardest part of the entire song-creation process. Finally, I removed the echoes in the second half of each verse, and I really like how sparse it leaves that section.

The remaining tunes on my list actually require full production (why didn't I do them first, when I had the time?) But I'm well into a murder ballad with no chorus (but lots of wicked slide guitar), and actually I have a cover of song from The Books that just needs some re-arranging, so maybe that will come along soon as well. Keep an ear out, we're in the home stretch!

To The Devil: "it was a pleasure to burn" production diary

Professional obligations have eclipsed my musical predilections for the past week, so I have been remiss in posting the piecemeal progress I've made towards completing it was a pleasure to burn. Nonetheless, progress there has been, and below you may find the evidence thereof.

"To The Devil" is one of my unprompted compositions, which means she arrived without call from either a Song Fight! or SpinTunes challenge, nor even during FAWM.

i spoke to the devil but he had nothing to say
cuz i had beat him down, beat him all damn day
Beelzebub came a knockin', came up right to my door
tried to whisper sweet nothin's so i put him on the floor

i spoke to the devil
i spoke with my fist
i spoke to the devil
now he's on my list

course there is what Freddy said about the black abyss
can you win that staring game and make Satan miss?
if this is that hubris thing, then just let me be
if i can make my way there blind, his blood will set me free

i spoke to the devil
Mephistopheles
i spoke to the devil
you want no truck with me

though it winds like a serpent, i can walk the path
sow the seeds of destruction, pick the grapes of wrath
i spoke to the devil but was only talkin' aloud
i am my own hemlock i weave my own shroud

i spoke to the devil
bluffed the father of lies
i spoke to the devil, boy
you better let me pass on by

i spoke to the devil
Mephistopheles
i spoke to the devil and lived
you want no truck with me

This song actually comes from a pretty dark place, so I have trouble talking about it. Let's start with structure and my trademark references.

"To the Devil" is a pretty straight-up rock song. I knew this right from the get go, and so it's lathered in dynamics, bombast and a simple chord progression. In its initial iteration, the whole vocal delivery was rather monotone. I was trying to play it cool, underlying an assured delivery with lyrics soaked in doubt and not a little self-loathing. I wanted there to be a tension between the raucous triumph of the music and the dark introspection of the words: fragile aggression.



I'm very happy with the dynamics of this song, the way it ebbs and flows, but for the new take, I knew that it need more of that. So, I redid the percussion track entirely. (Hooray for EzDrummer!) and put more energy into the chorus. The call/response in that section was a last-minute editing decision; I'm on the fence and it may not survive (entirely) the last edit before I consider the album complete.

References to literature and philosophy abound. Overall, I was thinking of Charlie Daniel's "The Devil Went Down the Georgia" as well as anti-heroes that figure in so much of Johnny's Cash's work.

"Freddy" and his "black abyss" is a nod to one Nietzsche's more famous quotes:

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you. (Beyond Good and Evil.)

The second half of verse two is actually a very oblique reference to Oedipus at Colonus, the third and final part of Sophocles' Theban Plays, in which the now-blinded king ruminates upon his dire fate. It's a pessimistic work, even for a tragedy. And no mention of "hemlock" could miss evoking the fate of Socrates, who was condemned to death for basically being a skeptic and "corrupting the youth" of Athens with rational thought, of all things.

The "grapes of wrath," here has nothing to do with the Steinbeck novel, but rather his source: The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Which is, in turn, a reference to Revelations 14: 19-20. I'm just part of a long chain of borrowing.

Personally, I'll manage to say that writing this song was kind of cathartic. It's hyperbolic, of course: my life is pretty good, but I had settled into a kind of mid-winter glum and channeled my shadow into a song that might make Kurt Cobain go "Dude, you have issues."

More music has been made since I've fallen quiet. Come back soon (like, tomorrow) and I'll tell you about more dark shadows that I've summoned.

SpinTunes: Hey, Joe

The challenge for the second round of SpinTunes 4 was pretty straight-foward: write a Valentines' Day card for someone other than your significant other. That suited me just fine: I actually find it hard to write about my wife (though I have done so on a few occasions), and this challenge allowed me some welcome creative freedom with just the right amount of boundaries to get the juices flowing. I read the challenge first thing last Monday morning with a big cup of coffee in my hand and it was a "Eureka!" moment. (Well, in my early morning, pre-coffee haze more like: "Hmmmm... *look at coffee cup* Yup.")

Two things off the bat:

1. Please listen to the whole album. There is some fantastic stuff here. Brand new, and totally free. (I'm number 8 in the queue).
2. Please go vote for your favorites (and mine, too!) over on the SpinTunes blog. The popular vote counts like a judge, so your voice is important.

Right, on with the show. For lyrics, beyond the condition of writing an ode (of sorts) that was not for my wife, I set myself the additional condition of not writing about a tryst, because that seemed facile. Coffee is something that I could pour myself into, so I set a third condition: don't mention the word "coffee." I like things that are discrete about their subject matter; and it's a good exercise in craft to make a clear description without naming a thing overtly.

It's often part of my creative process to have a touchstone for inspiration and reference. This tune has several. My primary reference for lyrics was an essay called "The Pleasures and Pains of Coffee," by the 19th-century realist Honoré de Balzac. This dude knew his stuff. (Side note as a French professor: the English translation is annoyingly edited, cobbled together from a much longer piece that's just as interesting, called the Traité des excitants modernes.) But I digress. Yes, I stole the "coffee roasts my insides" from Balzac.

wake [D] up, get out of bed
[Am] have a cup and [C] tilt your head
[G] [F]
take a [Am] sip, another one
 [C] sugar, cream: your [D] motor runs

hey [D] joe, i am [Am] awake now
you have [C] my vow, [G] thank you friend
hey joe, what is this feeling
my fingers tingling
i think i love you

after lunch, another cup
caffeine always help me sup
take it black with a smoke
gotta to keep my fires stoked

hey joe, you are my bright star
you warm my heart every day
hey joe, you roast my insides
you make my eyes bright
i think i love you

[G] i feel i am floating
[F#] i feel i am flying
[Em] i feel i am letting go
in the air soaring
upon the waves crashing
oh will you help me joe

hey joe, don't want no mocha
no chai latte, just grind it fine
hey joe, this fine aroma
it transports me,
you're all mine

Musically, I had the second half of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" in my head for some reason. I purposefully didn't listen to the song before writing and recording, relying upon the haze of my memory to give me enough distance. I'm no John Lennon, to be sure, but I'm quite happy with the way things turned out.

I have to admit, dealing with the piano part was a pain. Firstly, I don't have a keyboard; that's all programmed with the REAPER MIDI interface. Secondly, for a long time, I had the parts reversed: the chorus was the verse. While that matched my memory of the verse from "A Day in the Life" a little better, it didn't work with the melody I had crafted. Once I swapped the parts, things went better, and when I changed the verse piano to a combo organ and synthesizer, it went much better. I'm really proud of the change in chord progression in the verse; I'm packing a lot of variation into not much space (well, for me) and that keeps it interesting.

I took a note from the Beatles as well for mixing, making the unconventional George Martin choice of hard-panning the drums and bass to one side and the guitars to the other (left and write, respectively.) I fiddled a little with the organ and piano parts, because that's where they sounded best, and chucked everything out for the bridge, using dynamic panning to introduction a sense of auditory delirium. It's a non-standard mixing choice, and so that can throw people off, but I think it works well for this tune, giving the whole thing space to breath. You really can pick out each part, which is something that I love about much of the Beatles' stuff.

Let's talk structure. I took a bit of inspiration from the previous round and went for a series of tempo changes: 132 bpm for the verse, 144 for the chorus, and 80 for the bridge. Still, there's the illusion of more variation with the constant breaks in the verse. I really wanted that part to have the Beatlesque vocal "Aaaaaah - aaaaaah," but I cannot sing like that, much less craft a similar harmony. So, I let the guitars do it for me. (Post-submission, I had the idea that the break leading into the chorus should go up from G to A instead of down to F. Ah well, noted for the remix.)

The bridge comes from an early version of the song that was inspired by French comic songwriters Oldelaf and Monsieur D., "Un p'tit café?"

I originally had the narrator going crazy, coming home and murdering his family as a proof of his devotion to Joe. It was a too dark for a light-hearted love song. And having a constant tempo increase would have been too much a direct rip of Oldelaf's and Monsieur D's genius.

One thing that I was not referencing - for some reason - was the 50's / 60's rock standard "Hey Joe," perhaps most famously covered by Jimi Hendrix. I only ran across this when Googling album art for my Bandcamp page. [/shameless plug]

FAWM 2012: Week 1

On top of Song Fight! and SpinTunes, I enjoy participating in February Album Writing Month. Each of these organizations / challenges has its own distinct atmosphere. Song Fight! is heavy on the criticism, but frequently in a very constructive way, and there's a lot of buy-in from the entire community to keep things going and continually improve things. SpinTunes, despite being a more focused songwriting competition, has a much more laid-back and convivial feel to the interactions. It's held rather infrequently, but there's a pretty solid core of people who regularly participate as either judges or contestants.

FAWM is something else entirely. If Song Fight! is a perpetual songwriting workshop, and SpinTunes is a Battle of the Bands, FAWM is a giant block party. It reminds me of la Fête de la musique, with everybody playing every which way, what, where and how. The point isn't to craft great songs and hone your skills. It's just to get 14 songs written during the shortest month of the year.

You heard me right: 14 songs in 28 days. It's no small feat. In fact, I've never done it. Last year I think I hit ten, but only had nine recordings. 2010 only got three or four. Nonetheless, it's a great exercise in just getting it done and out there.

So, this the attitude I'm taking this year: write the damn tune, slap it down in demo form and move on to the next. Focus on the bigger pictures - melody, lyric, structure, narrative - instead of the minutiae of a killer drum track or building a third guitar part for the chorus. Attention to the immediate and the particular; I'll come back to the gems and refine them for an album over the some - probably Mayish.

You can visit my FAWM page here. I'll also be posting my demos on Bandcamp, just I can use the handy embedded playlist and you can listen to them right here:

It's the evening of February 2 as I write this, and that means I've completed two brand new songs in as many days. That's pretty damn good, if I do say so myself. (Mind you, I'm going to be busy over the long weekend, so that ratio's going to drop off mighty quick.) But let's savor the moment and talk a little about these tunes.

All Swear About Murder
"All swear about murder" was a typo on a Google+ post many months ago. It was just too good of a phrase to let go, so I plunked it down in Evernote and since then it's been steadily accruing companions from various places, though I must admit that Denise Hudson consistently turns a pretty phrase and I pilfer her disjecta with gusto. I started this with the clear intention never to mention the word murder, and I enjoy the ambiguity of what being "all swear" means. It's a flashback episode, too, starting at the end of the story, with a little plot twist at the end of Act One. When writing the prechorus, I decided the first line was just too good. Rather than jam it into a chorus, I just ditched the idea altogether. Chorus no; bridge, yes. The first line and the entire general grove of the bridge is actually ripped from a cover of a song by The Books that I did for Gift of Music this year, "A Cold Freezin' Night." I liked being able to the turn the original lyric on its head.

Panacea
For some reason, it's really, really hard for me to write happy songs. I take myself too seriously, and I appreciate how much craft it takes to be funny. Being tragic is easier. So, I was delighted when a rather happy little ditty popped into my head on the way home this afternoon. Maybe it was the sunshine after days of rain. Maybe it was the car exhaust as I putted about on my scooter. Maybe Euterpe just had a caprice. Whatever, I took the idea and ran with it, keeping things as simple as possible: straight I - V - IV verse and few 7ths and 9ths for chorus. The doubled vocal track was a last-minute addition; i rather like it, but it'll take some serious honing in revisions. I waffled a lot about having a bridge. The 3rd verse was originally a bridge, but I didn't have anything more to say, and the melody wasn't all that different anyway. (Actually, the verse chord progression was going to be only for the bridge, but it was too good.)

SpinTunes: Always Someone's Monster

The topic for Round 1 of SpinTunes 4 was to write a song about a childhood nightmare and include significant use of rubato. My offering is called "Always Someone's Monster," number 7 on the playlist below. Please download the entire album on Bandcamp for a really impressive display of creativity that runs the musical gambit of genres and styles.

Song Bio
My parents divorced when I was three. I was too young to remember clearly, but family lore is that I woke up crying for several nights after my father left us. There's a shadow from that episode that I still struggle with. I took some dramatic licence for this tune. My real mother is made of anything but steel: she's the nicest, most disorganized person I know. All in all, I still have this lingering fear of abandonment, I suppose.

Initial drafts of the second verse were more compact; the lines left too much space in the phrase and the melody didn't match up well with what I had established in the first verse. The "you" of this song isn't really any one in particular, more like an amalgamation of people in my life; I like the slight variation in the second prechorus.

[Fmaj7] my mother was [C] adamant
[Gmaj7] that woman was made of [Am] steel
so one night she stole away
said she couldn't feel

my father wasn't there
his jaw slack, his eyes a-glaze
he awoke hard one day
left the porch, the house ablaze

[Em] and i tell you [Cmaj7] all of this
[Am] so you can under-[Dadd9] stand

[Fmaj7] my [C] mother always [Gmaj7] said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them [Fmaj7] there [C]

i am working my way on through
my family tree of twisted branches
climb on down to the tangled roots
find out where my shadow dances

i am looking for the answer
to the question you asked me
if you are always someone's monster
are you ever really free

and i tell you all of this
so you will take my hand

my mother always said
there are no monsters under your bed
in the closet they abide
keep them there

Coda : Fmaj7/add9 - Cadd9/C/Cmaj7 - Gmaj7 - Em

(Yup, I slightly flubbed the second verse: I should have sung "tangled roots" instead of "twisted." Le sigh. Deadlines.)

I'm proud of the structural work on this song, especially the coda. I had eight bars of this neat little melody hanging around for weeks without a home. I think it lends a hopeful tone to an otherwise really dark piece. I love time changes; this one shifts from 4/4 at about 80 bpm to 6/8 at 126 bpm. It was originally 16 bars longer; the fade continued in reverse order of the instrumentation as they are introduced: the guitar took back over from the piano, the organs faded, then the percussion, and finally the cello, to leave the guitar slowly winding down. But I felt like the point had been made, musically, and opted for concision.

The rubato is significant, creating an ebb and flow within the song that matches a dream-like state, and it is paralleled by crescendos. Basically, faster and louder means more urgent and more important. The rubato challenge was particularly sticky for me, since I played or programmed each part myself and thus had to multitrack the whole thing instead of a live performance where I would have had more liberty with tempo. Instead, the entire piece slowly builds with a few hanging moments, starting at 80 bpm, stepping up to 82 for the second half of each verse, a momentary hang, then to 84 for the prechorus,and then jumping to 86 bpm for the chorus. (It was originally 88 bpm; that was just a smidge too fast.)

I love the MIDI organ tone I found, but it was difficulty to include all of the sonic ideas in the chorus without clipping. When I revisit this for an album, I think I'll move the organ arpeggio to the second portion of each phrase to make more room for the vocals and explosive guitars.

A word about the chord progressions. As I said, the coda existed as a sketch long before this challenge, and I first started using the Fmaj7 - C - Gmaj7 - Em, but both the progression and 6/8 time it didn't work with the melody I had in my head. But, switching it up to a slow-tempo 4/4 and ending the phrase on Am worked wonderfully. (It also made is sound very close to a song I wrote last year, Looking at the Sea.)


I wanted to push myself to craft something more complicated than the usual Verse-Chorus-Verse arrangement, and changing the end of the phrase from Em to Am let me then transition to a prechorus that starts with Em and ascends. You'll notice that there are lots of major 7ths; to create tension through the song, I let the high-E string ring as much as possible. For the prechorus, I went all out with open, jangling chords and a steady up-tempo rhythm to segue from the laconic, meditative verse to the more energetic chorus. With all these complicated chords, I wanted the chorus to be much more straightforward: just a IV - I - V - V rock-out.

During the listening party, it turned out that reverb was a sonic effect of choice for many compositions, and I'm as guilty as anyone. It's the go-to sound for making things sound dreamlike and bigger than life. Part of me wishes I would have thought ahead about that and looked for something more distinct. Nonetheless, I'm confident in my choice for this specific song: it works for what I want to do and the feelings I want to convey.