Studio Recap: Day Eleven

Joseph Rocks the Melodica

After our Thursday of marvels, there was no way that Friday could measure up. Indeed, it was a grind of a day, although we started strong, with a few small edits to three songs that helped them shine a little brighter.

Much of the day was devoted to vocal work for Joe, and I think he was experiencing something like what I went through a few days ago: the frustration of the endless vocal takes. One of the downfalls of our glorious modern recording technology is that you can record a song, and think it sounds great - or good, or good enough - but when you sit down and listen to the playback, you hear all of these small - or major - imperfections that you couldn't hear while you were singing. It can be very discouraging. But Joe also managed to rock out on the melodica and trombone, so the day had its moments. And Jonathan is playing with Ableton Live more (normally he works in ProTools or Logic, but Joe and I both tend to work in Ableton for our other projects), so it was a day of working and learning.

I have been working away at writing lyrics for a song we are calling "The Constant." So far it is proving elusive.

Studio Recap: Day Ten

Slinkyvision

Thursday was a day of marvels.

Moods were good, the weather was glorious, we were silly, and I was reunited with my beloved Slinky.

We are beginning to cross songs off the to-do list. We made some mix decisions for "I Let It Stay." Just a few simple changes made all of the difference, and the song has a lot more pizazz now. We also recorded keys and guitar for "Sunday," and the Anti-Tank Guitar for "The Falsified Documents of Ms. B."

Joe Plays Anti-Tank Guitar

I was most excited by the work I did on vocals. I've been feeling really down on my voice lately, and even though I knew that I would get the performances I wanted eventually, I was starting to worry. The combination of lack of practice with the cold weather and dry indoor heating was really creating some havoc in my upper respiratory system. Thankfully, temps have been much milder in the last few days, and yesterday was the first day that I sounded like myself (to myself). So we recorded final vocals for "Ivy Choir" and "Her Gentleman Caller," two songs that I've been wanted to get another crack at since last January. Here's the OLD VERSION of "Her Gentleman Caller." We almost gave up and decided to keep this vocal, but the new one feels so much better in my ear-holes. You can hear the new one soon, I promise!

Her Gentleman Caller by Listing

It's a sweet little song about a lady who sets her hair on fire, a partly autobiographical story. Of course, when I did it, it really was an accident...

Studio Recap: Day Nine

We only had a few hours in the studio, so I spent them working on my vocal for "It Pushes Back" (formerly called "Shivers and -Umbles," which was formerly known as "Slinkitzer"). We ran into an all-too-common problem: I loved the sound of the scratch vocal, and we were unable to match it on the day we set out to do the final vocal. Unfortunately, there were too many problems with the scratch (the vocal in the clip I posted on January 10) for us to keep it - it was the first time I actually sang the song, so there were some melody and timing problems, and I had made some lyric changes. I can live with the vocal as it is now, but I am not in love with the sound or the performance, so I'll probably revisit it if we have time.

While I tried to tweak the vox, Joe worked on a Casio keyboard line for "Sunday" (formerly known as "Convey"), and Jonathan played with some ideas for "I Let It Stay," the pop song with hate in its heart.

Studio Recap: Day Eight

We spent the vast majority of the day Tuesday working on a song entitled "The Falsified Documents of Ms. B." It's one we wrote last year, and it never quite sat right with the rest of the album, so we tried some different arrangement ideas. Joe had been taking the lead on vocals on this one, but we played with some call & response vox. It's not quite there, but getting closer.

We had to wrap up early, because the studio was booked for the evening, so Joe and I went to the pub, had some beers, and tried to work on prioritizing...

Studio Recap: Day Seven

Jonathan Holds the Power of ProTools in His Heart.

Joseph at the Drums

Monday was Drumday. Joe and Jonathan did drum takes for a few of the older songs - "All Forward All," "On the Island," and "Más Más Más" - as well as the new song which I am now calling "Shivers and Umbles." Nice work, guys! I assistant-engineered a little bit, but mostly I worked on lyrics for "The Constant" and provided my invaluable input.

I also taught Joe a few important things about how to use Twitter (@ replies and such) which I am sure he will never use.

Studio Recap: Day Six

It was a short Saturday in the studio: 6pm-10:30pm. I tried some vocals, but sounded pretty rough, so I'm holding out for better weather and restored respiratory bits.


Here's a clip of the song formerly known as "Slinkitzer" with my scratch vocal from Friday:
Shivers and -Umbles by Listing

I might tweak the lyrics a bit, but I don't think the first attempt was too bad. Joe and Jonathan played with some drum, bass, and guitar ideas for this one, but ultimately we weren't able to check anything off the list that night.

Sunday was a day off (I saw The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus with my brothers), so we're much refreshed for the new week.

Notes on writing lyrics

Sometimes people ask me how I write songs, and I usually give cagey, unspecific answers. This is mostly because I can ramble endlessly on the topic, and partly because the writing of songs is, in my experience, a lengthy and frustrating process that I don't imagine would be as interesting to others as they might suppose.

However, because I am in the midst of a songwriting frenzy, I thought this might be a good time to organize some thoughts on the subject - specifically, on writing lyrics.

In these current sessions with Joe and Jonathan, the composition process has been very collaborative. We usually begin with instruments; it is rare for us to begin with a vocal melody and to write instrumental parts to accompany it. In the beginning, we usually have a rather bare-bones musical arrangement, and maybe some idea of what the song could be about. Sometimes we have a title, and sometimes the title determines the lyrical content of the piece. Other times the original title ends up being discarded after the lyrics are written.

On Monday, we began writing the song provisionally titled "Slinkitzer." We started with a wandering Wurlitzer/guitar/walkietalkie jam. Joe had mentioned to me that he wanted to have a song about capillary action. To paraphrase, he said we should have a song about things being pulled through other things. So I looked up related terms on Wikipedia: capillary, capillary action, wick, and I followed all of the "See Also" links. I wrote down words that interested me from the entries, words like "perfused" and "everted." I looked at pictures of frost flowers (ice formations that are formed as the result of capillary action in plants) and from there I looked up other types of frost: hoarfrost, hard rime and soft rime. I went through my notes from the last few months to see if I could grab words or images (no dice there, this time, though usually this kind of synchronicity does pop up). I wrote a list of words that I liked that day, words like wish and asp and aluminum. I wrote a list of colors that have been mentioned in the songs we have already written for the album, and then a list of colors that have not yet been named. I wrote down this question: Would you draw me through?

Another resource that I tapped was a book that I recently started reading: Archimedes to Hawking: Laws of Science and the Great Minds Behind Them. There were a surprising number of instances of the term "capillarity."

I also grabbed some phrases from Joe's notes. "It pushed back" and "radiator smell." We have agreed that we can steal words from one another. Don't worry.

We came back to the "Slinkitzer" recording on Thursday, and made some structural decisions about which chord progressions would comprise the verses, choruses, etc. These decisions made, we put an audio file on my iPod and I spent much of Thursday and Friday listening to the song on repeat while trying to organize my lists of words into lyrics.

So far as I can tell, there are no rules for lyric writing. Sometimes the lyrics and melody seem to spring from my mind fully formed, like Athena from the head of Zeus. Upon further reflection though, I have to admit that those moments that feel like inspiration are usually the result of months of verbal accumulation - ideas, notes taken, things people have said. Other times, it takes ages for lyrics to sit right in the song. Sometimes I write the whole thing out in sequence on a piece of paper and the words stay that way. Other times I shuffle things around.

For this song, I did a lot of shuffling. To make it easier to switch things around and organize, I used a program called FreeMind, free mind-mapping software that I usually use to outline essays and papers. You can see an image of the song in progress at the top of this post. This song is a lot more wordy than my lyrics usually get, so using this software really helped me to play with/refine meter and phrasing, without wasting tons of paper. I also find that switching up writing media can help me get through blocks, so going from pen & paper to computer can loosen up the ol' word machine.

Finally, after two days of focused work, I had a draft and was ready to sing a scratch vocal (the scratch vocal is a rough performance that is not meant to be kept, but is used as reference for the other parts, and so I don't forget the melody in my head). Performance-wise it was a little bit rough, but all in all I think the song is going to be really strong, and having the vocal melody in place sparked other ideas and has allowed us to move on with the song - this is what we are doing tonight.

For me, melody is almost always the easy part. Words are hard. But for some reason, this is the only thing that I am compelled to do year after year, even when it is difficult, when it feels impossible, when I think I suck, when I think I'm all tapped out and I have sung everything I have to sing. The words are out there. I just have to discover them.