First few measures of a reworked demo
Here are the first 34 measures of a new arrangement of The World Outside my 45’s. I cleaned the cello part up, added a decent rhythm track (beats actually on time!), added the bitcrushed guitar part sooner in the song, and tempered the rhythm guitar to give more space during the verses. Ignore the vocals–not a great take, though I love singing the deep withered verses of this tune!
On a side note, I now have graduated from GarageBand to Logic.
Hmm… comparing the two versions, the first still has the high lonesome sound I love… punctuated by some noisy exuberance… but the new one is such a pleasure to listen to… I’m trying to strike a balance between my slowcore melancholia and the dangerous brazen hooks of chamber pop… listeners, if there be any… what say you?
May 24th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
Not bad! More listenable-to than the first. The voice… You said to ignore the vocals. Still, I like the low voice, but it’s… I think it’s the tone that bothers me. Note: I don’t know sh… about music. And I don’t like Nick Cave or Lou Reed (well, not always) or even Tom Waits much, ok?
Having destroyed my cred, I’ll suggest the tone should be more neutral, or even happy. A depressed song with a depressing tone relieved only by irony is not good. A depressed or low song, in a matter-of-fact, bemused, distant tone, that has a faint undercurrent of quiet jubilation… That’s what I like to hear! Like Spain or Tindersticks or Tarnation or Cowboy Junkies.
Just figured it out: your song reminded me of the late Go-Betweens, in their Acoustic Demos album, maybe “Wait until June”:
http://kai.dyndns.org/musique/The%20Go-Betweens/16%20Lovers%20Lane%20Acoustic%20Démos/
Jubilation so tightly wound it makes you want to sssssscccccccrrrrrream:
http://kai.dyndns.org/musique/Spain/The%20Blue%20Moods%20of%20Spain/
“It’s So True”… “Untitled #1″… “Spiritual”…
PS: Logic. $999! Jeez. Better than GarageBand how? Just curious.
May 24th, 2006 at 8:05 pm
Good feedback… thanks… I am listening to these tunes as I write this… “It’s so true” is lovely… i like “devil’s eye”…
The tone is something I can’t give up–I love torchy crooning… I wish I had a better voice for it… I try to keep it in check when it needs to be… but my tolerance for melancholia goes to 11, so…
I am very interesting in exploring the edge of what you are articulating: the fine edge between “depressing”, or let us just say, sad, and the liberating release of exuberance/jubilation. Because there is something about the expression of sadness that is liberating and joyful… It is a kind of acknowledgement of the condition of mortality…
I love the history of melancholia as expressed in music. I love old folk ballads that you know will end badly from the moment the singer delivers the first line… yet they unrelentingly unfold the story in all its tragic splendor… there’s something to that… to the idea of honoring that dimension of human experience…
GarageBand is actually based off of some of Logic’s features, though severely limited. Logic is a huge program–tons of useful and amazing stuff in it. Take a look at this: a demo (annoyingly narrated) of Sculpture, a pretty amazing software synth in Logic.
I still love GarageBand, though–so easy to use (Logic is going to take years to learn)–the cool thing is that I can do quick easy demos in GarageBand and then open up GarageBand files in Logic to finish and master them. As far as the price goes, well, being an academic, I got the more reasonably priced academic version. ^_^
May 29th, 2006 at 10:02 am
The music sounds cleaner in the second version but I kind of like the voice better in the first one. Although I like smoky dark sounds, I think the first voice is more genuine. I like both and thank you for making music.
May 29th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
Thanks for your response, T. You are welcome–and thanks for listening… I will hopefully make much more music over the course of the summer… Speaking of music, how is Big D. coming with his guitar lessons?
I wanted to use the same take for the vocals, but unfortunately, the first version was the first time I had ever used GarageBand and I stupidly recorded the voice and guitar on the same track–so i couldn’t extract it without getting the guitar as well, which wasn’t recorded very well and clipped in a few places.
I do like the vocals of version 1. They were inspired. I had the flu during the second version, so the vocals are all wrong. I will fix them in due time!