Jaron's Journal
| July 2, 2012, 8:58 AM Recording The Song "Dark Forest" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Hey all, So as promised, for those of you interested in this sort of thing, I'm going to write at length about the process of recording the "Dark Forest" album. Naturally we shall begin with the title track and the first song of the album, the "Dark Forest." Download the finished "Dark Forest" song
For starters, I had the idea to begin "making music" and journaling about it way back on November 26, 2007, because something in my head exploded that day. I wrote an incredibly long stream-of-consciousness entry which I will not foist on you here, that told of an album I wanted to create and ended with a description of an experiment I wanted to employ to make a song. I had this to say about it: "My first idea for an album is an album I've tentatively called "The Dark Forest" in my head. I'm imagining as being a concept album with the "Dark Forest" theme running through the album (enough to notice, but not enough to be overwhelming--sort of like Sgt. Pepper is a 'Concert' album). I've always been fascinated with the idea of a dark forest, and I think this has its roots in a lot of odd places. Mirkwood is one inspiration--a wood where you have to travel a magical path, and if you get off of the path, who knows what sort of evil or magic awaits you. A wood that could contain the most evil being of all Middle Earth! The video for the song 'There There' is another inspiration. The woods in King's Quest V is another inspiration. And so id the old forest outside Bree in "Lord of the Rings" with Tom Bombadil, the barrow-wights, the ever-enclosing evil trees and the old willow. The idea of a dark forest is fascinating and magical, menacing and evil, dark and foreboding, hopeful and full of surprise. I'm hoping to capture all of these feelings in an effort that is both incisive and meaningful. I'm going to start off my journey by using a method Bowie used in his writing techniques--the cut-up method. I'm going to cut up words that remind of a dark forest, pick them randomly (two by two) and assemble sentences from them. I'm going to pick a random time signature and a random chord progression. Well here I go!" And so I did! I wrote 64 words that made me think of a Dark Forest, cut them up and put them in a cup. I then took turns with Rachel and my two rats at the time (Ziggy and Krycek), selecting two words at a time. Both words had to fit logically into each line of the song. For verse 1, I picked these words. Then more for the chorus, the second verse and the third verse. I then used the same method to get the time signature (3/4, though it's probably actually closer to 6/8) and the chord progression. With the chord progression, I used 12 minor and 12 major chords to choose from for the verse; and 6 minor, 12 major and 6 SUS chords for the chorus. For the verse, 9 chords were accidentally chosen instead of 8. I decided used the first 8 chords, but it simply didn't sound like anything, and the G#m didn't loop back to the F#m well. For a time I wrote new chords and almost abandoned these. But then I went back and used the "A" instead of the G#m chord. This grew on me, so I kept it. I was always in love with the chords for the chorus, and upon playing them, a melody came to me almost instantly. I began recording a demo for this on June 7, 2008. At the time, I only had the verse, chorus and chorus melody. From here I worked meticulously to find a melody that worked for the verse and lyrics for the verses and choruses, which would later be changed. I cut another demo of this in November 2008. Here it is, warts and all. This song then sat on a shelf for a year and a half. I'm officially calling 2009 the "Lost Year" in terms of recording, because I virtually got nothing done aside from work on the song "Plastic Sea." Then inspired in May 2010, I wrote chords to close out the chorus, bridge chords that seemed to fit the song, a vocal intro and lyrics to verses 1 and 2. I recorded these and other ideas into a quick demo. In January 2011, work began in earnest on the final product and wrapped up in May 2012. Most notably, I came up with the piano, violin, acoustic guitar, bass guitar and drum pieces during this time and worked with others to lay them all down. I also revamped and darkened the lyrics as advised by my good friend, Jake Russell. The full recording schedule of this song is found below. I'm sure I spent more time writing and recording this song than any other on the album! And I'll end with a "missing link" demo, cut in November, 2011.
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