Jaron's Journal
| July 26, 2012, 1:18 PM Recording The Song "Dreaming Of Her" | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alright ladies and gents, Once again I'm detailing the recording process of another Dark forest song. As you can probably tell by this point, I've simply been ascending from track to track numerically with each post. So it should come as no surprise that this post is about "Dreaming Of Her." Listen to the finished "Dreaming Of Her" song
This song is a favorite of a few of the people who have listened to the album (Chad and Russ), and is the point at which the album takes off for some people. Yet it had a humble beginning, and I didn't hold out much hope for it initially. The song started out as a simple experiment that occurred to me on 12/18/2007. Basically I wanted a song that was composed of four chords (C, D, Am, G). Each chord would be a "section" of the song, and the third "section" would contain a guitar solo. I was free to fill out these sections as I pleased, so long as I emphasized the main chord of each section. This experiment was aptly codenamed "4-chord song." This was followed up by an attempt to create a melody and lyrics for the first chord. It was at this point that I decided the song would be about the crush I had on my then-future wife, Rachel :) I changed the name of the song to "Resting Your Head," to reflect these lyrics. On 11/12/2008 I layed down a quick demo with electric guitar and vocals. This demo exemplifies the song's humble beginning. Aside from the first section, I pretty much made up the melody as it went and filled in it in with meaningless words (a few of which stuck). I also didn't have a handle on how best to sing it, so I just blasted out the melody as it came. Inexplicably the "D" section became an "F" section, because I remembered the chord progression incorrectly. This stuck with the song to the end. I began recording this song in what I call "recording session 2" with Jesse Dunivent somewhere between November 21st and 23rd, 2008. I had an idea that I would create multiple extemporaneous keyboard pieces and then splice the best of each take into one flowing keyboard melody. I had six different takes. During the final three takes, I tried to accentuate a different note of each chord in each section. When all was said and done, I loved how chaotic each of the pieces sounded when they were played together, so I stuck with this. On top of that, I felt too lazy to splice and dice each piece. I tried to include Jesse's acoustic guitar in the experiment, but that didn't pan out into something usable. I did however use a solo he layed down for the third chord of the song. For a time, I really didn't know what to do with this song. So it sat around through the "lost year" of 2009 and didn't materialize again until November 2010. Jake came over to help record some Dark Forest pieces and I suggested this song. I wanted him to lay down acoustic guitar, but he said, "I'm in the mood to play your new drums." So that's what he did (Jake's like that)! This is the only song on the album that has Jake on the drums. Incidentally, it's also the only song on the album where I play bass guitar. But that's neither here nor there. Eventually Jake did lay down a very simple acoustic guitar piece which pretty much defined each chord section concretely. He strummed the chord over and over. It doesn't get simpler than that :) So after Jake layed down his pieces, the song sounded like this for another year and a half. In this time I finished the lyrics and renamed the song "Dreaming Of Her." I decided to take the story a little further and talk about the complications I faced when Rachel and I first started falling for each other in early 2005. Armed with these lyrics in March 2012, I discovered how to sing this song. I sang it softly and wistfully. The result can be heard here. It was at this point that I really began to like this song. After I sang it, I layed down a quick bass piece and the most complicated violin piece on the album, including a three-part harmony during part of the solo section. And that was that! This song had a long life, but all in all, I didn't spend too much time in the recording studio for it. In fact, I think it was the song I spent the least amount of time on, but it turned out beautifully nonetheless. It's one of my favorites on the album. So stay tuned next week, when I'll bring you the details about "Plastic Sea," one of the cornerstones of the album! The full recording schedule of "Dreaming Of Her" is found below.
|