Jaron's Journal
| August 8, 2012, 8:33 AM Recording The Song "Plastic Sea" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alright ladies and gents, Plastic Sea! One of the original kingpins of the Dark Forest album! Sentence fragments! Details below! Listen to the finished "Plastic Sea" song
Alright, so before I begin, I've noted something interesting. This song and "Terrible Light" are the only two songs that don't feature one of my main collaborators on the "Dark Forest" album, Jake Russell. Also, my other strongest collaborator, Jesse Dunivent, only missed one song, "Animals." I consider these guys two of my best friends, and they were invaluable in helping to create this album--I'm not sure I could have done it without them. This being noted, "Plastic Sea" brings me back to the days when the "Dark Forest" was a little seedling; back when it was mostly a collaboration between Jesse and I over a series of weekends in 2008 and 2009. So in early 2008, a quick little musical idea popped into my head, something that sounded almost Pink Floyd-ish or Beatles-ish (or more specifically Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds-ish). I quickly grabbed my new digital recorder and recorded this. This sat around until 8-28-2008. I took what little I had and recorded this quick demo. I then spend the next week or so creating the pre-chorus and chorus. On September 5-7, 2008, Jesse and I got together and had the first official Dark Forest recording session. I prepared many songs for this occasion, and it was a very productive weekend indeed! We recorded pieces for "Happening Now," "Terrible Light," "The End" and "Plastic Sea." You can read all about it here. Jesse and I laid down the instrumentals that stuck with the song all the way to the final version. Toward the end of 2008, I released my first demo from the album, "Terrible Light." I was quite proud of how this turned out, so I set out to release another demo in 2009. Plastic Sea was an obvious choice. So about this "Lost Year," 2009. I wasn't lazy and unmotivated all of the time; just most of the time. And at the beginning of the year, I had quite a bit of energy to muster. But after attempting to sing "Plastic Sea," I was hit with a double crisis:
In any case, after some effort, I made this demo so that I could get some feedback from Jesse. It's a bit rough :P This is also back when I ended the song with a "Falling Down" section that I imagined bleeding into the song "Jump," a song cut from the final album. Vocal session after vocal session ensued, and the song evolved. I decided that the song would sound best if I pitch-shifted my voice for the verses, pre-choruses and ending. Even with this, I worked and worked on getting it to sound right. I also decided to shake up the ending, because Jesse wasn't such a fan of it. Upon reflection, I can see where he was coming from. It didn't fit the song. On June 6, 2009, I had a demo. And I made it available here. Whew! This song was then sentenced to the vaults for two years. I didn't feel like working on it again :P When I dug it out in June, 2011, I had Beach Boys'd the piano piece (drawing inspiration from "Surf's Up"), and I gave this to Kelcie Mattson to play. I then created and recorded my favorite drum piece on the album. Yes! I went back for the umpteen-zillionth time and re-re-recorded the vocals. I knew it had to be done due to the changed lyrics and possibility of mixed tones, but I avoided it like the plague for as long as I could. My friend, Beth Perry, then sealed the deal by adding live violin. Beautiful! And that's that! The final product, in my opinion, is outshined by a lot of its neighbors, but it's still one of my favorites on the album. Here's a missing link demo. The full recording schedule is below. Stay tuned next time, when we'll talk about the many faces of "Happening Now!"
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