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.
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| July 18, 2012, 9:01 AM Recording The Song "Animals" | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Alright ladies and gents, Now that we've thoroughly covered what it took to record the "Dark Forest" song from the "Dark Forest" album, I shall continue to give you way too many details about how I recorded the song "Animals." Listen to the finished "Animals" song
This song began as a simple idea that occured to me on 12/20/2007. I wanted to build a song on a fugue. More specifically, I wanted to take three distinct melodies with exact timing and layer them a few beats apart such that they created somewhat of an incidental chord progression as they went. This was nothing more than an idea I codenamed "Fugue" until 9/14/2010, well beyond the "Lost Year" of 2009. In a fit of inspiration, I wrote a paranoid, allegorical song about a broken relationship with a set of friends called "Animals." I went into the studio for the rest of September 2010 and tried my best to make and combine melodies that worked with the lyrics and produced this demo. Over time, a few things clicked into place. During the aforementioned session, I made a drum piece played predominantly on the toms. In 2011 I thought of a chromatic violin piece and recorded spring peepers at a pond. The peepers were intended to be used for any one of my songs, but eventually I used them for this song. I also tweaked some of the lyrics, per advice from a friend, Jake Russell. Finally in January 2012, recording began in earnest on the final product and wrapped up in late May, 2012. I created vocals, acoustic guitar, organ, bass, violin and piano pieces and layed them down with a little help from my friends. I added a second pounding drum track at the advice of Jake. It didn't sound as jungle-ish as I'd initially anticipated, but it worked beautifully nonetheless and got the paranoia across effectively. So all in all, this was a pretty straightforward track to create, but it is one of my favorites because it really sets a mood and hits me close to home lyrically. The full recording schedule of this song is found below. The next post (hopefully next week) will be about "Dreaming Of Her," so stay tuned Russ and Chad (and anyone else interested)! Once again I'll end with a "missing link" demo, cut in April, 2012.
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| 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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