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i have never blogged before so don't expect anything too interesting, but i thought this project was pretty interesting and included many of you, so i thought the process might be worth reporting on.
the project began by being called "let's say good bye" but a lyric i had written gave me the perfect title "BRUTAL Entertainment".
the BIG idea was, since i have been doing these little 1 minute per 9 song "enneads" mostly by myself (except for that one screaming lead by my friend pharmer chris on "fool on fire" from the ennead "all fired up..." ) i would try to expand my musical palette by inviting 9 (or more) of my favorite icompers to join me in creating tracks for this new project.
each song i would try to write with the potential collaborator in mind, so when you hear it, you should be able to say "yeah, that was the perfect song for him or her".
then, once i have the files in my hands, i will mix them with my files to try to create something synergistic and spectacular.
i will write a separate post for each song i am working on, and give you a sense of the process of creating the song and working with the icomp artist. i am already more than half done writing the songs (you know writing songs when you are emotionally miserable is REALLY easy!!!) and maybe even some of the process about how i worked with each person, why i made certain decisions in the mix, etc.
i doubt more than a couple of people will read the posts, but for those of you who do, i hope you enjoy it!!! |
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Jul 05, 2012 | 3:34 pm |
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keep the links in this blog |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 4:00 am |
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Arrrrrrr.... Sent you a pm Miles. |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 7:00 am |
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What IS Brutal Entertainment.
A nine song collaboration with 9 icompers, (and a couple more) which I have named “the Legal Council” for this project.
Who I am working with
I am selecting a set of icomper’s who are immediately identifiable by their sound, and I am attempting to write a song in a style that they can do with their eyes (and ears) shut.
Why I am doing Brutal Entertainment
I want to do this first because I love nothing better than the creative process and being creative about creating. But I also do it because it pushes me to listen with new ears to each song. Each style requires a different approach to composing, and I am learning more about production, and composing than I ever had. I am forcing myself to write quickly and trust my instincts with everything.
What is going on in my life that this is important
For those of you have been listening carefully (most people don’t so don’t worry about it) my wife and I are going through some pretty tough stuff. A lot of the first couple of “enneads” were about lies and freedom. Just listen, it is EVERYWHERE!!! This one is dealing directly with the issue. You be the judge of it. But I will tell you a couple of things about it. First, the first half of the piece was written BEFORE the divorce, the second half after. Right down the middle!!! Like, totally, the first 4 songs were written when we were in counseling and I began the 5th, so it was written HALF as a married person and half as a guy about to get divorced. Also the original working title was “lets say goodbye” which was replaced with “brutal entertainment” just because it was a lyric that just captured the whole thing perfectly.
Historical perspective
This is my fourth in a series of “enneads” - a way of grouping ideas in sets of nines borrowed from Plotinus, a Neo-Platonist philosopher from the 3rd century.
There is something perfect about the number 9; 9 innings in a baseball game, nine planets (please bring back Pluto), the number of lives a cat has, what a stitch in time saves, etc. I choose this number because I like calling the groups of songs “enneads” and so, since I can do anything I like since it is my project, that is the format I have continued.
I started writing these short songs, with the criteria that none could be more than a minute long; They had to be written, arranged, produced, mixed, and complete in one sitting; It all had to be live; and I could only use one nylon string guitar that I bought at a garage sale for $5, and some found percussion, from pop corn tins and a little toy tambourine about 3 inches across etc. They also had to develop and unfold lyrically so you felt like you were being told a narrative at the end, even if it was so loosely written you weren’t sure what you heard, you would know that you heard something cohesive.
The first ennead was a set called “This Joke has gone too far”. All the songs were entirely impromptu, stream of consciousness creations. Each song and each lyric was completely unplanned, and I allowed the music and arrangement to completely inform the lyric. I sat down and made noise and when I got up a couple of hours later I had a completed song. The whole thing took me 9 days.
The second set, “all fired up…” was a little more directed, and thematically and narrative-ly complete. In regards to the production also, in my opinion, I really hit my stride.
I felt like I knew what I was doing with the instruments and production tools and editing software at my disposal, and the writing style I was trying to capture was mostly right on target. The idea behind it was standing up for what you believe is right and doing something about it, inspired by the occupy wall street movement.
The third set was even more of all these things, “it’s a little bit funny” is a song cycle about the heroism of futility, and the narrative was a little more directed still, and I allowed just a touch of the midi into the mix, mostly played live midi piano (since I don’t have a real piano). It takes the listener through songs like rooms, with each one intending to flow naturally one to the next. In this set, the concept and the lyric came first, and informed the music. I used some midi piano because I felt it would warm the sound a little, however I played the piano parts, I didn’t program them.
I will not post the songs individually for brutal entertainment. They are not meant to be listened to as “singles”, rather they are intended to present aspects of something that everyone should be able to relate to, but would be impossible to distill into a single pop song. It is complicated, difficult, scary, funny - and to lose that introspection to a single facet of for the convenience of a pop song would disrespect the entire process.
I hope someone reads this. And I hope in the end I have captured something that everyone can relate to. |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 8:36 am |
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“Hello” was the first song that I wrote for “Brutal Entertainment” (when it was still called “lets say goodbye”)…it is one of those songs that combines the mirage of what the heart desires with the heart-breaking nightmare of reality. It is a “reaching-out”, a weak attempt at an apology, the kind when you don’t think you have anything to apologize for.
But it is also a song of mutual condemnation. In fairness, and since this was a duet, the “female perspective” needed to be represented as well, so I tried to divvy up the complaints. I had originally intended to take one whole chorus and let Annie take the next one, but I ended up loving how we sounded trading off lines, almost like it was a session with the marriage councilor. Unfortunately this led to a a confusion of who’s complaints were who’s, (both of mine are in the first chorus, both of “hers” are in the second)
I wanted to write a duet for Annie SISTERS because, well, I have always wanted to, and she and I have never sung together and I imagined her passion in the song and her amazing ability to spontaneously come out with the most glorious harmonies. I was not disappointed. I was also so glad that she said yes, because since I was doing my “dream collaborations”, and she just said YES without even (I am guessing) blinking.
It was written, as these songs all were, in a quick 20 minute session - after returning from the marriage councilor’s office. The truth is of no use when the heart is trying to find it’s way.
I immediately noticed that I was writing a Neil Diamond song, and I expect to hear many of you make the comparison.
Since this was my first collaboration in the new set, I was feeling my way. I let the time of the song spread out, because everyone seems more comfortable with longer songs (!) and I thought I would allow each idea to develop a little more this time (you will see songs almost TWO HOLE MINUTES LONG!!!). I also “heard” horns so I added a midi track, and I played that delicate piano part on a midi keyboard. I intended to put in strings, sort of as a lead instrument in the middle section, but after hearing the “hello” harmonies between Annie and me, I decided the violins were unnecessary.
Annie is an amazing, Generous, and thoughtful collaborator. As the song developed, she proved me with an evolving set of vocals that in the end were as precise as they were passionate. |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 4:59 pm |
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Miles my dear I feel for you. So sorry to hear you are going through this, I do know what a marvelous father you have appeared to be...you obviously idolise your son and that neednt change even though you are not living together. Never forget communication is paramount...that and NEVER EVER falling into the trap of criticising your spouse or ex in front of your song. It may seem futile now because she is probably doing exactly that, but later when he has grown up he will understand that you took the higher ground and wherever possible, was always there for him.
Love n hugggs |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 9:55 pm |
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You have chosen an excellent way to work through difficult and complex emotions. I see this as a series of skits that form the entire theme for a play. I am truly sorry about the life changes you are having to go through right now. It's trite, I know, but sometimes things just happen. Keep in mind that the quality of time spent with your son is far more important than the quantity. Don't hide your emotions from him, but do be an adult. Little boys need to know that's it's ok to feel sad. So do men. You have my thoughts for a good now and a better tomorrow. Be well, dear friend. (By writing those words, I am willing them into reality.) |
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Jul 07, 2012 | 11:42 pm |
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“You Wear Me Out” was the second song I worked on in this cycle, and in many ways it was the most challenging to date.
The content of the lyric will be immediately apparent. It is about two people who can no longer communicate at all, and who blame each other for the breakdown in communication, and ultimately just suck the life out of each other.
I have been trying to create these key and tempo changes within the structure of some of my compositions in order to really push the amount of texture and lyrical variety available throughout the whole song cycle - like my 9 songs are really a dozen compressed, and all the possible emotion available to explore has that much more leg room to stretch out in.
Again, I wrote the song in about 15 minutes, tried to make something very off beat for my friend Sammy Dix http://www.icompositions.com/artists/sammydix
to add his personal touch to. It was sloppy and strange and I didn’t care because I knew that Sammy would “get it”.
What he sent me back was a set of tracks I would have DREAMED of if I had his level of talent and creativity. They were awesome, the vocal layering made me sound like a hack, and the bass line and guitar work was stunning.
One problem - and this was the good problem I was trying to create with this project – what to do with all of this great material, or, how to fit it all within my vision. It took a lot of cutting and pasting, I had to force a lot of Sammy’s phrasing into place, carefully cutting and pasting individual notes, doubling things to make them huge in the mix, catching that “special” combination and figuring out how to make it pop, etc. There was so much for me to play with that I would never have been able to create myself, new ways of thinking - a WONDERFUL problem.
And THEN, I was still left with all this material, so I made something else. I took the same progression as the opening verse, but this time I shifted it to more of a rock track, put Sammy’s backing vocal harmonies way up front, and laid down a little wah wah lead which I just loved….but in my mind, I heard someone else, and, well you guessed it, my favorite vocal and guitar stylist (I swear sometimes I don’t know if he is singing or playing guitar, his phrasing is so distinct), my friend Pharmer Chris
http://www.icompositions.com/artists/pharmakeus
. When you hear it you will hear what I hear, and why I think Chris’ guitar is the perfect match for my songs…how uncanny his playing seems to be able to express perfectly what I am trying to create lyrically and musically.
I took this same little progression and transformed it one more time into a chant to lead us out of the song, still heavy with Sammy’s backing vocal, but losing instrumentation along the way, until we are left only with Sammy’s ethereal harmonies and one note on the Wah Wah Guitar disappearing into an echo. |
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Jul 11, 2012 | 10:47 pm |
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“Nobody Said” was written with only one person in mind - my favorite piano player in the whole world, and an all-together too infrequent collaborator John Jenkins, or as he is better know Woofer.
http://www.icompositions.com/artists/woofer3
I was looking for a little raggy blues riff, so I played around with a little progression and made it work and then wrote a very short fast moving song that was only half complete when I first shipped it off to John.
He turned around a quick and incomplete take on it almost right away, but I had to put the file on the back-burner because I was working on a couple of other songs, and by the time I got back to it and smoothed it out and provided john with the right chord progressions it was too late, he was up to his eye balls in work and his music editor crapped out on him so I was out of luck. I have had to cut and paste, pitch shift, splice in pieces of myself playing piano, and all together I think I have spent 4 or 5 hours making his part useable in this song, but the FEEL and his touch are so definitively what I wanted it was worth it (and I am sure you will agree when you hear it).
The other stumbling block I ran into was asking a “certain someone” to provide me with the female vocal part. She provided a very decent 4 separate takes of the 2 lines I needed. I grabbed a couple words from each take and assembled a very nice part. HOWEVER this “certain someone” was reading my blog and decided that the whole divorce thing was too charged that she didn’t want to participate. She asked “are my lines supposed to be your wife?” and I said “a-ya…duh” and she said “then I respectfully don’t want to be part of this collaboration”.
So off I went to look for a new female vocal, and so I approached my favorite sister Annie, and she said sure, send along the file. Since I didn’t want to send Annie the vocal of the person who was begged off the song, I rerecorded the female vocal myself and sent it to get her take on it.
I was rather surprised when Annie said that she couldn't improve on the vocal she heard, and felt I should use the version I recorded my self…I reminded her that it was ME, and that I was NOT a woman. She made me listen again and she convinced me that I provided a vocal that was the “epitome” of the character I was creating. So that was that. i promised Annie Producer credits for making the recommendation...
When you hear the song, I hope you will be more amused then anything else. It is kinda funny, cute, and really mostly inoffensive.
This idea of the song is that I am letting her know that no one promised her that life with me would be easy. She in turn is letting me know that she should have married someone else because she would be living “in style” by now. I in turn agree with her, and let her know if she DID marry someone else then I wouldn’t be the one she was nagging. (Explaining it has taken MANY more words than are in the song!!!) |
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Jul 22, 2012 | 6:55 pm |
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I can't wait to hear these. |
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Jul 24, 2012 | 3:50 pm |
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"if I invented you” was written with chris bachtoven in mind
If you look at most of the posts I have made on his songs, almost all of them say how inventive I thought his music was
When I asked him to collaborate I didn’t even have a song prepared, not even a concept.
It came in a flash, the lyrical content, and it was written for him about my wife, in the usual 15 minutes, although the last line of the chorus required a series of rewrites.
The idea developed quickly, a song about inventing, but inventing what? Well what about if I were to invent a person? Well who would I invent? well my wife of course; and how would I invent her? well I would invent her happy; how would I do that? with buttons and switches in her heart and brain that would allow me to cause her happiness; but then - the realization that she is who she is and I am going to have to accept who she has become.
I sent chris a rough mix of the song with guitar and harmonica and some banging and after a little while he returned with what was a VERY inventive set of tracks…the harmonica was replaced with an accordion, there was a clarinet that wound it’s way through the melody, and a herky jerky percussion track and some bass… jaunty…joyful
Of course, like everyone else in this project, chris threw himself totally into the process, and sent me lots of stuff…I couldn’t possibly use all of it, but I picked through the heaps of tracks and I “found the sound”. The only thing I added was the rhythm guitar and the vocals. I sorted through his tracks and cut and pasted parts here and there, re-recorded a couple of notes of the accordion flourish leading into the chorus (panned left, chris’s accordion is right), and a ton of backing vocals, beep beeps and ahhs etc.
I guess this would qualify as the children’s song of the set, it is a sweet song, a gentle song, a song of strange hope in the midst of no hope at all, and the last song of hope in the set.
Like everyone else in this project, I picked the perfect person for the song, and given the chance, I wouldn’t change a note of what we created. |
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Aug 17, 2012 | 7:18 am |
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“This party never ends” was the first song in the set of songs written after the divorce papers were served. It reflects on a guy who feels taken advantage of, makes assumptions and accusations that might have various levels of truth, and wraps it up in perhaps the only danceable song I have ever produced…
Well, obviously, with a title like that, you would HAVE to be able to dance to it. So how does a confirmed no-way-in-hell-am-I-going-to-write-a-dance-song guy like me go about this? I have no idea how I came up with it, but I wrote my “15 minute/2 minute” song, and asked someone with the PHATTEST beats (that’s right, I said it) to give me a beat…and HE DID!!!
Who was this magic man? None other than chris brown, AKA “A1K3M1”…and did he ever lay down a beat!!! I had to refit my song to squeeze in to his beat, but that was easy. I just rerecorded the tracks, and they felt just right all of a sudden, a couple of rhythm tracks, with effects, a straightforward bass line, and a simple and painfully catchy synth line. I don’t think any song could have been so easy to lay down and arrange itself, and I attribute that to chris’s beat…almost like I didn’t have to do anything, just sit back and let it happen.
I did my usual cut and paste with his track to force some transitional moments and edited out some incidental effects, but the purity of a dance beat is an amazing thing… |
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Aug 18, 2012 | 7:04 am |
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I was laying in bed thinking about the next song, still reeling from the shock of being served, and still awash in my own unresolved resentments and disappointment in my marriage, when a very simple idea for a song came into my head…
“I’m pretty sure” was written in my head as i was waking up one morning, and i reached over for my guitar next to the bed and just played it. it was written with one very specific icomper in mind, but the collaboration happened with another. It was the fourth failed start with a fellow who I really wanted to work with, but after agreeing to work with me, I waited weeks for a track (any track) or an email (any email) so I decided to look for another collaborator, and the choice was so perfect and obvious, I don’t know why he wasn’t my first choice to begin with.
Jeff (iron saul) took my raggedy song, and turned around a set of sharp and clever tracks that helped create the exact sound I was looking for. The idea was this – a little gypsy kings, a little chris issac – a big guitar sound with a little California surfer.
Jeff gave me a beautiful rhythm guitar, a perfect counterpoint to my rhythm, and a perfect bass, which was a perfect counterpoint to my bass!!! A solid foundation for what was next.
I used a lot of little rhythm guitar accents, but I was still missing something. I needed some lead guitar without allowing it to get too busy. I found what I think was just the right sound, a simple little touch that really stands out without getting in the way.
Finally, I wanted to include a little vocal counterpoint, to express lyrically the OTHER side, that it wasn’t just ME going through this and having these thoughts, but that my wife might be having these thoughts as well. I asked annie sister AGAIN to help out (she is so totally my vocal muse!!!) and of course she said yes, and provided me with beautiful tight backing harmonies (that I am treating almost as a duet) and a second melody in the verse (that I am treating almost as a voice in my head, pushed back in a clearing, off to the side, but very present). Her lines are a call back to the second song of the cycle, about losing her youth to me and wanting it back, and she delivers them with her usual passion. |
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Aug 31, 2012 | 7:55 am |
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you're doing a GREAT job of build-up, Brother.
you've sure got ME droolin to hear this brutal set.
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Aug 31, 2012 | 9:56 am |
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Isn’t everyone a Beatles fan? When I think about the people I want to collaborate with Beatle is always right at the top. The problem was, how do you write a Beatles song for the sixth Beatle and make it worthy of his talents!!!???
I emailed John and within a few hours he was on board…now I had to have a song to send to him!!! As usual, I sat down with a focused idea and found it very easy to turn one out. It began with what I called “walrus strings” which were used to transition between parts, key changes - and so on - all in a song of less than 2 minutes!
Working with John is an experience. It is thought provoking, a profound education in production, arranging, and intense communication. He was opinionated without being difficult, scholarly without being condescending, and he “got” what I was doing completely, immediately and intuitively.
John gave me a HUGE number of files, a couple of rhythm guitar tracks, a bass, a drum track, and a host of his magnificent layered vocals tracks, and of course the strings in the segue section.
Now I had to put it all together…not an easy task when you sit down with so much material!!! I decided in order to maintain some “sonic” continuity with my other tracks I would record some live bass and percussion. I stripped out a lot of Johns beautiful and well-written parts in deference to this objective, but I kept his rhythm guitar parts, and his glorious, tight and impeccably recorded backing vocals. And of course the strings.
Those strings. When I sent the file to John first, he returned the tracks with something other than those strings. I thought it would have been OBVIOUS, and sent him an email saying simply “how about ‘Walrus strings’”. He responded with something like “oh my god I can’t believe I didn’t see (hear) that right away”, and within a couple of hours returned to me EXACTLY what I was looking for. Do YOU know what that sounds like? If you do, you will get it right away. |
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Sep 09, 2012 | 9:13 am |
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