If the NAP is a baby fetus in our collective uterus, then it is due this week. Though it is not uncommon for babies to be late, I say that, as much as we’d like to continue feeding this baby from our placenta forever and ever, it is time to let it start breathing air. In other words, spread your legs wide and let it out. It will hurt, but isn’t it worth it? I mean we’ve spent forty weeks nursing the thing from the inside, our placenta can’t last much longer.
Ok, enough with the bizarre rant.
Here are two new sketches on the continuing Ballad.
Walk*
This bit represents my coming to terms with the most basic influence for what I hope this record will be. The comments I received on the week 32 post combined with my inclination that was echoed by said comments, helped me cut down my pretensions of originality and just get to the point.
Dialogue is invaluable to me during the creative process. I don’t create well in a vacuum so I need the back and forth and exchange of ideas I’ve generally found in bands, friends, music venues, etc. However over the last year that dialogue has been somewhat lacking. Since the arrival of our daughter the band hasn’t been gigging. The Ms and I have played a few shows in the past month and we are slowly making our way back to the clubs, but it’s been slow moving. Since we haven’t been gigging we also haven’t been having official band practices. The Ms and I practice at home when we can, but she is busy with her new business and with the baby, so the little time we get alone together we haven’t been using for practicing music. We also haven’t been in bars and friends houses playing and exchanging ideas until the sun comes up. Of course, none of this is said as a complaint. It is our new life with our daughter, and I love it. But it’s a transition period, and it needs a little tuning. And one of the aspects that needs tuning is that I’m having to find new ways to interact with people and get that dialogue that I use as part of my creative output.
I am working on various ways to obtain such dialogue, and one of them is this blog. Granted it is not the same as all of us sitting around in a practice room with our instruments working on music, but by the same token it may offer other possibilities. That being said, I appreciate the comments that have been offered, but at the same time I wish for more. I wish you would all see this blog as the great opportunity that it could be. We each have our own preferred modes of expression and we don’t necessarily agree on aesthetics, methodology, or much else for that matter, but we’ve all made a commitment to this blog and to me that combination is one of the best foundations to create something that could actually evolve into something greater than the sum of our parts which ultimately would be a very musical thing to do.
The NAPquisite Corpse was a humble step but a step nonetheless (did anyone else make versions of this?). Sometimes I have this vision that Heidi is going to come up with some magnificent architecture/music/New York City idea that will become the catalyst for what will become many NAP creations. It’s just a dream, but let me dream for just a little bit, my cynicism is unusually low today. And I tend to get ahead of ourselves. One step in front of the other.
Back to the sketch. In this first sketch you might recognize the beginning of a previous sketch (week 32, the wrecking ball). It starts the same, but please, if you’ve heard it stick with it through that beginning because it’s going somewhere totally different this time. However, just as I felt before, I still feel that this is how the record starts. Though I feel the mood is now more acurately described.
Sometimes Mariana*
This is an older song. We have live recordings of it but have never done any kind of studio recording of it. Subject-wise it’s the central inspiration for this record I’m working on. And in a way it’s her record. Mariana’s record, that is. I grew up with Mariana from very little until her dad was stabbed on the street, walked into a bar and bled to death when everyone thought he was just drunk. Then her mom and her and her little sister moved to Canada and I never saw them again. She was my first best friend.
Anyways, the usual version of this song that we play as a band is quite fast (runs about 2 minutes) and in D major. For the record and since I’m thinking about it in terms of being the song right after Walk (see above), I feel it should be slower, more folksy, and in C major (though I’m already beginning to see how it would work with the faster version too). Here’s a first sketch of it with just me on the guitar.
*As before, these mp3s will only remain posted for one week, but they might also appear on this week’s NAPcast.
For other parts of this series, click on the link below.
I’m sure I’ve heard Sometimes Mariana before. It sounds great except just like Walk before it, the vocals aren’t mixed high enough.
The key seems right to me. The song has something in common with Simon & Garfield’s Cecilia which I believe is in the same key.
Anyway, really enjoy that song.
Walk is unfinished. I like the intro. The song has a Pink Floyd-ish feel to it. But you don’t sound confident in the singing and the vox are mixed too low as well. I don’t know, I’d say you have to go back to the chalk board with the lyrics, not that they are bad but it sounds unfinished and it sounds like you are singing as if you know that. Does that make sense?
Which lyrics and singing in walk are you talking about? I assume you refer to the middle section (actually, more acurately it would be the middle of the middle section) singing which is the only place that sort of has ‘lyrics’. But i’m still debating between having any words or having it be instrumental, the words that are there now were more meant as background, sort of like a distant radio, but it’s not working quite like that. I havent decided what to do in that section.
However in Mariana, (as well as in the ‘chorus’ and ‘coda’ singing on Walk) in my stereo the vocals sound plenty loud, could it be a difference in our stereos? the weaker mp3 formats?
Also, wehn you mention lyrics, do you mean the actual words? or more the melody/musicality? The song only has 3 lines of lyrics total, the one in that middle middle section is the one i’m not so sure of. The other two lines (the first and last) I stand by them.
I mean the musicality. You sing Mariana so naturally. It’s really quite good. The other song not so much and it’s repetative and maybe not enough considering the long intro/outro so yeah maybe as an instrumental thing it would be better.
Could be my mix because I listened with headphones. Somebody else will have to pipe in on that.
I get your point. After all Mariana is a much older song that i’ve sung many times in many kinds of situations. Wheras Walk has never been played live, and no one has really heard it except the Ms and now you. I do like the repetitiveness of it… I was thinking of making it even longer. But i do think it needs more instrumental interest, yet i like the nuances of the guitar, so i dont want to add too much that may take away from that. decisions decisions… well, its a sketch, still in the works, more to come.
Sir Elton John seems to disagree with us about the benefits of blogging and the internet. Or, it could just be that The Sun is taking things out of context and trying to create controversy, as usual.
Wow, you lost me with the first bit. Totally.
As for the tunes, i’ll listen this weekend when I have more time.
I’m with Elton John to some extent. Not sure that the benefits that I see from this blog have much to do with music development. Not yet anyway. Then again it still feels like a fetus, like Roberto said. Something we are molding, collaboratively. But I do think that things are happening that are beyond EJ’s concept of what could happen with the internet. It’s just a tool yet identifying its faults gives it new powers.
I don’t have any trouble at all believing that Sir Elton would say something like that. He’s not the sharpest tool in the shed.
i swear i have a recording (ktru?) of dry nod playing sometimes mariana. completely differently of course, but seems to be the same song. sound familiar? i should dig it out…
Tom, if you find that i’d like to hear it. I guess its possible that, back then, I might already have had bits of that song floating around. though i have no memory of ever playing it with DN, and i can’t imagine me bringing it up in practice, just doesnt seem like the kind of song we would’ve done, but who knows maybe i did, and maybe we played it. my memory is very faulty during those last DN years.
John, i lost myself on that first paragraph too. no worries. I think what i was trying to say, i said better (maybe?) later on in the post.
Roberto, it’s possible that the vocals sound clear to you because you know them. I know when I recorded a song and mixed my vocals to where I was happy/comfortable, everybody I played it for thought the vocals were too low. I found it a bit difficult to make out the vocals, myself, but I wonder if it’s more a question of EQ’ing the guitar differently or something.
I listened to the songs. The build-up for “Walk” is really amazing, I think I could listen to a whole album of you doing musique concrete stuff. I find it really hard to comment on the rest after it, though, because the musique concrete really overpowers everything that comes in its wake. But that may be more due to this arrangement than the song itself. Can’t really tell.
“Sometimes Mariana” sounds like it wants to be more upbeat to me. Alternately, if you want to play it slower, it might be more effective in an arrangement with individually plucked strings than strummed. But then again with backing instruments it might seem totally different to me.
I guess what I’m learning is that I’m not skilled enough at songwriting or songlistening or something to be able to hear the forest for the trees.
Now I know how my clients feel when I show them rough cuts.
dd, i’m aware that commenting on work in progress, in this kind of forum, can be difficult. All I hope for is a reaction of some sort, an impression if you will. So thanks for commenting. And thanks for the complement on the musique concrete part, coming from a professional film editor it means a lot to me.
it is actually an almost painful experience to do this. It feels a bit like playing a song for an audience and when you are done, you have to wait several hours, sometimes days to get a reaction,and sometimes you get none, and I can’t even see the faces of the audience to see if they are yawning or talking to someone else or what. Its a strange experience to say the least, and sometimes i think even a comment such as ‘blah’ would be better than nothing. So i greatly appreciate any response at all, and even more so responses that actually engage me in dialogue about the music.
After listening to the songs again, I think i’m starting to hear what you and kilian say about the vocals not being loud enough. I think you may be right about the vocals sounding clearer to me due to my familiarity with them. That and the fact that i like to hear the guitar louder might account for the vox sounding loud enough for me. I think the answer might be in working with the EQ as you suggest( this is not my forte by a long shot so we’ll see how that goes).