Jane

Hear ORIGAMI directly below – just click on arrow to open up player

Jane finished her song today – blog update to come.

“origami”

an horizon, approach slow
many tears on the plane, most hard
ripping cuts through the red thin tape
like thick card

it’s compromising time
so fold along the line

fingernail-curled, an origami
turn me like paper in a gale

it’s compromising time
so fold along the line
fold

tread the surface tension, lazy-thumb
like lifting it from a death drum
without lifting any noise

fold along the line

each one mental compartment
likely not seen from the others
not through, not flowing like soul-you
in a river, many dry stones
like if your arm were crushed
you could try to lift but not much
well, attempt to navigate this segmented brain
connections like cracked bones

it’s compromising time
fold along the line
fold along the line
fold along the line
fold along the line

I went to do a session writing my song for the APEX thing. I had two ideas in my head and initially couldn’t decide between them. We sorted out the tempo and time signiature for one, but then I changed my mind to the other. But then I changed my mind back, because the one I am doing (entitled “Origami”) is one that I initially made up on the piano in a break-time at one of the APEX singing groups a while ago, and hadn’t significantly developed since. Also I was excited that there is a snare drum there, which is one of the main instruments in the song.

I know the main instruments in the song because when I make up a song, I imagine all the other instruments playing in my head, even though I myself only play it on two (piano and voice).

Before we did anything else, we laid down a very basic beat consisting of a kick drum, a hi hat and a reverb effect, and duplicated it more times than necessary. At first, we figured out what would be a few of the instrument sounds I would use, and then I played a bit of the song on the ‘backing piano’. Then we attempted to set the song structure down by me having a recorded play-through on that instrument, but that didn’t work because I got the structure wrong. So… instead, I moused in the chords after we found a lovely basic backing pad sound without too much opening decay.

After that, I moused in a backing bell sound as a suggestion of the main tune. We went to the mixer bit to reduce the volume of this track. It itself also contains varied key intensities, wherein notes are always played in pairs and the top key is always quieter. I initially forgot to put this top key in, but thanks to some nice colour-coding along the way, was able to fairly easily edit each piece and then copy / paste replace them all over the original versions which didn’t have the top bit.

The song is fairly repetitive, and plays with the listener’s sense of expectation. Along the way of getting the structure down like this, I figured out that there were some rules behind the way these varying verse and chorus lengths were varying. For example, the verse is made of two quickly-alternating sections, which I marked salmon and orange. One rule is that they always end in a slightly modified version of the salmon which I marked red. Another rule is that which one begins the next verse always alternates after each chorus. While playing the song before, such rules as these were just “feelings” as I played it. The structure wasn’t identical each time, but it did follow these rules. Now that the structure is set, the song feels more solid.

Thankyou to Jacqui who heard that there was something wrong-to-the-ear with the chords as I played through the track. She pointed out where and that was what led me to the modified salmon-coloured verse bit marked instead in red. A “fade-to-simple” was added to the end of the song, wherein most instruments fade out while only one or two melody tracks remain to play the final notes. This listens like a good way to end the song.

We figured out how to toggle between the time measures, from bars and beats to minutes and seconds and back. Taking off the initial four-bar run-in at the beginning (which will not be a part of the finished song), it ran to approximately 4 and a half minutes.

We talked through a plan of what the following sessions might cover. The recorded snare and a bass would likely follow next. The crash cymbals would follow after the snare, and I would sort out samples for those at home and bring them in. The vocals would likely be done in the second-to-last session, with the lyrics written just before that session, again in my own time. The last session would involve buffing the song out and making its sound fuller with whichever minor tracks we decided upon – an essential tonic to the basic repetitiveness of the song itself. This seemed like a good plan.

I did not feel in the correct mental mode to write this blog entry after the session, as was suggested, and so that is why I wrote it at home instead. My mind at the time was “at sounds” rather than “at words”.

This was a very fun session and I really enjoyed it and am very excited to see my song take shape!