Okay WB storytime.
I am in bed being the little spoon (something I am getting comfortable with) and drifting off to sleep...
when I start getting full on sentences in my brain while holding this feeling for my conservative hometown and some men in my life who seem miserable because they think they know everything.
I realize that I have to write all this down and I end up writing this poem:
"When you think you know everything
Your thinking that you are correct in how things will play out makes you lose all potential
Sex becomes a saltine cracker that you bend over backwards for
And gender is simply one of two positions in a game
Here where all things are bleak and shadowed over by draw string blinds and the smell of cheap daily alcohol
Where sadness is the hereditary boundaries of dreams
Where grief is unprocessed cycles and outbursts
And imagination is a childhood friend you don’t remember how to talk to
Grows the most beautiful flower
Dirt fertilizer
Light after and within darkness
Two sides of a rusty coin that gets neglected down a drain and washed away in the salt of the sea
Everything becomes something else
Weight listen"
It reminds me of passages from the Tao Te Ching and although this all came from my brain, it didn't feel like it was mine but merely passed through me. I sometimes feel this way when I make music, but rarely with just words. In the end of writing and how the poem itself ends I feel relieved. That I don't have to be that person, and also that if someone feels that they are in that position there is still hope because there is always the potential to change if they choose.
You might be asking, "Why are you sharing a poem on WB? what does this have to do with your song this week?"
Welp, I made a song the day after about this poem :)
Lyrics:
If I die today
I’ll cry in my head
I lie I shake
Asleep in my bed
I smile a weight
Feels finally shed
I lie awake
Remade my light
Production notes! › Show Spoiler‹ Hide Spoiler-I thought about knowing everything and was trying to conjure what "thinking music sounds like. I could only think of the music from Death Note. Specifically L's theme
-I started here and tried to make a weird time signature looping section with three electric guitar parts on various amp presets with Logic. Then I thought to layer strings over the top when a melody came to me that I was singing. There are about 9 vox stacked on top of each other at very low gain. Some of them have no words, but just syllables. Slowly over the takes I figured out what I wanted to say and wrote down lyrics. I was super inspired by Clairo who I have been listening too, and really trying to tease out how the vox are stacked in her tracks.
-The time signature is weird at this point probably 6/8, but I wanted to put electronic drums over the top. I exported the whole section into maschine and tried messing around with drum patterns but it wouldn't work in that signature so I chopped that whole intro section up into playable samples. This is the chops you hear after the first section. I jammed with these cuts until I found something I liked.
-Then I jammed with drum patterns until I found something I liked.
-Then I played around with synth leads until I found the one that stutters over those chops. I originally played around until I found the melody and then added an LFO that stutters at 1/8 the speed.
-From here I exported the files back to logic and played around with structure. When to add parts of the drums, slight side-chaining, and the vox samples of the kids laughing and the small section "I like that tree".
-Once I found a structure I liked that swelled I felt called to add strings, and did an arrangment like a concert hall except with two violin parts and two cello parts. Then I kept those melodies, but slightly altered them when the song shifts back into 6/8. I am so surprised that those transitions feel somewhat smooth. The poem came out of me in 15 minutes and the song took about 5 hours:) -thanks for reading!
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