Impasse

It’s 4:30 in the morning. I have a sea of work in front of me that isn’t REALLY technically work. Deadlines that aren’t REALLY deadlines. A few gigs. Some fun equipment to learn. A house to clean. I’m sick. I’m tired. No biggie.

But I’m at an impasse, because All Is Not Well.

Because I’ve gotten bored. I’ve had a few knocks. A few failures. A few “mediocres” and not enough “Hell-yeahs.” Not enough crazy-wow-s. I need a HIT. Not just a REALLY good. But an undeniable hit.

I need another ‘Bluebeard.’ Or another ‘Cupcake.’ Or another ‘Emily.’ Or I need to spruce up ‘Stranded,’ and get it out there, because that was a good song.

But I do need to do something, and quick.

I’ve had several ideas. Directions I could go in. Things I could do. All the while things pile up around me. I look at the things. And I’ve been here before. And I realize that nothing is going to change and I will be this person for the rest of my life unless I become a person who inspires people.

In order to do that, I’m going to have to get more sleep, and clean my house, and make some lists. And I’m going to need to learn these organ patches so I won’t have a REAL reason to drink as much liquor as the Kings are probably going to feed me on Friday.

Keys and Lies

This is a blog about my SongFu shadow entry. It’s going to be very stream of consciousness, as I go …

THE STORY
One of the things about this story is that it’s DIFFERENT from the original Bluebeard song! This is because it is a different wife. The first wife I envisioned for my king I had to make up. This is because Joe made me very, very nervous.

Joe isn’t just older than me agewise, he’s fuller and richer sounding than me. He has a more sophisticated sounding accent to me (to my ears). When he records himself, he often does this “man on the march with a very large army” thing with chorus-type effect and it makes him seem very present. Whereas I sound often very young and thin. I often wrinkle around the pitch and I haven’t quite come into the bottom-out of my range. I can feel it coming, but it hasn’t arrived yet. I think we work in a duet sitch because our vibratos just happen to match up. It’s odd because our voices do not. The only way I resolved this problem was to make a character piece till I learn the puzzle around our vocal chemistry better.

The basic thing is that he’s a remote cold ruler of a country and my first wife is a young and easily impressionable childlike slip of a girl that is completely overcome by this man. He teaches her EVERYTHING about love and she is lost in him. But yeah, curiosity kills the cat. She finds the key and all the women are hanging on the hooks.

It makes me want to finish it, in a trilogy. How did he become a serial killer? Hmmm. I swear I’m not a psychopath! Maybe I want an album of feminist fairy tale songs.

The story didn’t feel over. I wanted this king dead. And the real story is about the wife that is saved. I don’t like that. I want the girl to save herself. So I change the story. I want her to poison him. I think poison is very romantic. Maybe she has a cool ring that she keeps poison in. Maybe it’s the ring that the previous wife (who was her friend, after all!) didn’t have the good sense not to use at the first awkward breakfast after that stupid business trip to the orient where he went to get the textiles or whatever it is he does overseas …)

There’s an argument happening in a development happening between this husband and wife leading up to the line “what will you kill me for / I’ll kill you for – curiosity” The characters are not in sync. The facade of the marriage is starting to fall apart. It’s all based on sex and mourning for a mutual love. The wife was too fascinated with the intense love story of the original Bluebeard marriage (“I watched you love her” – from the first stanza), and Bluebeard was kinda (sorry!) sexing his troubles away with her. This new wife is very sensual … but not “the one.”

This is because Bluebeard has a problem with women. But he screwed up because he fell in love with the one from FuSixRound 2 and now he’s acting out. He really should stop killing his women. Perhaps he needs a ‘shrink.

In the blues part, it’s pretty certain that they do have a bit of a thing for each other. They certainly are addicted to propriety, an ideal of marriage, sex, the mourning of an idealized love that they both witnessed (and he experienced!) in the previous marriage (the ‘Something Very Horrible’ one). They need the One More Night. But this girl has her head on a bit straighter and she’s got follow through. She rises to the challenge and remembers that he can drink himself a bit and that she’s just got to suck it up past her fascination with this man. What’s her lie? Maybe that it’s okay. Who knows.

They both know it’s not okay. The whole situation is easy. It’s like a duel.

I have a little scene in my mind about the “ties that bind.” Like he imprisons her and then lets her out for one more night. This tracks with the Bluebeard story where she begs for ten more minutes. Mine becomes one more night. This is admittedly why I drag out section two a bit. I’m trying to stretch it out like you try not to say goodbye.

But onto the next section. The compositional ideas are, once again for me, not coming across in the recording … yet!

The Recording
1. I haven’t had a guy vocal in my songs since … before …. I’m experimenting with a themed thing. I have access to a lot of tools I’ve never had before as well.
3. This song is not finished. I’m not happy with it yet.
4. I think the engineering is very “tentative.” I think that this is because I am at a very tentative point in my life. I’m both confident and unsure.
5. I am also taking more risks and trying to bring together all the “things that I wanted to be when I grew up” into one cohesive style. It’s hard to amalgamate everything.
6. Joe has this opinion about the first Bluebeard tune. He said other people have shared this opinion, and I have since had that confirmed. It’s that my vocals are buried back in the mix and should be louder. This got into my head on this recording. I think I over-compensated. As a result, my vocals are too loud.
7. Joe’s vocal is not loud enough. His reverb is not right yet. I need it to come up and I need to spend time finding the right reverb for him. This is still in discussion. I fear I will never find the right effect for him; although I have gotten pretty good at editing his position and his wave when need be. I did it REALLY well in Bluebeard. Although … he hardly needed a thing because the man can lay down a track …
8. I want another instrument in here. Or three. I ran out of time, simply that. Also, I really wanted a real drumset. SXSW intervened. Maybe I’ll get my wish sometime.
9. The vocals are also out of sync a bit, in my opinion.
10. It was hard to line up the track to the instrumentals. Usually it is not hard to do this. Cubase has been acting up. The computer fully crashed twice during this and I actually lost a lot of data once!

I think I was having “marital problems” with the song! Just like they were.

Sometimes things don’t come quite as easily. However, I like the concept a lot and I think this has a lot of potential. It feels right. More mature. It’s worth a work-on. So I’m gonna keep at it. Which feels weird to say, because I can’t play it live or anything.

Anyway, the listening party is soon and Joe is casting so I’m off. I have to admit that I’m a bit nervous about this one, so will post this blog now.

Thanks for listening.

‘Something Very Horrible (Bluebeard’s Lament)’

Well, Masters of Songfu Round 2 is up. I have written a song called ‘Something Very Horrible (Bluebeard’s Lament).’ We were told to write a song that doesn’t rhyme. It was very difficult. I chose to write a song about Bluebeard. It’s based upon his fable. You can find out more about Bluebeard, and his poor wives – here, where I liked all the story except the very last line!

It features a fellow called Joe “Covenant” Lamb. He is also a member of Too Much Awesome with me, and won the last Song Fu, so I’m fortunate to have him on my track.

And SECOND most importantly, you can vote for the song HERE!

(and apologies for BLOGGING this SO LATE to anyone I’ve passed a card to :S)