“I could write songs of awestruck peace and wholesome beauty,
but my life is full of blockades that force me to detour.”
– A line from my unrecorded song called Mirrors
Precisely my description of I See A Vision – It’s a headphones song.
Music making insight and techniques:
What may come as a surprise.. The distant piano instrument was the last work I did on the Observe album. I See A Vision is a headphones stereo song. And while all of the album is in stereo, this song in particular is a whole other idea of stereo mixing.. The technique is one that blends 2 different mixes, one to the left channel the other to the right. An experiment that came to mind when I liked 2 different effect mixes yet thought both were too much for such a simple yet complex song. Left sounds airy and raspy textured. Right is the untouched guitar+vocal recording with a delay. Revisited 2016: I only had an MP3 render of the previously finished song, along with a project file right before the finished mix. I couldn’t remember *how* I came up with such an interesting mix! I spent weeks trying to recreate it, with week long breaks in between them. It drove me nuts – I could come up with something very close, but still rougher sounding.. How could I have come up with such a polished mix *back then* with so little to work with in the project, and am not able to create anything as good *now*? Later on I realized I had multiple mixes (mind you: entitled “That Day”) rendered and finally remembered that I tried mixing them to find a clean balance..
Here’s some techniques I’ve discovered, they’re quite helpful to a by-ear musician/producer: Effects. Nothing crazy (unless that’s what you’re going for), some good spring reverb and good delay does wonders. Especially if you’re working with both vocals and guitar recorded together on 1 track.. You’re gonna want to have variety in your sound. Duplicate the track and run it thought an effect that will bring the sound that the track needs! This isn’t the 90’s anymore: Amps aren’t only for guitar noise. You can run vocals, and anything through an amp and guitar pedals. Less is more. I’ve found virtual amps to be quite fantastic and with better guitar pedals (spring reverb, delay) than any hardware I’ve heard, or VST plugins for that matter. Not to take away from hardware and live music – I’m simply talking about essential effect uses such as reverb or using a virtual amp to generate texture on an acoustic guitar and vocal recording. The sky is the limit, this song is an example of a clean minimalist track.
Anyway, the actual 2016 work on this song was that I lowered the chorus volume slightly to match the verses, but overall wasn’t sure on the song being released, let alone for the album.. I’ve played with various pianists before, but I’ve yet to play with one that would add few notes and chords to a song, transforming it into a life of it’s own. At first I wanted to simply add a few notes to the song, maybe scretch them out with effects, but ended up adding a few chords on the chorus, and it went from there. It’s still minimalist, but it has it’s parts to stand out: making the song stand out, while still being a background instrument not taking away from the “vocal song” concept. The presence of the piano has made this track my favorite (of Observe) to relisten to again.
How the song was written & recorded:
July 25th 2010 – Sitting at my computer desk on a late existential night, I felt something to say boiling within and I took the chance to discover it. I started thinking about what it was that I was feeling and where it was going, and had this *very* specific idea of a bar song with an almost country-like slur. I heard the chorus in my head, the lyrics and melody in my voice and in this specific tone.. The verse guitar as well, note for note – it’s just a chord. I quickly grabbed my classical guitar and played it out, surprised that I already had the song down, I just needed to write out the lyrics and format. The bar song wasn’t a song for people in a chapel, it’s a realist prophecy to a broken human. The first verse came easy as an intro, then further on I had ideas to pull in some metaphors from my idea notepad. I became a huge fan of Мумий Тролль’s metaphor usage in songs – specifically the lyric writing style in their popular song called Девочка where a metaphor is not only used as a replacement word/idea, but you spin off of it – in my case a train’s-worth: fire, now ice, world melts, covered, snow as dust, settles down with pressure. It’s real that you can touch it, but I’m describing feelings only as weather cycles. Half are real, half are vibrant metaphors. I adjusted the mic stand, the input level, and did a few full takes of the song. Upon playback I wanted to get it as right as I could, even though I knew this was probably just a tracking demo. To my surprise, it sounded the way I heard it in my head just earlier.. I stayed up cutting a thing or two and trying out some boosting effects tho I ended up keeping it minimal to bare. Shared the mp3 the next day with a music friend from that time, got feedback: “it’s not bad, my dad likes it, but I don’t.” Haha. Turns out later on that same friend would walk out on a music friendship because they didn’t understand the Soul Avant project – “if a song doesn’t say ‘Jesus I love you’ then the music isn’t from God”. Wish I knew people better before I got my hopes up of making music not alone, but so is life. As said above.. “I could write songs of awestruck peace and wholesome beauty, but my life is full of blockades that force me to detour.“
Thanks for reading – enjoy the song.
Revealed next Wednesday: Track #7: In Your Eyes 🙂