Music is all about sharing: sharing thoughts, experiences, feelings, and visions. If someone writes a song, but no-one else hears it, does the song really exist?!
Music is also an evolutionary process that pushes its creator to depths or heights one once thought unimaginable. It’s pure inspiration written haphazardly or methodically and having multiple meanings to the multitudes.
Here are a few of the moments I’ve experienced in my musical journey. Some are basic ideas on writing and others are technical aspects of recording and production.
…just a few minutes later.
I’ve written some songs in 20 minutes. There are others that are still unfinished 20 years later. Is one song better than another? What defines the quality of a piece of music? These are questions that have no hard and fast answers. Is a question a question if it has no definite answer? I could go on like this all night, but there’s other work to be done!
Behind the Scenes
Sea’s Beautiful Daughters
This is the only ballad on the Transit album and the feature lyric on the previous page. I wrote the original melody and chords in October 2020. Listening to my first ‘sketch’ of the song, the 4-bar intro and the 6-bar verse melody remained somewhat the same. Coming back to the song several times, I chose a 2nd ending that takes the song into the instrumental section. Since the song is very chord heavy and the changes* come every 2 beats, I decided that the instrumental would hang on the same bass note for a few bars as a release to give the sensation of floating. The chords on the instrumental also reflect the lyric line: “We dance atop their glass** heaven high”. I also made a change to the original melody for the second half of each verse. To give the song a lift, I changed the melody’s shape to mirror the movement of the lyric. The song has no chorus, so I built the lift into the latter half of the verse.
The production you hear is the 4th version. The previous 3 leaned heavily on programmed percussion and keyboards. The melody and chords lean into the jazz realm, but the lyrics are earthy and folky. When I had completed most of the lyrics, it suddenly hit me that the arrangement should be light and easy. I recorded my vocal to sound as quiet and personal as possible. Pat’s acoustic and gut-string guitars are perfect for the lyric, and as a surfer from Southern California, he’s lived the song’s story. He recorded his parts to a basic drum loop and my finished vocal. The arrangement came together quickly after that because the focus remained on the vocal and guitars. The bass, electric piano, synth string pad, subtle rhythm parts, and wave sounds just fell into place. [Musicians’ Trivia: Can you guess how the wave sounds were generated?]
*Changes refer to chords that accompany a tune. Musicians often use the term ‘changes’ as shorthand for chord changes.
**Glass is a surfing term that refers to a smooth, mirror-like surface of the water.