A Very Interesting Day...

It crashed during... (Ed. - this is next week's Bonus Round clue - yesterday didn't crash at all!)

Last Week’s Bonus Round: “Angeles” by written and performed by Elliot Smith, originally appearing as Track 9 on the 1997 album “Either/Or”.

From Wikipedia:

“Either/Or is the third studio album by American singer-songwriter Elliott Smith. Either/Or was recorded in several locations, mostly in Portland, Oregon – while Smith was still a member of Heatmiser – and was produced by Smith, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf. Either/Or was released on February 25, 1997, on the Kill Rock Stars record label, following Heatmiser's dissolution. Book-ended by its two singles, "Speed Trials" and "Ballad of Big Nothing", Either/Or did not chart in the US, but was acclaimed by critics.”

(Ed. The song became one of three off of the same album incorporated into the “Good Will Hunting” movie soundtrack - source: Wikipedia)

“Either/Or was recorded at several locations: Joanna Bolme's house; Smith's own house; Undercover, Inc.; Laundry Rules Recording; and the Heatmiser House – all in Portland, Oregon – as well as The Shop in Arcata, California. The album was produced by Smith, Tom Rothrock and Rob Schnapf.^[7]”

Credit: Wikipedia Link: Elliot Smith "Either/Or" Album

This is interesting. Ultimate Guitar, on their “Official” page for the song shows this:

Note this page says the key is Aminor, which is the relative minor of the Key of CMajor, no capo, lots of interesting chords. BUT: For a key supposedly in Aminor, the relative minor of CMajor, and not capoed (so this isn’t a “shape” thing), this chord chart seems to be conspicuously lacking either an Am or CMaj chord….

So…while Ultimate Guitar is user created, this chart purports to be the “official version”. Interesting.

Chordify, of course, disagrees, though it stubbornly starts off with the Am chord that went missing from the UG chart.

Note the key signature with one flat. This indicates the Key is either GMajor, or (consulting our handy Circle of Fifths chart) it’s the relative minor Key of Eminor. Hmmm. So there are enough chords that would be nondiatonic to either key (Am or Em) that it probably doesn’t matter while playing. If you decided to record, the discussion with bandmates who are wanting to do arpeggios over a rhythm track might get interesting as others want to improvise, but that’s a part of working within the group - knowing the language of music theory is a great help. Just sayin’…

Another possibility (maybe quite a probability actually) is the musicians, all playing together, were thinking more in terms of a score, rather than a chord chart and were improvising a score based off of each other’s arpeggios and the rhythm player (if there was one) just had to “keep up”. Dunno, would be an interesting conversation though.

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Michael Acoustic

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Thanks new subscribers! Mika, the cat, welcomes you!!

Mika: “There are squirrels in the neighbor’s trees!! Were you aware of this, human?”

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For today, I want to talk a little about my experience yesterday, which is why there was no Thursday Post. I was in a local studio where my song “Long Road Back” was being mastered. I’m just going to talk a little about that today, because I’m struggling mightily to get through the process of getting the song released through a publishing admin and distributor online and want to finish that today. I’m looking for a release next week on the premise that few, if any folks are spending their holiday weekend looking for new stuff to listen to and already have whatever they’re going to listen to on a playlist. Not sure if that’s a good idea or not, but I’m pretty sure I don’t want to spend MY weekend looking at stats and obsessing. Plus I have another song I’m already working on to release later this summer.

So, interesting experience! First the (very few) negatives, which were all owned by me. To say I was having a lot of anxiety yesterday morning before the 10 AM scheduled session would be an understatement, but it all worked out (so this is more of “all my negatives mostly worked out really well” story…). I had invited along some musician friends, but not all of their schedules allowed them to come by. My friend, Terry, a very accomplished musician and performer and producer was able to come by and I think he had a pretty good time (that one goes in the “positives” column). Also, the mixing room is a necessarily pretty small area, so that probably worked out for the best anyway, and we’ll have other opportunities in a few weeks. Jay, the audio engineer is the epitome of a professional at his craft (another positive!) and the producer for my song, Mellad (read my interview with him here: Interview With Mellad!) were both there, and whatever anxiety I had quickly dissipated (so this yeah, pretty much all positive…). Okay - here’s my sorta negative for real this time: What sort of didn’t immediately dissipate was the agony of listening to my own voice over and over for a good portion of two hours. I know - most everyone hates their own voice! Jay, Mellad and Terry kind of handheld me through that and after awhile it just sort of faded into the background. So, in the end, all positive (Ed. Ha- weren’t expecting that, were ya?). The mix sounds fabulous - I didn’t write the song as a country song, but the song actually “found itself” when the distinct country flavor found it - and I could not be more pleased with the result. There are a couple of notes that I had struggled to hit and they were kind of a gut punch wince at first, but finally I just got over myself and it’ll all be fine. Ultimately, of course, that will be decided by listeners and anyone who covers the song, and critics: as Mr. Prine would say, “those syphilitic parasitics” - though I’m determined to learn what I can from the criticism if it’s helpful and brush the rest off. We’ll see.

A couple of pics from yesterday:

Mellad on the right, Jay at the console. Jay has a lot of cool stuff, and very few cable management issues!

So much more to write about on here - over the coming weeks after the song is “out there”, I’ll be writing about the genesis of the song, things like rhyming structures, syllable counts, chord charts, a little about melody (I dunno, I mostly just make it up as I go along…), the song structures I used and how much I diverge from “the rules” (a lot!!), communicating with other musicians and producers and audio engineers - mostly along the lines of what I learned I have to improve on for next time and I’m already working on that. We’ll talk about all of that and more, and I really hope that will be a two-way conversation with you all, Gentle Readers!!

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So here’s what I’m listening to:

(Ed. Very short list, but there’s a reason for that. The song that we finished up in the mastering phase yesterday has a 75 BPM tempo. It’s a good thing to have reference tracks to listen to at tempo to catch a groove or vibe, and since that’s a pretty slow ballad tempo, to help with timing. I discovered I could just search for “75 BPM Songs” and find sites that listed a bunch of them. Handy to know when you’re looking for reference tracks at a specific tempo…I started with probably 20 or so songs on this list and over time ended up with these that seemed to fit with my song, tempo and vibe wise, the “best”. It’s also handy to have an app called “liveBPM” running on your phone while you’re listening to tracks on Spotify or YouTube or somewhere on a home theater system.)

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Bonus Round: …these years.

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Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic