Elephantine
Starting off the second half of the year with a trip back to my riff-rock roots.
UPDATE: This is now the way-more-bitchen-DDP-master. You'll want to re-download if you got here early this morning, because Darin's sounds WAY better than mine does.
Thank you for listening! PLEASE consider posting a comment by clicking the comments link below! Thank you, and I'll see you next week!
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17 comments:
This song is like a 5-pound hamburger!
-Witty
word: thydrant
Lovely main riff. Clean, solid rock.
Did you double the lead guitar part on keys, or was that a weird stomp box effect? It was just the right amount of high sounding something that wasneeded there.
Jeroen
This is just rad. I love riffy songs. Hearing "you harshed my buzz" in the lyrics made me laugh.
Actually the solo was WRITTEN on keys, and then I learned it on guitar. So there is synth in there, and then the guitars also have some pitch FX on there, one has a phaser and the other has a flanger.
Damn. I feel as if a gauntlet has been thrown down or something.
Consider this a big, goofy, smiley emoticon. Combined with the stellar job interview I had today, it's not a bad Monday at all.
Love the riffs, love the song. Second half off to a great start!
Congrats on the interview! Wish I could get one of those! :-/
Hi,
Five things:
1. Back to the solo... did you play it originally over a slower speed so that it would be/sound faster in the final mix... something like that?
2. Talk about the decision to sing this song with an accent, for lack of a better term ("Them teeth are shaRp")... you silly man.
3. In all my 20-25 years of knowing you, I've never heard music come out of you that has sounded ANYthing like it does at the point in the song where you sing, "You can cling to this on the lonely nights ". You must have been proud of that little groove when you heard for the first time. :)
4. I've heard you talk in the past about how you write songs, the music that is, that you don't necessarily think about a key and the "rules", etc... that you write the music 'til it sounds good to you. So, what's going on there in the opening riff? Is it breaking key signature "rules" or anything of that nature? It makes me think, "perhaps he tried this riff in a couple of different keys and then thought they sounded pretty wild one after another and went with that AS the riff".
5. Did you really take that picture?
-Witty
Zee answers:
1. Nope, it was recorded at speed, but a) it took a lot of punch-ins and b) the combination of pitch FX plus the keyboards at an octave higher do combine to make it sound "altered"
2. I have no idea why that happened, other than sometimes words are easier to enunciate when sung a certain way, and I tend to go where the easy is. Also, a while back I decided I would try to hit "hard R's" as much as possible when singing, 'cause dammit, I'm a 'Merican and that's how we talk. ;-)
3. That main groove has been around a while, but for whatever reason, I never listened to it against a drum beat until pretty recently. When I put it against that Bonham-sounding "strut" (for want of a better term), I got pretty happy, yeah. That drum kit is the "Slingerland" kit in BFD.
4. This is definitely one of those songs where I never thought about key signature. This song is played on the 7-string in "standard" tuning (i.e., the regular-tuned 6 strings on top with a low B on the bottom), but I think I wrote the riff on a drop-D guitar tuning, and moved it over to the 7. Obviously it's very chromatic, but still sort of bluesy, until you get to that point in the fifth rep where the note that is bent is one half-step lower, and the low pedal tone is RAISED one half-step (to C), and then it goes to that weird chord (D# root) that comes out of nowhere. Yeah, I don't really know where that came from. Just happened.
5. I really did! With the scenery in this part of the country, you just have to point the dang camera and shoot. That is at the top of the Mt. Si trail on a cloudy day. It was cloudy all the way up, but then at the top, I was JUST above the cloud line. Actually the clouds were sweeping right at us at that moment, and a few seconds later we were totally surrounded in gray.
Hi,
"So long, fare well, it's time to say good night".
That's the part of this song that keeps popping into my head as I meander through my day. Would that be considered the bridge, or no?
What is a "bridge" exactly? Has anyone seen the bridge? Can you rattle off some notable bridges as examples?
-Witty
Nevermind, I can Google that sh*t.
But how about some 5240 bridges... are there any?
:P
-Witty
I'm sure there's a Webster's definition of "bridge" somewhere, just as there are probably listings of typical song forms around. I don't really pay attention to those too much.
Usually bridges are that thing that happens ONCE in the song somewhere around 2/3 of the way in that shakes it up a little right before you chorus out. So, the quiet part of "Esther" is something I would consider a bridge.
If pressed, I would call the "so long/fare well" section of this one a "B-section." And the solo would sort of qualify as the bridge, but it's played over a modified, one-chord version of the B-section.
But ya know. Whatever feels right.
Favorite 5240 bridge so far is "I'm not special..." in I Like You More Than You Do.
Still my favorite song so far, too, but there are at least 15 ties for second.
Sa-weet! Can't really add more to what's already been said.
Oooh, nice Led Zep feeling to this with the riff and the drums. This would be a nice HZ song. Excellent solo.
RAWK!! \m/
I wouldn't mind doing this one with the HZ kids at ALL.
I super dig this one. I'm one who only likes half or a little more than half of the songs in the project, but this one is great.
I should note that I'm finding more that I like, now that I'm playing the entire project front to back.
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