Ever Come Near Me

~ tryingartist ~ Leave a comment

https://soundcloud.com/thetryingartist/ever-come-near-me

Hilariously, this song uses the same chords as Hyper for the verse. If it ain’t broke… A phrase that doesn’t really apply here. 

Just to get the elephant out of the room- yes I am saying ‘with your hate with your hate with your hate’ in the chorus. Again, blame Muse. Basically, as a young teenage musician, I had a bit of sass. A bit of attitude. It’s almost punk-y in places, I like to tell myself.

This one was slightly more rhythmically interesting than Hyper. Ever so slightly. There’s some offbeat strumming there, for crying out loud. And some fast out of time strumming too.

For the music people out there, it’s great that the chords for the verse are:

A major e minor

and the chorus:

a minor E major.

So rogue, so cheeky. I mean where is the key? Where is it??

I attempt to sing the first verse again more softly, more vulnerably, at the end, before building to a massive crash cymbal climax. I don’t know if you noticed. My first strength as a songwriter/producer, and maybe still my greatest strength, was an understanding of textures. This was born from my ability to play many instruments, all not very well (except for maybe drums- although at this point even the drum playing was basic and inaccurate). Rather than coming up with one complex hook on a guitar, for example, I would weave together various sounds to make a thicker, more interesting sound. Or, as in this early tune, I would have quiet bits, and I would have loud bits.

Another elephant: Those with finely tuned ears might have noticed that my voice isn’t very good. This will be quite a consistent feature actually. You know when people announce: ‘No, no I can’t sing’, as if it’s something they just don’t understand, like rolling your tongue? I think that basically I was born to be one of those people, but then proceeded to sing in (casual) choirs regularly from the age of about 7, gradually forcing my ears to hear whether something is out of tune, and moulding my voice into something that occasionally can sing. During these early songs though, it sort of straddles the quality ranks: ‘Embarrassing’ and ‘Bad’.

Oh, and I say ‘hello’ right at the end in a funny voice.

I used to really like this Muse song. Amusing lyrics on screen.

Hyper

~ tryingartist ~ Leave a comment

https://soundcloud.com/thetryingartist/hyper

So here it is, my first song, written and performed by me. What do you think?

I don’t remember the moment I showed this to mum and dad, but I imagine that my 14 year old self sat there, legs twitching (legs always twitching unless specified otherwise), seriously proud. And to my parents’ credit, I’m pretty sure their reactions were appropriately proud as well. If they hadn’t been- if the wool had been pulled out from under my eyes and I had really understood that the song wasn’t particularrlllly good, I might not have written the close to 200 songs which followed it. So thanks to my parents for listening with rose-tinted ears.

The distorted octave bass playing along to a metronome which introduces the song was not an auspicious start to my music career. Although the (perhaps frivolous) layering up of parts has been a component of much of my music ever since.

I’ve always felt strongly that electric feeling of adrenaline when creating anything quickly. And it explains in part why so many of these early songs have such obvious mistakes in them. The timing errors going out of the chorus for example. I just couldn’t wait to show everyone what I had made. Couldn’t wait until I’d unblocked my nose, or stopped messing up the drum fills, or maybe learned a few more chords before writing a song.

Connected to this is a KEY feature of my early music- the mouse click as I finish recording. All these early songs were recorded on an Apple computer, using only the internal microphone. Very little post-performance editing of the audio tracks occurred, and the deleting of untoward extra-musical sounds I found to be an unnecessary indulgence. So, we have many mouse clicks.

Harmonically, the chords change at one point from e minor to e major, which is actually slightly advanced, if it had been done with any sort of awareness. I think at this time I used to just play one chord, then another chord, and attempt to fashion melodies around the change, no matter what it sounded like.

 And finally, the lyrics. The inspiration for this song I remember was the scene on Kingsland Road as I got off the bus in winter at night, the scary boys who hung out on the corner (who never once threatened me at all). ‘Walking through the streets at night’- a fair line, although maybe one you shouldn’t repeat for so much of the song, without having Lou Reed’s voice. However: ‘sitting watching running starting starting looking starting running getting nowhere ’til we’ is alright, and similar to the style of lyrics from much later songs, much better songs. 

The thematic content here, and many others from the early period, is quite clearly influenced by the melodrama of Muse. Blame them. And the lyrics get a lot worse than this song, for example in my next work^

Beginnings

~ tryingartist ~ Leave a comment

https://soundcloud.com/thetryingartist/sets/garageband

This is how it all started. Rearranging pre-made Garageband loops. For those who don’t know, Garageband is a basic music programme on Macs, which offers thousands of recorded riffs or chord sequences, all in the same key, for you to have fun arranging and editing. Once I started playing my own instruments, I continued to record using Garageband for a good few years. But the only thing I actually played in all four of these songs is the piano solo at the beginning of the first track. Which, you know…

It brightens up your day though, no doubt.

Perhaps the greatest creative input I had in these pieces was the choosing of the name. ‘Converted from the Israelites’ is interesting. I have absolutely no idea where that came from. Converted to what? The song itself is elusive… dreamy… offering no concrete answers.

I’ve included these because Garageband, even when I was solely using its loops, taught me the basics of editing audio files, using effects, mixing, and structure/texture in music.

There are (or were before I lost most of them) a huge number of Garageband songs. I picked three of the best ones, and one of the funniest ones.