Right on daf. Let me see what I can do here.
To start off with, this was a weird experience to say the least.
I had never heard any of hevy's stuff prior to our pairing, not sure if he was familiar with me. Hevy's stuff is a bit more straightforward than mine, but it was immediately apparent that this guy could tear it up on the guitar. We went through some phases of testing the water trying to get to know each other, and trying to see how we could best compliment each other's styles.
chronicled here
Some of the more magical moments went something like this...
Hevy (Dan) sends the first piece of lyrics to toss around.
Ummmm...not my first choice in lyrical imagery. Kind of predictable. Kind of boring.
I hope you don't take offense to my bluntness, but if we're going to work together, there's no room for political correctness, no let's set all bullshit aside!
-rats
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your move
-Dan
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Hmmm.
-rats
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Of the three original options I considered in my first email, did one sound more attractive than the others?
If you give me a rhythm guitar track and a click, I can go with that. I like your bluesy stuff. Maybe something slow and really stripped down?
-rats
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I'm still licking my wounds
I generally find when first dealing with a person that simple common courtesy can take things a long way toward a mutually beneficial conclusion.
Should we try and start over?
I don't feel like I could send you anything unless there is a certain amount of trust and limits set.
What do you think?
-Dan
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Dan-
Hey man I'm sorry if I offended you with my comments, which apparently I did. Not my intention at all. I went back and read over my response trying to see where I went wrong, and I can see how you could have taken it that way.
Quote:
I hope you don't take offense to my bluntness, but if we're going to work together, there's no room for political correctness, no let's set all bullshit aside!
Seriously though, I know this is for fun, but I still take music that I am involved with seriously to some level, and always want it to be the best it can be, it's just my nature. I can be overly concerned with details, a forewarning! I'm used to the guys I play with and myself the same being upfront and maybe sometimes blunt when we hear something that we don't like or needs improvement to speak up when it's recognized, otherwise time gets wasted working on things that you're not happy with.
So here's the dilemma: We're both looking to have fun writing a song for a bigger group experiment, and we're paired with someone who doesn't mesh stylistically. This means we'll have to bend from our comfort zone. It also means that we are going to have to work together and get to understand each other a bit to see how each other ticks in order to find our common ground to be able to produce the best outcome. In my mind, and with the time we have allotted, the only way to do this is to be honest and set our feelings aside until afterwards. Maybe that's not what you consider fun. Maybe I'm a sick individual! This is my thing; if I can't tell you I don't like something, this isn't going to work. I would expect you to tell me the same if I gave you something you didn't like. Maybe the way I worded my original statement was offensive in your culture, so set me straight! Courtesy is good! How would you have better handled the situation, just so I know? I think this could be a good learning experience for both of us. Maybe I could learn how not to be an asshole and still get the job done!
And maybe this whole project is a lost cause? Maybe more of a pain then it's worth? At this point I'll let you make the call, I'm on the fence. I think it could be if nothing else a good learning experience, and hell, maybe even we'll come up with something really cool!
-rats
Anyway, we made amends, and I think hevy is a way cool guy. A lot was to be learned from this.
The next sequence of events was interesting too. This is how the meat of the song coagulated.
Frustration
Will I
Won't I
Should I
Don't I
Up I Down I
All around the pound I
Love I Hate I
Do I - or Die I
Here we go again I
Stay at home in pain I
Keep it soft and plain I
Stay and play the game I
Nothing here to gall I
Staring at the wall I
Screaming in the hall I
Crying in the stall I
Here I
There I
Poof I
Gone I
I found this kicking around.
If you don't like it, change it, rewrite it,
We could try...........You send a line>I send one back
Maybe we should write a song about how everything is a competition with men. Listen to 99% of male convo and you'll hear the thinly veiled race to be the best.
Don't get frustrated, get creative.
MAKE A CONTRIBUTION
Dan
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Hey! I like this! Are the lines breaks or the word "I"? Either way, I like the word "I" in a lot of those places. Do you have any music for this? I know what you're saying about men...I can see that in a lot of guys I know.
As far as me writing any lyrics to add to this, I'm sure I can, but I usually do that once a rhythm and melody has been established so the words flow with the song.
Update: Just took a shit and upon further excremdeditation I'm hearing something. It kind of puts a twist on your idea...
Will I, won't I, should I, don't I
Know the way to pay
For all the lovin' in the world
To shine on me today
Up I, down I, around the pound I'm
Crawling on the ground
If it takes me to hit the bottom rock
Well that rock is what I've found
It's the last time I'll be sitting here
It's the last time I'll ever know
It's the last time I'll be staring into
Halls that go nowhere
There's no more time to stare
I'm starting now to care about the
Sun and the stars and the hastening cars and the...
Here I, there I, poof I'm gone and I
Can't turn back my mind
From the troubles I've seen and the hope that I've found
That changes are just in time
It's the last time I'll be sitting here
It's the last time I'll ever know
It's the last time I'll be staring into
Halls that go nowhere
There's no more time to stare
I'm starting now to care about the
Sun and the stars and the hastening cars and the...
-rats
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Amazing what happens in your head when you are pushing real hard. We just wrote complete lyrics to a song............... Now for melody and beat............... We'll probably have to trade back and forth for that too.
That poem was written by my late Mother.
It's nice to put it to some use.
She'd approve of this.
try to email you before the end of biz
2 oclock on the sunny west coast?
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Right on. Nice poem, I hope I didn't hack it up too much. I'm REALLY glad I liked it seeing how you would probably have wanted to kill me if I responded like I did the first time around!!!
Yeah if you get it to me before 4:00 out here (EST) I'll take it home and see what turns up!
-rats
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Do you have any objections to me posting a web page chronicling our experiment?
-rats
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My mother was a professional writer for many years so I figured if that material got trashed you had to be planted on me to drive me away from HR.com forever. (Just kidding) You do what you want as far as a record of this.I read on the bbs where some of the"I'd rather type about it than do it types" wanted to make a record of thier colabs. I usually get creative at night.............those first lyrics should prove
that
You will hear from me again when I have a click and rythm guitar based on the lyrics. Feel free to keep rewriting BTW. But I like it well enough. Cries out for a screaming punk vocal I think. For main ax I'm leening towards something slow punkish...........
-dan
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So hevy sends me some tracks. He's been the catalyst all the way with the riff and the lyrics so hats off to hevy. He sent me the guitars and a click track. The guitar part he sent was much much more evolved than what you'll hear here. There were actually chord changes, and lots of 'em! It had a bluesy rock feel. I was looking for someway to integrate this in to the kind of stuff I've been doing, and experimented with it quite a bit but wasn't getting anywhere.
It wasn't until I'd seen the movie "Spun" that I got my inspiration for where to take this. That was the movie with John Leguizamo, Brittany Murphy, Mickey Roarke, Mena Suvari, etc., about the CRystal Meth heads. Cool flick if you haven't seen it. Anyway, after seeing that flick I savaged hevy d's fine work, splicing, deleting, cutting, looping, pasting. That was the crazy part. Basically I tool all the "E" parts and spliced them, copied, etc. I took out ALL of the chord changes.
All that was left was teh several variations of teh way he played the "E" parts.
At his point I was getting scared. I'd literally spent hours on end hacking this up, and wasn't sure what I was going to do with it. I basically ended up plugging in the guitar to the GT-6 and seeing what would fly. Several things flew, a few landed.
Then the vocs. I figured where I wanted teh vocs, and got to the meat of the lyrics and left the rest on the cutting room floor.
Then under the influence of something I started laying samples...feverishly. Editing, copying, processing. I spent quite awhile on the samples. This is where the crazy shit from "Spun" was really making an influence.
The next day I had my drummer come over and lay tracks. He came up with that "shuffley" sort of bit. I'm still not very good at capturing live drums, me thinks, but I fiddled with the EQ until they seemed to work. I think they came out with a trippy effect based on teh EQ and room sound I put them in.
Then I sent hevy a rough mix. He sent me back a bass line. I loved it.
Then I mixed. This was really weird to mix because I could have gone a lot of different ways with it.
Sorry if we scared you! Yeah that malaysian guy is even scarier though.
