How To Paint An Owl

I wrote this song after reading a blog post by Juliette Crane about a painting she was working on.

In addition to selling her own beautiful paintings, Juliette teaches in person and online mixed media workshops. Her online class "How To Paint An Owl" includes several time-lapse videos that follow her paintings from start to finish. I've seen a few segments and they are gorgeous documents of the creative process. Quite inspiring.

Juliette asked if she could use music from The Wiggly Tendrils in her videos (we of course said yes), but I felt she should have a song of her own. So I sat down to write this tune.

Working out the lyrics for "How To Paint An Owl"

I knew I wanted the chorus to be the title of Juliette's e-course "how to paint an owl." Reading Juliette's blog I saw her post about an unfinished painting I was struck by the starless night above the main character. That starless night and the lamppost reminded me of C. S. Lewis's description of the beginning of Narnia. I was imagining that the beginning a painting must be like the beginning of the world, and I thought the picture looked so right just there in its unfinished form. I had to write about it.

12 years old and still sounding good

Once the song was written, I recorded it on my new Portastudio 414 cassette 4-track. I haven't gotten around to buying any new cassette tapes, so I used a 12 year old Maxel XLII tape that I had used to bootleg a concert. Considering the tape's age, I'm amazed this recording sounds as good as it does. 

I recorded two tracks of acoustic guitar. One with a capo and one without. Then two tracks of vocals. For the higher harmony part, I used the pitch control to pitch the song up while recording it, then slowed it back down on play back. It makes the vocal sound a bit heavy and lethargic. There's something interesting about hearing the higher vocal part in a slightly slowed down tone. I will definitely try that again.

The Portastudio has stereo RCA outs, but I only could find one of my RCA to quarter inch mono adaptors. I imported each track into logic one at a time and mixed the recording in logic. I added some compression, EQ and reverb to each track and then bounced it down to wave.

Here it is:

Portastudio 414

I bought a Tascam 4-track cassette recorder last week, the Portastudio 414. A college friend of mine had a similar machine (the 424) and we used to record covers of Billy Bragg and Wilco songs. A few years later I started writing my own music. I got a Sony mini disc recorder and recorded a few horrible demos of my first band... Demos that I have just recently rediscovered in a box full of cassette tapes that I've been moving around with me over the past 10 years.

Song Idea and Various Demos

I started recording a song on the Tascam tonight, but didn't finish it. Here are my initial thoughts:

1. I'm refreshingly out of my comfort zone. I've already accidently played a take without hitting record, recorded silence over a take I wanted to keep, and recorded a take at the wrong tape speed. Yeah learning!
2. Everything sounds different, and that is inspiring.
3. Rewind. I forgot all about rewinding. I spend a lot of time rewinding.

Stay tuned for the finished song...

Tascam Portastudio 414 4-Track Cassette Recorder

Spring Won't You Come

This song began with lyrics by fellow tendril, Terrance G. Terrance and I have collaborated on five songs now, and I think they've all turned out nicely. I'm particularly proud of "Farmageddon" and "My Onetime Friend". Here's how the collaboration works, Terrance sends me an email with lyrics and some musical ideas, and then I do my best to mold the lyrics into a song. I enjoy working this way because I normally start with the melody and fit the words together afterwards. Working with lyrics first gets me out of my normal writing habits and forces me in some new and interesting directions. Here are the words Terrance sent:

Spring,
Spring won't you come?
Come out and wake up the flowers
Show us your colours!

Sun,
Sun won't you rise?
Rise up high above the clouds
and warm up our faces

I like the simplicity and the repetition. That's really what you need from good song lyrics. In Terrance's lyrics I thought it was interesting that he repeated the last word in the second line, as the first word in the third line. Quite cool. I like to imagine that if you were to lift a song's lyrics off the page, that somehow all the words would still fit together. That each part is connected to the whole. That each word is held in the song by meter, meaning, consonance, assonance, and rhyme. That's the effect I go for more than any particular rhyme or metrical scheme. Just a sense that everything connects... Here's my version:

spring won't you come
come and wake up the flowers
flowers with their colors
colors of the sun

Sun won't you rise
high above the clouds
wake up all the flowers
sleeping in the ground

In the first verse I use Terrance's trick. Each line begins with the last word of the previous line. To my ears all the words hold together even without a single rhyme. Quite a cool effect. In the second verse I have some parallel construction with the first verse, but now I'm using rhyme instead of repetition to hold things together. Really it's just the slant/rhyme of the words "clouds" and "ground" but it's enough to get that sensation of something clasping shut as the verse ends.

Here's the recording...

Vegetarians (Thank God I Ain't One)

While I'm OK with the lyrics and melody on this song, I think the recording is pretty awful. It's like a bad sandwich made badly from bad ingredients. I was rushing and it shows. I started writing the song around 7pm on Thursday night and finished the recording around 10pm. The song needed to be submitted to baconfest by noon on Thursday, so I had to get it done.

Guitar
I used one mic, an SM57 pointed at the neck of the guitar around the 12th fret. I'm not into this sound. The sound of the guitar at the beginning of "Fifty" is much better.

Drums percussion
They're drum and percussion loops from logic. I didn't spend much time selecting loops that made sense with the song. And I have them dropping in and out at weird times. Sort of disorienting and distracting. Once the drums drop out at the end, I like the track much better.

Vocals
I sang all the vocals into an SM57. I was just too lazy to set up a second mic. I didn't use a windscreen on the lead track and you can tell. There's a nasty mic distortion. This is especially apparent when the guitar drops out at the start of the second chorus. The SM57 sounds OK on the background vocals (where I used the windscreen), I'll probably use it again to give some contrast.

Organ
I wanted something in the bass register so I laid down a midi organ track. The part isn't very inspired, but it fills out the spectrum a bit.

Mix
I think more than anything else it's the mix that bothers me on this track. It's hard for me to put my finger on, but something about it is bad. Actually, this is an area where I need to spend more time and focus. These are three incredibly basic things that I know I need to do:

1. First, I need to get out of the habit of writing, recording and mixing in one sitting. By the time I get to the mix my ears are shot. I can't hear anything with any objectivity.
2. Second, I need to stop mixing on headphones. This really follows from the point above. Because I tend to write/record/ and mix in one sitting I end up mixing very late. I use the headphones because my recording set up is located above my landlord's bedroom and I don't want to wake him.
3. Third, I need to A/B my mixes. This is so basic and obvious. I'm embarrassed to admit I never do it... (hmmm... what should I use?)

Lyrics
I thought about posting this song with a disclaimer, or writing a partner song about vegetarianism. I have a lot of respect for vegetarians, and I have difficulty justifying my omnivorous lifestyle. I suppose I'm just nutritionally reckless at this point in my life. I don't actually thank god that I'm not a vegetarian, and in fact, someday I would like to be one. Or at least make rational decision about what I ingest. . . I'll let it sit for a bit, but I think I owe the universe a second song along these lines.

Fifty

This song was written for a 50th birthday party. I wrote most of the words earlier in the week and started recording yesterday around noon. I finished a little before 8pm. I wanted a "spirit in the sky" type sound, but ended up going in a completely different direction.

The "Fifty" background vocal continues throughout the entire song after the first chorus. I imagined it as sort of a sing along, though I don't think it worked out that way. The background vocals are too echoey to sing along with. They're more of an atmospheric thing.

I wish that the "Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba Ba" part in the chorus was "Dean and Barbara" instead. But I thought of that after I'd already sent out the song. Also, I recorded a short bridge after the second chorus, but ended up cutting it in order to get the song done in time for the party. Here's a summary of the tracks...

Drums:
Logic comes with loads of techno and two-step beats, but it doesn't have much in the way of rock and swing. I end up going to the same loops again and again. For this song I used the 60s Shuffle Drumset 01. I used this beat on Farmageddon and remembered liking it.  I set the tempo to 135bpm for this song, and as I continued recording I realized this drum sample just does not rock at this tempo. I messed around with it a bunch (chopped it up, distorted it, etc.) but finally ended up deleting most of it, and putting it way back in the mix. To me it just sounded stale so I thought it was better to go without drums for most of the song. I used tambourines and shakers to compensate.

Someday (when I don't live above my landlord) I'll buy a drum-set and learn to play.

Acoustic Guitar:
There are two stereo tracks of acoustic guitar. One is muted and dry, the other is strummed and very wet. I recorded both the same way: SM57 around the 12th fret and a SM7B at the bridge. The mics were 180 out of phase, so I inverted the SM57 at the pre-amp. I tuned the guitar down a whole step and put a capo on the second fret to make the strings a little more slack. I wanted something that sounded kind of slack, dead, and sloppy. I just wish I could have gotten that same feel in the drums.

Electric Guitar:
I have a complex relationship with distortion. I love the way it sounds, and hate the way it makes everything else sound. I'm always searching for fuzz that fits in the track. For this song, I tried to use my Zvex fuzz factory to dial in a fuzz sound. I found plenty of cool sounds, but I didn't like the way they sounded in the song. Plus the drums weren't rocking, so I ditched the fuzz guitar, and went for a clean sound. The guitar here is subtle, and really just shows up for a bit in the second chorus.

Zipper fuzz sound. So cool, but alas...

Wurlitzer:
I envisioned a more complete electric piano part, but I'm a poor keyboard player and I wanted to get the song done in time for the birthday party. I ended up just using it for the bass notes. I like the way it sounds as the bass. The notes are really uneven, and I think that gives it a cool sound.

Vocals:
I used my AKG 414 and SM7B for the back and fourth section at the beginning. I like the SM7B, but I managed to dial in a pretty wonky sound with the AKG. The background vocals are done with the SM7B. I used the presence boost and bass roll off for everything. If I had been thinking about it, I probably would have only used the presence boost on the lead vocal. But I was moving quickly and wasn't really thinking about it. . . There's lots of reverb and echo on the background vocals, and I was having fun singing harmony into all that cacophony. I expect I'll do a lot more of that in future songs.