Like A Bird In A Maze

I took some time off from writing this past month. At first I was just procrastinating as usual, but then I really enjoyed the break. I feel like I have a bit of perspective now on the music I've been writing this past year.

Plus my wife, Deirdre, just defended her PhD so we've had more time to hang out together --which has been awesome!

This weekend I decided to start writing for TWT again. I browsed through the list of open song requests and picked this one:

What is your song idea?Previous request, Space Whales, was so good that I'm compelled to ask again.
My friend is writing a Metroidish 8-bit style videogame with a snail for hero, which has a maze room you have to shoot and break open the path to get to an item, which has no enemies in it.
Her bird enemies fly through all objects like Medusa heads in Castlevania, so I joked "that room with the breakable maze to the helix piece, you could have birds fly through there too. since they can already fly through the ground why not brick walls too."
Anyways can you write a song about Birds In The Maze Room. Here's the cover art:
http://i51.tinypic.com/w01hyo.png 

describe your song in one word birdsinthemazeroom

I had started this song last month, but abandoned it. Originally I was writing 8-bit style video game music... but then I looked a little closer at the request and realized I was supposed to write a song about Birds In The Maze Room, not music for Birds In The Maze Room. Doah.

screenshot of birds in the maze room

This was my original take:


Deirdre suggested that the song be in a 50s style similar to Rocking Robin. I used her idea as a starting point and came up with a simple guitar riff in a 1-4-5 progression. I recorded the riff on an acoustic guitar using my new pair of Rhode NT5 small diaphragm condensers. I wasn't wild about the sound so I ran it through an octave effect and fuzz and looped it about 4 times. I wasn't sure what to do next so I just added stuff: a second strummed acoustic, a synth bass, harpsichord, two tambourines, and two drum beats. It was a mess.

Video is glad to be songwriting again. She naps, I rock.

I spent the next couple hours muting tracks, planning when each instrument should drop in and out. I decided to start by featuring the strummed acoustic guitar, then moving to the fuzzed riff, then featuring the bass and harpsichord, then going back to the acoustic. Changing the instrumentation gave it some sense of forward motion, which it needed since the song was just verse-verse-verse-verse.  Starting and ending with the acoustic guitar at least gave it some sense of return and resolution.

I jotted down some words and recorded the vocals through my SM7. The lead vocal has a slap echo and a bit of distortion. The background vocals are dry and in three part harmony. Pretty slapdash overall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Here's the finished song (which sounds nothing like Rocking Robin).