Albumlet No.1 – Fermenting
To those who find it interesting to hear the stories behind the music. And for the record, go to my bandcamp page.
The “albumlet.” After recording a couple songs right when I moved to Austin, I realized that I could easily wind up making music that’s all over the place if I kept recording song after song. So I decided to start doing songs in chunks, where I would take some ideas and work with them over multiple songs. That way, I could get deeper into ideas and refine them, coming up with better music as a result.
Fermenting started with these ideas: use held organ chords, busy drums, parallel 7ths or 9ths in a melody, and bottle blow. I then came up with four topics for the songs’ lyrics to be about. Halfway through recording everything I realized I had two songs that prominently featured sleep, so I changed one of them from sleep and friends to food and friends.
I had just read about the idea of a “concept” for an album, and liked the idea of having a unifying idea. The songs I had come up with seemed to fit together well in as songs about sitting and stewing in some emotion. Either that, or literally stewing (as in: food). Using bottles as instruments led me to the word “Fermenting.”
Nothing Better
This song began by fiddling with half-diminished chords, and once I tried to sing with it, I realized it was more blues than jazz. I tried to arrange the instruments so they would come in and out more, to vary the texture of the verses somewhat, and make the song feel like it progresses more organically. The words appeal to socializing in a way that’s more genuine than friday night bar hopping. Also, I am surprised there are not more songs written about food. As the last song written, I deviated from some of the musical seeds of the other songs (no parallel 7ths, no bottles). The result? What I think is the best song on the albumlet.
Keep It Asleep
I originally wanted to write a song, in response to so many songs that express feelings, that deliberately said “I’m not going to express any feelings right now.” But I moved away from the “joke” song to the more interesting (and real) difficulty of navigating when to tell someone you love them. This song started with the words and the music came after to support them. I struggled with the verse instrumentation and still think it’s pretty weak.
ImPatient
A sort-of pun like “I’m patient” and “I am a patient” and just being antsy and impatient. When I was younger and had one of my annual runny-nose colds that kept me home from school for a day, I wanted to write a song about being sick. But a cough and a runny nose isn’t that compelling. Instead, years later, I have now come up with this song, which is a bit more intense than any experience I’ve ever had, but being sick or constrained to a healing process is frustrating no matter what. Also, if bottles were easier to tune and play in tune, I would have used them a bit to double the verse organ part. I had partly resolved to not use distorted electric guitar on any of the songs, partly to let the organ have a greater role but also because so many people play electric guitar and know the sounds in such detail that my half-assed approach could wind up sounding lame. But there was no other way to get the punch of that descending line without it. I think this is the second-best song on the albumlet.
Stuck
This was the first song written and recorded, and was very true to the original ideas of the albumlet. After writing the words, I heard on Gospel 1060 (AM radio) a preacher use the phrase “kids having kids” and was glad there really was someone out there saying literally the same thing. Also, as I was brainstorming lyrics, they were originally going to be very policy-oriented and logical. These fit better.
Overall Performance
I spent extra time recording this albumlet than originally intended because I realized I needed to actually start practicing my singing if I want people I don’t know to give my music a chance. The singing is still nowhere near perfect, but I needed to move on, so I settled with these final takes. I’m also focusing a lot more on timing and the groove between instruments that I play, which is not easy, but that’s a good challenge.
The cover art is a photo of a part of my backyard with a bottle sitting in it. I photoshopped an image of a paper with FERMENTING written on it for the title. Since this is the first albumlet, I had to do all the background setup to make bandcamp work as a host for the music, which was a bit of a pain. But now it’s done and the next uploads will be way easier.
In general, releasing any kind of album makes you feel like an official musician. You spent the time, listened to every note and every measure at least fifty times, scrutinized the mix, thought long and hard about how each word is phrased, on and on and on. And then you package it all together and set it out into the world (only to have the compression algorithm on bandcamp seem to make it distort weird at times, argh). Am I 100% satisfied with it? Definitely not. But everything you do is practice until suddenly it’s not anymore, and people want you to do what you’ve been doing.
The coolest part though is that you can’t unmake recordings. Once you finish, they will always have been made. For the rest of your life. It’s kind of an incentive to make more. After a while you’re like, “whoa, I made all that?”
Finally, a teaser: the next one will be titled “Stick Figures.”
