January 21st, 2009
Today I'm talking about this song: Think Again.
Way back in 2002 (it feels weird to talk about 2002 as "way back" but, nevertheless, there it is ... ) I wrote a song called "Think Again" meant to be part of the CD project that my friend Ken and I were planning. We did get around to recording it, but there were some flaws with the song that, over time, made it too agonizingly troublesome for me to even listen to.
It's the case of a little guitar slip here, lack of proper compression on the vocals, a missed drum downbeat there, etc. ... nothing most people would notice (at least during the first listening), but every time I listened to the song, my agitation and embarrassment grew.
So it got dropped from consideration for the CD, along with some other songs, despite the fact that it had a set of lyrics I really really wanted Someone to hear. Oh well ... maybe it was for the best, after all (let it go, Porter, drop them bags already).
Except:
Over the Christmas break, I did something about it. I went back to the original recording of the drums, and sampled the best-sounding verse, best-sounding chorus, and a few stray drum hits in the break. I pieced them together into a long set of drum loops and was able to completely re-create the original structure of the song from those components. Although, I must confess, it now sounds a bit like a drum machine; the loss of some soul is the price I paid for genericizing and regulating Ken's original drum performance. (Sorry, Ken, you can keep the original version of the song in your MP3 player if you like.)
Then I re-recorded the whole song thus:
| Track No. | Instrument | Positioning (in stereo spectrum) |
| 1 | Mixdown of drums | Left |
| 2 | Mixdown of drums | Right |
| 3 | Rhythm guitar (this track carries pretty much the whole song) | Centre |
| 4 | Bass | Centre |
| 5 | Bitchin' guitar during vocal breaks 1 | Full left |
| 6 | Bitchin' guitar during vocal breaks 2 | Full right |
| 7 | Piano | Left |
| 8 | Piano | Right |
| 9 | Vocals | Slightly left |
| 10 | Vocals | Slightly right |
And there you have it: Someone's basement recording effort. :-)
Since I'm playing everything here, except the original source material I built the drum loops from, it does lack a bit of interaction between the players. But I can now listen to it without cringing at it and scrabbling to turn it off, because the performance flaws of the original are gone. The playing is pretty tight, well-balanced, maybe not virtuosic, but solid.
Too late, of course: It didn't make it onto the CD, but sometimes these songs I write are just for me anyway ...
Here's the sequel: HaHa
On the unbelievably small off-chance you're interested, here are the lyrics:
Think Again
If you're feeling down
Or feeling kinda blue
Don't come looking
for me
To show you what to do
Anticipating from me
The worst that I
can do
Well, I don't know what I'm doing
And neither do you
The way I hold my coffee
The way I smile at you
How I close the
doors
Or how I tie my shoes
They don't have special meanings
But
meanings are all you see
Well to me they all mean nothing
At least
nothing about me
And I'm not out to get you
But I can't ease your pain
You think
that I can help you
Well, you should think again
You know, I can't sit and listen
I don't know who is wrong
There's a lot of things I'm missing
So I won't play along
It wouldn't
be a favour
To let you think I'm wrong
Because it makes us both look
stupid
So leave me alone
And I'm not out to get you
But I can't ease your pain
You think
that I can help you
Well, you should think again
To trade consideration
And "fairness" for you
Just to gain good
feelings for me
Is an awful thing to do
I thought that you would know
that
Because you know a thing or two
Well, this isn't rocket science
So why should I help you?
'Cause I'm not out to get you
And I can't ease your pain
You
think that I can help you
Well, I think you're insane!
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