#68: Music, scaffolding, and a ferry ride

My Berth

[Note: audio below]

This week was spent exploring synth sounds, re-cabling and vacuuming the studio (no sign of the wee gecko). I also read a bunch of manuals I should’ve read a long time ago, and changed the strings of every guitar in sight. When I wasn’t doing all of that I was trying to add lyrics to some unaccomodating music. Of course, that last item accounts for all the other busy-ness. Throughout the week, every failed attempt sent me fleeing from the desk in frustration. It was made worse by the fact that I very much like the music and want it to be a song.

This is often how it goes. The music pulls me forward. It says, “look how close I am to being a new song. I’ve got everything you need: chords, melody, dynamics, a solid guitar part. C’mon, get it together. Write some lyrics already!” In the case of the song Transit, for example, this went on for a few years. The music—progression, melody, structure—was ready to go, fully formed. It felt like every syllable had an assigned place before any lyrics were ever written. It drove me nuts, but I kept trying. Then some really bad lyrics attached themselves and would not let go. It had to do with an insane ferry boat captain by the name of McPhee who steers the ship not to the other side, but out to sea, where there isn’t any other side, at least not one a ferry boat could reach. Then I saw that the lyric I had written was a metaphor for the lyric itself: boat and lyrics at sea, floating around, going nowhere, wondering who’s in charge. It took another couple of years for McPhee to loosen his grip on that melody.

This song is nothing like Transit, which always seemed to call for a long narrative. This one is a pop song, maybe a love song. The music is uptempo, and slightly outside of my comfort zone harmonically. Something tells me it wants to be in the second person singular, and that some sadness has befallen the person being addressed. It’s there in the music. But there’s also buoyancy in the music, as if it wants me to say, everything’s going to be alright. But it won’t be alright. I know this. Don’t ask me how. I just do.

Words can sometimes feel like scaffolding: prepositions, articles, nouns, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. It’s a lot. All of that syntax seems extraneous and clumsy. I wish I could just sing la, la, la or random syllables whose only purpose is that they sound good with the music. I’m tempted to go find a text, record myself reading each syllable, throw it all into a sampler, chop it up, randomize, then play it back on a keyboard to the melody.

It’s not that there’s anything particularly word-resistant about this music. It’s just a little pop song. Maybe that’s the problem. It wants to be simple and straightforward. That requires some settling down, some quiet. Simple can be tricky. I need to get out of town and away from all of these cables. I’m thinking a metaphorical ferry ride might be just the thing.

Finally, here’s a recent rough mix of Tactical. We’ve been trying some stuff. And if you enjoy these audio uploads, please consider becoming a paid subscriber.

---

Tactical (7/14/24)

---