Song: Turn It On

Turn It On
Mix 4
February 18, 2006
[2:23]


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Lyrics:

Everyday I wonder how living would be
If you gave a little more than a damn for me;
You've got pictures of your friends pinned up on the wall,
And am I the biggest, the biggest fool of them all?

Come on and turn it on...

Well I get so lost when I don't know where I stand,
But then I don't need no one here to hold my hand,
And so the news starts spreading around;
If you've got a minute then I'll show you just what I've found.

Come on and turn it on...

Though I don't know what I want, I'll tell you one thing I've got,
I've got a handkerchief round my neck,
And I'm ready to go with just a knock on the door,
And then you won't ever have to think of me no more.

Come on and turn it on...

Influences: They Might Be Giants, The Strokes.
Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar, Palms & Thighs.

During my last week of finals in December 2005, I woke up one morning with the words and riff of the refrain to this song repeating OVER and OVER in my head. I kept mulling it over while getting out of bed, and in the shower I started to think about lyrics that would fit as verses to go with the refrain. The first thing that came to mind was a line from "Spooky", a song by Classics IV. Just then I thought about how sometimes They Might Be Giants would incorporate bits of lyrics from popular songs into their own songs (such as in the song "The Biggest One" which borrows lines from the song "I Will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor), and I figured I might as well try that out and see what happens.

I ended up borrowing lines from "Spooky" for what became the second verse and following it closely by a less-obvious borrowing from Jet's song "Get What You Need". Then I started working out the first verse and managed to borrow in a line (and a rhyme) from "Take Me To The River" by Talking Heads. Finally, I borrowed a little bit out of the song "Geek Stink Breath" by Green Day to introduce the third verse. However, despite borrowing lyrics and, to some extent, vocal melody from those songs, I managed to kind of rearrange their meanings from their original contexts and combine them with my own lyrics into a theme of getting tough on a failing relationship. (Autobiographical? Hardly.)

I recorded this version of the track as a demo to the band I was playing with during my last semester at William and Mary, called The Adventures of..., A.K.A. "Bro Party". (We didn't ever actually perform the number.) There are three recordings of my Dean Acoustic/Electric Guitar (plugged in as an electric) in the track, one covering the low end with palm-muted power chords, and the other two providing more rhythm and chords. Both the foreground and background vocals were recorded against a slowed-down version of the instrumentation and pitched up one semitone to get a different sound. To round out the track I did some leg-slapping for percussion.

Not much more to say. Don't sue me.

Instrumental: The News

The News
Mix 8
August 27, 2005
[1:16]


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Influences: Super Smash Bros. Melee, Wing Commander: Privateer, Nine Inch Nails.
Instruments: MIDI Strings, MIDI Xylophone, MIDI Tubular Bell, MeanBeat Percussion Samples, Kramer Focus 111S.

After deciding to go onto WCWM as a DJ for my senior year (2005-2006) at William and Mary, I had every intention of making bogus news reports for the beginning of every weekly show. Indeed, so inspired by my friend Andrew, I had prepared a number of full-length newspaper-style articles by plugging real news articles into MegaHAL or cutting them up physically or digitally and scrambling them. However, laziness got the best of me and I never delivered any reports on my show, but I did create this nice backing track for that very purpose.

When conceptualizing this music, I had two elements in mind: First, the newsy music, for which I had a basic model in my head, which was influenced by the menu screen music from Super Smash Bros. Melee, with the weird pitch-changing tubular bell as a small touch influenced by ambient music from Wing Commander: Privateer. Then, after some guitar-feedback build-up, there is the climax, for which I considered the drum solo in Nine Inch Nails's "The Perfect Drug" to be an influence, even though it doesn't really sound that much like it. Since I'm not really an electric guitar virtuoso by any stretch, I had to play the lead guitar more slowly, five semitones lower in pitch than the backing track, and then I pitched it up in the mix.

Below, for your enjoyment, are the aforementioned news articles (seven total).

Demo: Because (Demo 3)

Because
Demo 3
August 5, 2004
[3:14]


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Lyrics:

If the light from the window is making you weep,
The sidewalks are bare and you're struggling to sleep,
Then why is it some people smile at the dawn?
It's all clear to me but I'm not letting on.

The world's turning east but the wind's to the west,
And in all of your time here you couldn't have guessed
If the sun is so bright why the sky is still blue;
Well, I know the answer but I'm not telling you.

If you feel like you're wasting the time of your life,
You tally your days in the wall with a knife,
Then how come the good times are fresh in your brain?
Don't ask me to say when the cause is so plain.

And why is it everyone acts as they do?
I'd tell you why but I haven't a clue.

They say that today is the first of the rest of your life,
And the last of the life that you've known;
And you can sleep in and hide,
You can make it outside,
Take what you see and then make it your own.

So why is it everyone acts as they do?
I'd tell you why but I haven't a clue.

You see that today is the first of the rest of your life,
The last of the life that you've lived;
And you can stare straight ahead
Or look backwards instead,
But if you like what you get,
Then we'd love what you give.

Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

At some point during summer 2004 I came up with the vague idea of turning the cliché phrase — "Today is the first day of the rest of your life." — into some kind of song lyric. I ended up deciding to tack it onto Because, for which I had recorded two previous demos a year before.

Taking a fresh look at the song, I ended up changing the vocal style and the guitar style to something much softer. I also changed the song's key from C to E (played the same way, using a capo on the fourth fret of the guitar).

In this version, the theme of the song is even more solidly established — first, narrowing in on the depressive aspect of the first three verses by removing the old final verse; leaving intact the subsequent admission of cluelessness; and finally, appending the new verses to close on a positive (albeit still somewhat clueless) note.

Boston Cream Pie

Boston Cream Pie
(w/ Ray N)
June 23, 2003
[1:00]


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Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

Inspired by a Peanuts comic which I had recently scanned for my brother, Greg, this is one of many recordings in which Ray and I practiced "reverse backmasking", a process in which we would listen to a phrase that had been turned backwards, write down how it was pronounced, say the backwards phrase into the microphone and then reverse that. The end result was usually a strange, retarded sounding version of the original forward phrase, with ambient backwards noises in the background.

At the beginning of this track, Ray is demonstrating a phonetic palindrome with the phrase "Oh yeah, aye wah", which sounds roughly the same forwards and backwards. In the middle, Ray is noodling some slide guitar and reciting the comic strip forwards, starting at the rightmost frame and moving leftward.

Demo: Windy Night (Demo 2)

Windy Night
Demo 2
June 10, 2003
[5:02]


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Lyrics:

Windy night, stars and the sky
Moon is bright, look up and cry
Eyes are grey
Await the day

Shadows move behind the trees
As the ground begins to freeze
Auburn hair
Floats through the air

Drifting down among the leaves
Gazing there, back to the breeze
Stand for a while
Tender a crimson smile

Turn around and let it pass
To the yard, lay on the grass
Shades are drawn
Sleep till the wild red dawn

Instruments: Dean Exotica QSE Acoustic/Electric Guitar.

This one's still pretty rough. First demo with the completed lyrics.  The last verse introduces a temporary key change, and the ending leaves off the wild strumming that was in the previous demo.  Vocals are still kind of shoddy.

Demo: Windy Night (Demo 1)

Windy Night
Demo 1
May 31, 2003
[3:00]


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Lyrics:

Alright. Here's a little demo, show you what's going on.

Ferry night, stel—
Oops, wrong song, try that again.

Windy night, stars and the sky
Moon is bright, look up and cry
Eyes are grey
Await the day

Shadows move behind the trees...

Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

This is my third songwriting attempt, after Everytime and Because. I had a cold when I recorded this, which doesn't necessarily excuse my utterly untrained voice...

The first thing I have to point out about this song is that my original plan was to write it in a constructed language — one which I was sort of designing on the fly, with vocabulary extrapolated from common Indo-European roots, and intended to look/sound a lot like English (note that, stunningly, the word for "night" is night). I eventually ran out of patience and just wrote the lyrics in English — but, having just switched over, I was confused enough to start singing the wrong words before correcting myself.

So, now that we've established that this song is not about fairies, what else can we glean from this demo? I actually just recorded this so I wouldn't forget what I was doing, and so I could let my friend Ray take a listen (which is why I'm talking to the microphone — I don't usually do that... much).

The last half minute of jumbled strumming actually represents the original source of the music — a little two-chord strumming jam I made up while I was still taking my beginning guitar class a couple years earlier.

Demo: Because (Demo 2)

Because
Demo 2
May 19, 2003
[2:22]


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Lyrics:

If the light from the window is making you weep,
The sidewalks are bare and you're struggling to sleep,
Then why is it some people smile at the dawn?
It's all clear to me but I'm not letting on.

The world's turning east but the wind's to the west,
And in all of your time here you couldn't have guessed
If the sun is so bright why the sky is still blue;
Well, I know the answer but I'm not telling you.

If you feel like you're wasting the time of your life,
You tally your days in the wall with a knife,
Then how come the good times are fresh in your brain?
Don't ask me to say when the cause is so plain.

When a girl and her man fall in love and take flight,
And her friends left behind think it couldn't be right,
If you feel so deserted, why care for them still?
I know the reason, and someday you will.

And why is it everyone acts as they do?
I'd tell you why but I haven't a clue.

Influences: Syd Barrett.
Instruments: Martin Backpacker.

The day after recording the first demo, I made a few changes — I inserted the third verse, and made a slight change to the wording of the last. The third verse fits well with the first two, and helps establish a more solid theme, which is apparently about living with depression — although I wasn't really feeling depressed when I wrote it.

As should be apparent, my vocals at this point are neither pretty nor very well settled. So, if it hurts too bad, you can always stop the audio. This holds true for most of my early demos :)