HITTING A CREATIVE DEAD END / never hesitate to EXPERIMENT!

About 2 months ago I wrote some lyrics based on interview quotes by John Coltrane (https://steemit.com/poetry/@grobens/jazz-poetry-a-verse-is-a-jazz-phrase) and I've been working on the music ever since. Today, I finally feel the song is finished so I would like to share with you just how it came about.

(this is a pavilion during winter at night time in my hometown of Koprivnica. I think this photo really captures the atmosphere of the song, walking around the streets alone at night...)

I was struggling with writing music for these lyrics quite some time. I simply couldn't decide on what instruments to use, how to shape the sound of it, what to do with the structure, what emotions the music should evoke and how to sing the melody with the lyrics varying so much in length. I always like experimenting and trying different unconventional approaches but here I felt I hit a dead end. Facing a wall, I sat down and played one of my favorite albums, ''Ocean Songs'' by the Dirty Three. Halfway through the album it struck me! I wanted the kind of atmosphere they've achieved, only a bit more pop like and with vocals!

A friend of mine and a fellow musician bought a broken cello. It was missing one of the strings and a tuning peg and she left it at my house one night after we stayed up late recording some music. I don't know how to play the cello and I've tried experimenting with it in the past by playing in as an upright bass but I wasn't satisfied both with the sound of it as well as my playing abilities so I just left it there to collect dust. Looking at it again, I wondered what could happen if I use an alternative tuning and try to play it as a weird version of an upright guitar, whatever that might be. I tuned the strings into a C - F - C tuning and started to play around with simple chords. Listening to the Dirty Three I also thought ''why not play a simple melody on it?''

(this is my friend Tena, playing the cello with a missing string; the tuning peg wasn't completely broken at the time)

It was time to decide on the rhythm. The lyrics reference the drum so I thought I should place the drum at a specific place in the song so it would emphasize the lyrics. As I wanted the song to have this ''smooth-walking-alone-in-the-streets-late-at-night'' feel to it, I kept the percussion minimal in the first part of the song. I sampled some finger snapping and short hi-hat punches, just enough for a groove to start happening but avoiding the sound of the drum. That way, when the drums hit at the same time the lyrics mention them for the first time, you give more meaning to them and they become more than just an instrument used for rhythm. It's all about trying to find a perfect spot for something minimal to happen with a maximal effect.

Since I played chords on the cello, I used the guitar as a filler rather than a lead instrument. A melody here, a melody there, some reverbed chords to help ''open up'' the song and give it some stereo space and a groove to replace the absence of the drum. I used my old Stagg SG model because it can sound both clear and bright and dark and dirty and because it's really easy to mute strings with your hand on a SG model (unlike a jazzmaster I usually use). The SG is the first guitar I ever bought and I feel bad I don't use it as much as I did before, especially because it's surprisingly easy to play and has a great Seymour Duncan bridge pick-up I've installed years ago and it doesn't have a tremolo but if you slightly bend the horn, you get the same effect.

I recorded the vocals in a few takes. It took some time to figure out the phrasing and to get my voice to sound as clear as possible (too much cigarettes and cold drinks that day + it was very late) but eventually I got my voice to work and the vocals to sit in place. When I woke up the next morning, I recorded a bunch of very high falsetto backing vocals because they're meant to be sang by the female members of my band so I sometimes sing in my highest possible voice just so they would get an idea of what they will sing on the track in the future. And that was it - from facing a dead end to a finished track, with a little help from my favorite music and experimental approaches to sound recording and composing.

The lesson? IT'S ALWAYS A GOOD IDEA TO TRY WHATEVER COMES TO MIND WHILE RECORDING AND COMPOSING. DON'T EVER HESITATE TO EXPERIMENT! Enjoy! :)