One of the joys of music-making is getting lost in sound. With digital recording, even the hobbyist has access to an amazing palette of sonic possibilities. As someone who isn't a pro but probably cares a bit too much to be described as a hobbyist, it's been an exhilarating experience for me to travel through strange new sounds, seeking out new songs, foolishly going where many have gone before.
The best parts are the "Aha!" moments--times where you dial in a sound and realize you're creating something new, at least in relation to what you've done before. When I started the piece below, I played around with a riff in my favorite plug-in--IK Multimedia's Amplitube--dropping the pitch a full octave and layering all kinds of nasty distortion on it. The different sections are all very simple chord progressions--something about that deep, crunchy guitar called for really basic chords--and for some reason the combination of the sound and the chords resulted in me creating a structure that was eight minutes long.
Good lord. I hope I can make something out of this.
I started piling on guitars. This is my solution for many things when I'm recording: addition by addition. Pretty soon it was clear I was building a guitar symphony. In the spirit of experimentation, I added the foundation--the bass and programmed drums--last. (Actually, it was in the spirit of laziness. I left the grunt work for later.) Eventually I decided this mini-symphony needed an actual orchestra section--brass--and bought IK's Miroslav Philharmonik for that purpose. For the time being, I nicknamed the song"Bloody Spill"--a nod to the cool connecting pieces between the songs on My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and the beautifully layered guitar parts of Built to Spill, especially on the transcendent "Carry the Zero."
Before I wrote what I eventually called "Why Only Six?" (no special meaning--I just liked how it sounded), creating something that sounded borderline epic, that could sustain its length and not overstay its welcome, wasn't in my eye-line. Not that I hadn't written songs as long (or almost) or that I hadn't tried to write something epic. I just hadn't gotten all the way there before. The target was too far off in the distance. "Why Only Six?" put the target right in front of my face, close enough to head butt.
Separate Leg Stretching was my Bikram Yoga "Aha!" pose. The picture above? It's not a quick little pop song you bang out in fifteen minutes. It's a mini-symphony. When you get into the pose, the Bikram dialogue goes something like: "First, your legs will stretch. Then your hips will stretch. Then your back will stretch. then your neck will stretch." Your arms don't stretch, but that's just because your fingers are under your feet, and you're pulling like hell on them. During my first classes, I would see people touch their heads to their mats and think, "I'm never going to do that. No way."
Six months later, I did it.
Like "Why Only Six?", it was a process of discovery, only it went in the proper order. First, the foundation: the legs. It was a long time before I could take separate my feet far enough to do the posture adequately. I had my hands under my feet, but it was weeks before I realized that the teacher's command to "pull on your heels" meant I should, you know, actually pull on my heels. From there, my back started extending, and I realized I could stretch my neck a little, and suddenly, holy crap! That's the floor! Two inches from my eyeballs!
And just like that, after hearing what my teachers were saying, after making incremental gains--a quarter inch here, a half inch there--I brushed my forehead against the mat. And at that precise moment, the brass section kicked in and carried me through to the end.
Why Only Six? by scottbishop
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