CategoriesWith Chooklyn nearly completed, I figured I'd continue to write on stuff about the new album.
The other day I was digging through some scrap paper and I found my first handwritten draft of Dots Make Lines / Lines Make Sound on the back of some ATM slips and receipts. (Listen to the promo mix of the song.)
Dots is about the experience of recording at 6ft. Studios in Chicago. I reference the sounds of the studio: music coming out of the monitors, noises from the space upstairs, our recording mascot Floyd barking and other aural sounds from orifaces that shall remain unmentioned. In the chorus, I make mention of how sound is made visual in comics by using symbols. I also reference how swear words are cleaned up by symbols in cartoons.
But enough about the "meaning" behind my lyrics. What I find interesting about this is to look back at what I started with to see what I ended up with. Lemme just point out some of the more interesting changes for our readers. (Hi Justice. Hi Bram.)
The working title it turns out was Dots Make Lines / Lines Mean Sound. I changed "mean" to "make" because it make the chorus easier for the listener to sing along to.
I started with "And the air is a thick, thick, cloud" and then tried "And the air is a thick, white cloud." White sounded too nice for what I was describing, and so I went with "black" instead. "Black" also sounded closer to "thick," which I thought flowed better. (What am I desrcibing? Three days of drunken recording sessions.)
At one point I tried out, "There's a noise / Oh boy / and an Omnichord," which I changed. But now that I read this, I wish I hadn't.
I added more specific pop culture references to the lyrics, such as "Mickey Mouse" and "Dick Tracy," after originally trying the kinda dull line "cartoon's mouth." I also toyed around with what grammatical symbols to reference for swearing. I started with "an at sign," but when I sang that it sounded like one word, "annatsen." So I went with the clearer "asterix."
I had a little trouble coming up with the last part of the chorus: the "dirty mess" part. I didn't come up with that until we started recording and as you can see I tried "The naughty bits," which didn't really make sense and then "The dirty slips." I think "mess" was the way to go.
It took awhile for me to come up with what beer to reference. I had originally "The low noise / starts to blow air / and I think it smells like Becks in here," but that line was too long for the music that had been written. So I cut of the "air" and then asked the band for a beer that rhymed with "blow" and Bram suggested Michelob. We really only tend to drink gallons of Bud Light while we're recording, but I call poetic license.
Lastly, I had originally written the end sing along part as, "It's the audio / Oh boy / Another noise made by Roy" in reference to one of the "fifth members" of BS, Roy Park. (In fact, Roy plays keyboards on the new album.) And I even recorded the song with that line. But as I was singing, I adlibbed "Floyd," who also appears on Chooklyn. The producer decided that Floyd was the way to go and so he only used only the lines with me singing about Floyd. Good choice I think.
[ 1 comment ] ( 113 views ) permalink The other day I was digging through some scrap paper and I found my first handwritten draft of Dots Make Lines / Lines Make Sound on the back of some ATM slips and receipts. (Listen to the promo mix of the song.)
Dots is about the experience of recording at 6ft. Studios in Chicago. I reference the sounds of the studio: music coming out of the monitors, noises from the space upstairs, our recording mascot Floyd barking and other aural sounds from orifaces that shall remain unmentioned. In the chorus, I make mention of how sound is made visual in comics by using symbols. I also reference how swear words are cleaned up by symbols in cartoons.
But enough about the "meaning" behind my lyrics. What I find interesting about this is to look back at what I started with to see what I ended up with. Lemme just point out some of the more interesting changes for our readers. (Hi Justice. Hi Bram.)
The working title it turns out was Dots Make Lines / Lines Mean Sound. I changed "mean" to "make" because it make the chorus easier for the listener to sing along to.
I started with "And the air is a thick, thick, cloud" and then tried "And the air is a thick, white cloud." White sounded too nice for what I was describing, and so I went with "black" instead. "Black" also sounded closer to "thick," which I thought flowed better. (What am I desrcibing? Three days of drunken recording sessions.)
At one point I tried out, "There's a noise / Oh boy / and an Omnichord," which I changed. But now that I read this, I wish I hadn't.
I added more specific pop culture references to the lyrics, such as "Mickey Mouse" and "Dick Tracy," after originally trying the kinda dull line "cartoon's mouth." I also toyed around with what grammatical symbols to reference for swearing. I started with "an at sign," but when I sang that it sounded like one word, "annatsen." So I went with the clearer "asterix."
I had a little trouble coming up with the last part of the chorus: the "dirty mess" part. I didn't come up with that until we started recording and as you can see I tried "The naughty bits," which didn't really make sense and then "The dirty slips." I think "mess" was the way to go.
It took awhile for me to come up with what beer to reference. I had originally "The low noise / starts to blow air / and I think it smells like Becks in here," but that line was too long for the music that had been written. So I cut of the "air" and then asked the band for a beer that rhymed with "blow" and Bram suggested Michelob. We really only tend to drink gallons of Bud Light while we're recording, but I call poetic license.
Lastly, I had originally written the end sing along part as, "It's the audio / Oh boy / Another noise made by Roy" in reference to one of the "fifth members" of BS, Roy Park. (In fact, Roy plays keyboards on the new album.) And I even recorded the song with that line. But as I was singing, I adlibbed "Floyd," who also appears on Chooklyn. The producer decided that Floyd was the way to go and so he only used only the lines with me singing about Floyd. Good choice I think.
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