I’ve embarked on a collaboration with award winning singer/songwriter Eddie Tadross. We decided to create a few songs in different styles to see which might be a good match for us to do more of in the future. We played around with a few ideas until we settled on the three to develop. The first was a minimalist acoustic guitar and drums idea we eventually titled “I Never Knew”. The second was “Red Rose Blue”, an electro blues rock track that mixes modern DJ/remix-type production with a rough and ready bluesy garage rock sound (70/30 leaning to garage rock). The last, which is still a work-in-progress, is a moody electronica track that has melodic ideas and some lyrics but nothing finalized.
“I Never Knew” started with a few laid back acoustic guitar chords and a sparse kick and rim shot beat. The lyrics Eddie came up with are about a moment of clarity in which the “missing piece” of the singer’s thus far elusive happiness is realized. We were intent in keeping that “clarity” feeling in the musical arrangement as well. The challenge was to keep the track extra minimal but still have it sound “finished”. We hit many dead ends on how to achieve that balance. The existing material seemed to interconnect well but was too skeletal and was missing “vibe”. Also the song was needing a textural element that would “glue” together what was there as well as some more pulsing rhythmic elements to push it forward.
We struggled to find the right material to add without complicating the track. Eventually we stumbled upon adding vibraphone and celesta. These new layers were less intrusive than other material we tried. It’s almost as if we had our own moment of clarity like Eddie’s lyrics talked about. It took the song to a dreamier place emotionally but we decided it was good and went with it. The mallet arpeggios also helped lift the chorus and push the track forward. Here is “I Never Knew”:
“Red Rose Blue” came a lot easier and incorporated a happy accident that contributed greatly to the final version (more on this later). I had a partially completed blues rock instrumental with tons of attitude and some production tricks/hooks. The most obvious being the intro hook that is a paring of slide guitar glissando and a guitar sound “power down” (like a record being stopped by hand). Other sonic hooks had processed harmonica/saxes/synths blended together to blur reality and create strange and unique blues riffs.
Eddie’s lyric, melody, and chords worked right into it and also had many cool flairs. My favorite one being the lyric repetition in the verse where the music stops and the vocals get quieter and quieter and trails off (“Louisiana’s state line, Louisiana’s…”).
The vocal performance that Eddie delivered was great, but it only truly blended in with the track when we treated it with tape echo (nod to Elvis’ Sun recordings) and distortion to connect it with the saturated sound of the track.
The echo and distortion treatment itself was a happy accident. Eddie did two whole takes straight thru the song that sounded great but I realized after that I had set up the microphone backwards (!) and the recording quality was less than ideal because the more sensitive side of the mic was facing the opposite way! I didn’t want to re-record the vocals because the performances were so grabbing so after feeling dejected for a few minutes I started messing with different distortion/tape saturators to better the sound and realized it was just what the vocal needed in the first place, correct mic placement or not! Here’s “Red Rose Blue”:
Our work-in-progress electronic track has mallets (celesta, vibraphone, and marimba) similar to “I Never Knew” but with LFO filtered electric guitars, electric bass and electronic drums. It’s midtempo, introspective, mysterious and moody. Initally while Eddie was trying to come up with melody/lyric ideas I had the arrangement set up in a very expected verse/pre chorus/chorus format but it seemed to be stiffling creativity. Eddie suggested we make an arrangement with a less commercial format that followed more what the music wanted to do than how I thought it should go. After we did that the melodic/lyric material seemed to flow more easily. So, we’ll see how it goes…here’s the instrumental in it’s current form:
Eddie, it’s been a pleasure so far!
