New vocals today for The Invisible Man and Light Blue Evening, two old songs that I first released under The Harlequin Kings name, but was never happy enough with them. I think they're good enough to get out there somehow, yet, they're never quite right! I think the very fact that I've listened to them a million times, and recorded about 50 vocal takes has destroyed my vision of the music. They were also in a bad choice of keys; it's really only been since I've started to write new vocal music this year that I've understood how crucial the central pitch and key is to the tone of the song - not merely the ease of singing. Generally the higher pitch the better too. Female voices are easier to mix than male, and of male voices, the higher the better.
Anyway, it's been a frustrating day of listening and tweaking the same old songs time and time and not being satisfied. I need to rationally consider why, and if I can't, perform random experiments to see if they can sound better or worse. Of course, it's all good practice; the key thing is to constantly hammer away. Often art is like a crossword, filling in the easy bits, which then help fathom out the medium parts, which then lead to clues to the difficult parts.
Perhaps here I need some sort of melody to match the vocal lead, the backing is perhaps too spartan, or I need a guide song or two that can be an inspiration.
In other news, I've submitted the new artwork for my Finnegans Judgement EP. Work on the new Bites of Greatness and Arcangel covers continues at a much slower pace; those are largely done and need a few days of away from my eyes for me to observe them anew. No rush there.
Last night I thought of song types, and strategies to make great songs. I don't have one answer; the target must always move, there are no right answers in art and it's bad pracice to only work to one philosophy - that leads to stagnation. I considered melody. Most Beatles songs are very melodic, you can play the tune on a piano, and, ideally, get an idea of what the song is about or like from that melody; yet, consider how the string production of Eleanor Rigby changes the mood, and that was added after the song was written. I often, now, put image and mood at the centre, and build sounds and timbre to paint that image and mood, rather than use melody. This is a stark change to how I used to write instrumental music, which is usually very melodic in my case. For that, I played notes to fit chords and made pretty tunes.
It made me consider which is best. Generally it's nice to have a song with a melody, and perhaps The Beatles were popular for that reason, yet there are many pop hits without much of a melody. 'Don't You Want Me' by The Human League has very little melody, and what is there is in the main synth riff at the start, which you could argue is the key part that makes people like the tune.
It seems that the battle is between melody and timbre to create mood. Of course now, any sound can easily become part of a song, and this was a relatively new innovation in the 60s where most sounds had to be made live using musical instruments. The Beatles did use tapes and odd sounds a few times and did write some songs with little melody; Helter Skelter, Revolution No. 9 - aren't these the songs people didn't generally like? Perhaps their song writing was a product of the technology and instruments of the day as much as philosophy.
On Apocalypse of Clowns some of the tracks are very melodic, like Clown Face, and some very timbral, like Siamese Twin Domestic. The latter feels more new and exciting, yet neither really 'better' than the other. Both strongly evoke a mood, although the latter perhaps evokes more of an image. Perhaps a scene is easier to manifest with sounds because we hear certain sounds in certain places. A key thing about melody though is that it seems easy to remember in a way that sound effects aren't; perhaps, also, we remember voices more easily than instrumental melodies because in our mind's ear we can repeat them.
