No, not a comment on historical music, the title of this post refers to my song Out Of Date, which I've been working on today. I re-wrote the music today. It was/is one of the more complex song on here, the first verse blends into a second (so its more like an 8-chord verse), then a chorus in new chords, back to a solo in verse chords, then a strange interlude. The lyrics originally read:
Strange
How right and wrong change - don't you think?
Remember when black was white?
Remember when dark was light?
How sad today feels.
For this, I need to move from then final resolving C-Major to the chorus, which starts A-minor, but there is solo after this, the 'sad' part - so there is a lot of flexibility. I decided to be radical and explore the words; light and dark, and a fall to sadness, so I used A-minor, A-Major, G-Major, G-minor, F-minor, F-Major, E-Major, E-minor for those words, sort a downward staircase of light and dark. The end falls into D-minor and the chords of the second verse, so leading into the chorus very like the first time around.
I was unsure about the 'Remember when black was white?' line. There is no escaping racial imagery, which is not at all intended; I meant the colours, I want a clash of opposites, like squares on a chessboard, the absurdity of black being white and white black. So I re-wrote the lines:
Strange
How right and wrong change - don't you think?
Remember when dark was light?
Remember when good was bad?
How today feels so sad.
This makes me think about intepretation. Is it the artist's job to think of how an audience might recieve it? Or should the artist make what he/she wants, and know that other people like him/her would understand, ignoring those who misinterpret as simply wrong? I'm unsure. I tend to prefer the latter option and write what I know and believe. In this case, I think the good versus bad line is better anyway because of the more dramatic clash, though the rhyme is worse.
The production has taken all day, but has gone remarkably well for the complexity of this song. There is a piano, octave strings, some lower, sforzando, strings, wide horn-like brass, and even a flute, as well as drums and bass, but it all worked so easily and quickly, flowing like a dreamy waltz. The last step was the crucial pacing.
I briefly watched a YouTube video comparing some fancy digital reverbs today - I saw that one unit costs a ridiculous amount, £3600 or so. I wondered how my self-designed Oxyverb or Nitroverb might hold up, and presume better. At least I can claim that no other musician in the world uses them. You can hear Nitroverb during the intro to Flatspace. My reverbs don't use real world units, it's bizarre to me that settings like 'hall' or 'cavern' or 'room' are applied to these totally artificial algorithms. I simply set the mathematical parameters. My reverbs can be tuned to last forever (infinite tail) which is useful for some effects, creating a constant 'breath'. I've mainly used this for extending snares.
