songs:365

  • day 157: Helplessness Blues

    Helplessness Blues, by Fleet Foxes.

    Playing catch-up here with the Fleet Foxes songs, ever since I realized they were only on like 2 and Wilco was at 4 or 5.

    This is another one where I remember where I was — if not the first time I heard this song, definitely one of the first times I had this album in my ears after it came out was sitting at my desk at the job I was working in 2011 — actually, it’s the desk I was sitting at when the East Coast earthquake happened, which was only a couple months later.

    Anyway, this is always one I feel deep down inside, always facing that tensions between being raised up believing I was special and bound for some sort of solo success, and as I mature(d) finding fulfillment in being a cog, working head down in service of some sort of progress.

    But also, it does a good job of relaying the omnipresent threat/wish/dream to throw it all away and get ourselves a farm.

    //

    I thought this would be a longer weekend project, but instead tried to exercise some minor degree of self-control and not layer on six more tracks until it turns to mud like that Cumberland Blues the other night (yeesh).

    So it’s in a weird D6 tuning or something — the chords on the internet are wrong, but there are almost-right versions, and somehow a video that is righter, but still wrong. I didn’t go looking on Robin Pecknold’s Instagram or videos for the right answer yet, but there probably is one, and it’s not playing the D#maj7 the way I was playing it.

    Added the electric and discovered my 7-year-old fancy cable is more busted than my 25+-year-old cheap cable, which should not surprise me, but still. One more vocal, then doubled it for the last bits with a little transposing for something resembling harmony.

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  • day 156: We Are Nowhere And It’s Now

    We Are Nowhere And It’s Now, by Bright Eyes.

    Something upbeat on a Saturday night! (Just kidding.)

    I might mess around and try to play every song on this album before I’m done. It feels like Conor Oberst is just plain showing off his one-liners on this song, and I, for one, am here for it.

    “If you hate the taste of wine, why do you drink it till you’re blind?”

    Kills me every time.

    //

    Put a goofy effect on the noodly guitar, and left the vocals all lonely and vulnerable. Didn’t play it all the way through before recording, so you can watch the lyric about his “favorite neon sign” catch me by surprise and make me smile. 😉

    [EDIT: Also kinda glad I didn’t try to do the background vocal, because on the album it’s Emmylou Harris, and I don’t think I can keep up with her.]

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  • day 155: Cumberland Blues

    Cumberland Blues, by the Grateful Dead.

    Well, it’s been a whole 20 days or so since I did a Dead song, so here we are. This song leads off Europe ’72, I think? The ridiculous harmonies (?) in the first verse made me so happy when I put this on in the car this week, I decided to try it out myself.

    The great thing about having only been to two Dead shows, is it’s pretty easy to remember some of what they played, and I can always look it up, and probably even listen to the shows without much trouble. I think they opened the first show I went to with In The Midnight Hour, which was fun, and during the second show they played Terrapin Station, which I was told at the time was a treat, and it was a treat.

    //

    Probably should’ve laid down a nice clean brush/train drum loop, but I did the vocal first, so my MIDI keyboard drums are, uh, present. The whole thing is kinda chaotic, rather than locked in, really, the opposite of locked in, mostly. Loose out? I dunno.

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  • day 154: Sisters of Mercy

    Sisters of Mercy, by Leonard Cohen.

    Honestly, if this song doesn’t remind you of anyone, or several anyones, I feel bad for you. But there’s always hope, maybe it will remind you of someone(s) in the future.

    //

    The nights this goes well, it’s because I can tell my basic guitar skills are improving. (I think this went well!)

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  • day 153: Yesterday

    Yesterday, by the Beatles.

    What’s the first Beatles song you can remember hearing as a kid? Is it this song? For some reason, I think maybe it’s this one for me, but then pretty quickly I took possession of my mom’s LPs of Meet the Beatles and Rubber Soul, so Michelle and a few others loom heavily in my early consciousness.

    I could say more about the Beatles. But not right now, I’m exhausted.

    //

    Just a simple (capo 5) set of changes, no big deal, always seemed harder than this before. This is one I might remix in the future to add, oh, idk, a string quartet, and piano and bass, and etc. but I’m not sure I ever noticed how short this song was before, too?

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  • day 152: Coal Miner’s Daughter

    Coal Miner’s Daughter, by Loretta Lynn.

    I’m sure I had heard Loretta Lynn a little before I saw the movie, but the movie made me a fan for life, as a movie will do. This song was the centerpiece of the story, and even if I enjoy a raucous “Don’t Come Home A-Drinkin’” just as much, this one makes me feel things, so it got the nod.

    //

    But I sang it like Johnny Cash? Does he cover this? I feel like I’ve heard him sing it. Kept it basic tonight, because not every day can be Purple Rain, y’know?

    Also, did I remember there was a key change in this number? I mean, sure. Did I remember there were two?? Not so much.

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  • day 151: Purple Rain

    Purple Rain, by Prince.

    There is nothing I can write about Prince or this song that will do it justice.

    Suffice it to say I did not “get” Prince as a kid — although when Cream and Get Off came out in my teenage years, I, uh, got Prince.

    Everything I have read about Purple Rain, including its recording, is jaw dropping — then again, everything I’ve ever read about Prince recording anything is jaw dropping.

    //

    I am not worthy.

    Trying to play a Prince song is an exercise in humility, like on every track, every sound says “I am making an effort but obviously doing this wrong.”

    So there aren’t enough voices on the chorus, which might’ve been nice, and the organ is a little over the top. I tried to make the drums a little gated-reverby, but I think they just came out reverby. The closing solo is just not enough (and like three minutes short of outro “whooooooo-hoooo-hooooo-oooos” and strings and whatnot), but I made some attempt to play a few of the same notes, a couple times.

    This song was on the list from the start, so I’m glad to have it in the can. 151 days is starting to feel like something!

    Oh, and I added tags for all the original artists in the project and put them on the index. Johnny Cash and Wilco are tied for the living-in-my-head-rent-free lead with four songs each.

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  • day 150: Divorce Song

    Divorce Song, by Liz Phair.

    It almost feels like cheating to do a song I’ve heard deconstructed and put back together again on the Song Exploder podcast…. but then again, I completely screwed up the vocal on the first try, kinda had to turn it into a round, and added some extra heavy chords in that one part where the chords are maybe different? The internet’s copy of the chords to this one is a little inconclusive, but I went with it.

    There’s definitely going to be a lack of fidelity to the video in this one where I’m singing the “wrong” part.

    This song hits way harder after you’ve, like, been in a relationship! Dear teenage self: Enjoy these songs, have your fun, but they will mean different things later.

    //

    Uh, so there are a bunch of tracks. Started with drum loops, and tried to be smarter about it today, leaving them short and looping the bass and guitar and other bits against those, before recording the vocal video with the short loop of everything else in the headphones.

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  • day 149: New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down

    New York, I Love You but You’re Bringing Me Down, by LCD Soundsystem.

    There are a lot of songs about New York City. There are not a lot of songs that manage to encapsulate a certain period of change in New York City as clearly or precisely as this song. To be clear, it’s not even about the period when I lived in New York City (peak Giuliani years) and it still hits hard.

    I think this is the song that finally got me into LCD Soundsystem, way after their run, maybe even after the famous final MSG show. And I’m pretty sure it was the Kermit the Frog video that sealed it for me. And that even came with the Miles Davis mashup, which, whoa, what? Yes.

    Anyway, I love this song. A lot. It still hurts a little. A lot.

    //

    Made a project out of it today, starting with the electric rhythm guitar (and I kinda whisper sung a demo vocal there that you can’t really hear, but was helpful for the rest.) Miked it too hot, but whatever. Added a bassline from the acoustic transposed down an octave, then MIDI organ, flute, drums, before getting to the solo vocal (wayyy too hot, Ryan, back off the dang mic please), a little doubling with effects there, and then a guitar solo that’s not terribly off, but is off, and I have to say, I aimed for a good freakout at the end, but listening to the original now, I missed the BAM BAM BAM chords there, and I thought about adding something just like that before I processed the video, but I didn’t, so we’ll leave it at that.

    The closing lyrics of this one have always confused me a little. I sang “here’s this song” tonight, because that’s what was written down on the internet, but I like it better if it switches to “maybe I’m wrong” at the end and then it’s a question at the end: “and if so, is there [somebody there for me]?” But who am I to argue with what is written down on the internet.

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  • day 148: Yer So Bad

    Yer So Bad, by Tom Petty.

    Drove through Chapel Hill last weekend, and it reminded me of Gainesville. Or maybe I just don’t have a good point of reference for what a University is supposed to look like outside a city. My cassette tape of Full Moon Fever? Probably gone after the last few storage closet clean-outs, but I kept it around for long enough. Free Fallin’ was so stupidly pure, a weird counterpoint to just about everything that was around at the same time. Not sure how it would be received now. It probably sounds like an actual Oldie.

    This song was always fun to play and sing and goof on, so here we are. “Oh you want me to solo on the Am pentatonic scale? 13-year-old Ryan here, ready to do some business.”

    //

    Second guitar track for that solo, and one backing vocal. And that’s all.

    I have a lot of “hard” songs building up for longer weekend projects, but I probably need to change my routine if I’m going to pull some of those off, layering in tracks earlier in the day so there’s not so much to do late at night, alone in the basement. Or is that how this is supposed to work? 😉

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