My Unfinished Lyricism

For as long as I have been playing music, I've explored the connections between notes and chords. One by one, melodies found their places on my guitar. I recorded all of them on my phone, and started a decent anthology, which continued to build as I gradually learned the piano. 

Writing lyrics only happened when I was forced to. I toyed with combining vocal melodies with my instrumentals, but I never put words to anything. I assumed it wasn't going to be that hard. 

But it was actually like entering a whole new dimension of creativity. I usually have so much to say. But I was at a loss for words. I struggled to find the perfect combination: brevity, flow, and subject matter. 

The pressure to write lyrics to all of these Super 8 instrumentals in such a short amount of time was, looking back, the best situation to put myself in. I was forced to put most words that came to my head down on paper, to just let the writing really happen. I noticed that I cared more about how the words sounded than anything. The musical element changed how I normally think while writing plain poetry. 

Later I played around with the idea of not rhyming at all. Radiohead vocalist Thom Yorke practically says whatever he wants in his music and manipulates his voice to fit with the song -- no matter what. 

I realized that writing lyric-heavy music is easier to me. Spoken-word-esque songs like both interlude tracks on To Pimp A Butterfly (For Free? & For Sale?) are what come easily to me. I find rhymes out of nowhere and make them the primary focus of the song, set to background music that's less important to me. 

As with every creative sub-field I interest myself in, I will find a way to twist it, stretch it, and make it my own. Every good artist is original with their takes on form: Thom Yorke with his vivid, jittery, image-driven vocals differs vastly from Sun Kil Moon's sentences that drone over his guitar strum.

As of right now, there are no lyrics that scream Mitchell Watson. I think I'm still finding my way through the maze of lyricism, creating a mental map of all its inner-workings. This process takes a long while, but the only way to build such a strong sense of self is to experiment. 

Contemporary Film Score Composers & Conscious Music

This post will discuss the relationship between audio and visuals.

In film, I've always considered the music (and the absence of it) the driving force. Still, there are exceptions, and this may not even ring true with others. I've accepted that I'm musically-driven, so the score/soundtrack are really what drive the films I watch. Regardless, when we look at any classic achievement in film, we can clearly confirm that the music is important to the movie.

There are multiple ways that music can be implemented in a film. The first difference we must recognize is that of conscious music and unconscious music. In a film, the music can either be:
-A background score that doesn't interfere with the characters (unconscious).
or:
-Music that is literally playing from a source inside the story of the movie; the characters can therefore hear it (conscious).

The other big difference is between soundtrack and score:
Soundtrack: Music that is pre-recorded for non-film purposes; primarily for the song itself
Score: Music that is meant to accompany a film; made for the visuals

One more thing I'd like to point out:
Music should always come first. In making film, one will find it much easier to edit TO music, not find music to fit perfectly later....

I watched David Lynch's Blue Velvet this weekend. And he -- now finally a member of my list of favorite filmmakers -- uses in-film music brilliantly. The main songs in the film (Blue Velvet & In Dreams) strangely coalesce with the actual score of the film. There's one scene where two characters sit in a car and have a strikingly normal conversation -- but there is extremely poignant church music in the background. I don't know why, but it works.

The over-emotional score in Blue Velvet makes the listener question its presence in the film.

I want to make the music in my movies evoke surrealism. This method, used by David Lynch in BV and by Paul Thomas Anderson (to probably the biggest extreme) in Magnolia, expands film in a direction that's extremely under-used.

UPDATE: Production Techniques and Artistic Inspiration

The first studio hours for my band were experimental and innocent. For the most part, we played our music while our producer did his thing. And I didn't really get it. I knew he hit record, and I knew he could adjust volumes and different settings. I knew he could add reverb to my voice. I knew the magical term we all used: "you gonna mix this?" "Yeah, I'm boutta mix everything later."
Over the course of our recording sessions, I learned more about what really makes a good record - what's behind the scenes.
Mixing is an art form if anyone really knows about it. Big bands like Radiohead (post-Kid A) are nothing without their loyal, genius producer Nigel Godrich (above).

Electronic production has an artistry to it that's difficult to explain, but there's a reason it inspires me. Small manipulation can mean all the difference in the world. A key element of mixing involves gradually changing elements of the song over time. For example -- I initially thought that only the volume can be altered gradually over multiple bars of music -- but there's actually so much more one can do with this technique, including the altering of effect intensity or shape, the size of the "room" for reverb, the strong or soft definition of a tremolo on a vocal, the pitch, and anything else imaginable. Literally. Any alterable function. I find this tool so useful for shaping my music. I've really played around with pacing, and I think this technical discovery has prompted me to look at my songs with the bigger picture in mind. I have more of a grasp on what songs should feel like after multiple listens, not just the first one.

I know I still have much more learning to do. I don't really know producer-terminology yet. And I honestly don't think I could properly "mix" a song right now. But I'm figuring more things out every day, and as I do, I'm really learning how to make truly original art. It's like I'm learning to speak a whole new language and then manipulate it to my own liking.

The right gradual buildups and the perfect placement of details mean everything. I just love the idea of a sole resolution that happens two thirds of the way into the song, or an unpredictable change in beat, or a new verse with a different chord progression. The deeper I look into the sound editor, and the smaller details I can manipulate, the bigger the picture portrait of the song becomes.

BADBADNOTGOOD & Song Pacing/Arrangement

Jazz is America's genre. It began relatively recently (the early 20th century), and it's now an established and completely individual genre of music, separate from classical, rock, and others. What makes jazz so interesting -- and more isolated from other genres -- is its high abstraction and level of complexity. Tunes in this genre are almost treated like abstract paintings by not forcing perfect mathematical musical formulas; improvisation plays a key role in its spontaneity and unpredictability.

And just like every genre, this one is evolving.

Ever since Miles Davis released the controversial "Bitches Brew," (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbCt-iXIXlQ) jazz has decided to experiment on serious levels.

Today, we have neo-jazz, which is making itself known in the popular mainstream. Most neo-jazz songs merge hip-hop (Robert Glasper, The Roots, etc.), and others try different routes.

BADBADNOTGOOD is definitely a neo-jazz group -- one that has directed itself towards rock & roll instrumental jam anthems. Here's one of their famous tracks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWF2jHFkNpk

Super 8 already has a similar approach to their music as B.B.N.G. Multiple songs in our repertoire are simple but catchy instrumentals that build on each other throughout (Red Licorice, The Life of Larry David, and The Shubdub). There are some specific methods in crafting this type of arrangement that I've been paying attention to -- they're essential to this type of song.

Pacing is the most important piece of the pie: the difference between two bars of music can mean the world. An instrumental's small details are necessary, but if the big picture isn't fitted to the correct proportions, the song will leave the listener with a strange taste in their mouth.

Playing around with a song's arrangement is like solving a puzzle to me. There's always the perfect fit. I think a specific formula exists -- one that explains our brain's psychological reaction to long-term songs and how they play out. I sometimes think, "the longer the build-up, the more satisfying the resolution?" or "should we just put a new layer in after each measure, and if there's consistency, the progression must sound good?"

I'm still looking for the perfect progression-instrumental arrangement. I think BADBADNOTGOOD hits it pretty darn close. They orchestrate it like it's second nature, while simultaneously incorporating jazz. They know exactly where the solos go. There may be a certain connection between jazz and this abstract knowledge of just how songs work...

DISK 2 & Lyricism

Recently, Radiohead released the backside of their 2007 album "In Rainbows" to the wide world of streaming. I've listened to it multiple times on youtube, but I finally get to have it on Spotify, right next to their 10-song front-side classic.

My first thought: if these songs couldn't even make it on the main LP, then shit, they're just too good for this planet.

(FYI, I'm not trying to make this blog a Radiohead fan page. I hope everyone understands this. I'm honestly just trying to communicate my creative process. Radiohead has inspired me. And using them as an example facilitates my musical/literary creative writing).

My second thought: I need to become more knowledgeable. I need to know about the making of this album. I've heard so much about how it was a f*ck you to the music industry, how it was a f*ck you to everything else, and how it correlates perfectly with their 10-years-past album "Ok Computer" (called the binary theory). But I really really wanted to get under the skin of this album. I felt like I this album was extra cerebral. Extra internal. Less contemplative of the outside world.

This was the podcast I ended up listening to:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXtmi5LkQOg

Santo & Johnny & Surf-Fusion Inspiration

Rock & Roll has almost an infinite amount of sub-genres that stretch across a vast spectrum. The sub-genres vary ever so slightly from one to the other, and sometimes they're hard to differentiate. When looking at the spectrum as a whole, however, opposite sides may seem totally unrelated. A certain piece of the Rock & Roll pie that has made it into the Super 8's inspiration/sound library stands out more than the others; it's an idiosyncratic element of the rock genre that isolates itself on a small island, where the soft background hush of crashing waves is forever present, and where surfer guys and gals jog on the beach during a sunset and smile with each other in a cheesy, slightly tacky, and dated fashion.

Surf Rock can be one way to describe Santo & Johnny's music. 99% of the time, it consists of mellow, smooth, sliding, reverberated chord progressions, usually at around the same slow tempo, and more often than not - in a 3/4 time signature. Although it can get homogenous real quick, this type of music has definitely put its defining trademark on Rock & Roll's golden age. With "Sleepwalk," the duo's #1 hit, the two young, sleek guitarists captured the nation's attention:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A4peMwQQz3E

Santo & Johnny wouldn't be Santo & Johnny without the slide guitar (bottom right corner of above photo). This iconic instrument is usually plucked with one or two fingers at a time, and a metal bar is moved up and down its horizontal neck with the other hand to produce the creamy, uninterrupted slide one doesn't get on a normal guitar. S & J run this instrument through a highly reverberated tube amp to get their particular sound from it. Such an iconic sound is always a good thing, except whenever it's used today, it's hard to get any originality out of this one instrument. It's been rooted in time.

Our band is making the attempt at merging the out-of-date surf mentality with modern funk, jazz, and alternative rock. Our objective is to take this cheesy surf-sound, which can nowadays be found in films to portray a false sense of beauty (see the film "Twelve Monkeys," where, in a dystopian world, the now-cheesy song "Sleep Walk" is used to back a commercial for a paradise getaway, illustrating an illusion of happiness that the depressed characters can never reach), and combining it with a more modern rhythm or melody. This combination, if performed correctly, will depict my band's natural and unaffected appreciation for the catchiness of Santo & Johnny, while also adding another level of musical complexity.

Playing parts of throwback music is important to me because I think there's a lot of value in showing how I can express my own take on something outdated. If I can manage to fit a slide guitar into one of Super 8's songs, we can reference the old artist and create new juxtapositions that have never been done before. In this outlook, the more distinct the differences are, the better. We might just f*ck around and put a slide guitar through a crunchy rock amp, sample some S & J, and add it all to a hip-hop beat and see what happens. After all, we've always been a band of experimentation.

Radiohead: The Ultimate Inspiration (Weird Fishes/Arpeggi)

Ever since elementary school, I remember scrolling through my father's iPod nano: through his Men At Work, his Clash, his U2, and finally, his Radiohead. A few songs from their surreal, warm album "In Rainbows" made his daily rotation of music. I wouldn't spend too much time on this section of his iPod at 11 years old. I didn't really know what they were singing about and the abstract melodies were difficult to latch onto, but they most definitely inspired an inquisitiveness in me. I was eager to figure them out. They felt larger than life. They sounded like they had a grip on the impossible; they understood the secrets of human-universe interaction, and they explored it in the most classic way possible... I felt like I would never reach any level of expertise (or just genius) close to theirs, but that's what intrigued me more than ever.

Over the past few years of my life, Radiohead has slowly "crept" up my spinal cord (I'm sorry), and now I feel like they've finally found their place in my brain. I have finally studied this band with my undivided attention, and I've decided that this band is my all-time favorite. To me, it just makes sense: they've just added to the list of perfectly crafted melodies, impeccable abstract lyricism, and absolutely original concepts. (And please, just forget about the Creep reference, and the song in general really; I choose to disassociate it from their catalog).

Today, I sit in my chair, reflecting on the Radiohead concert I saw last night. Instead of 5 musicians on stage, I saw 5 individual geniuses in their natural habitat, twisting and turning in and out of spirit and performance. I remember the best part of the concert: their transcendental dual-song performance of Everything In Its Right Place and Idioteque. I then compare this moment to their simpler rock ballads like Karma Police and Street Spirit (Fade Out). The diversity in this set of music could be one of the most outstanding aspects of this band.

There's so much more to discuss, but I feel like their music speaks louder than the words I'm using to try to explain it, so here's my favorite song of all time:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNRCvG9YtYI

Super 8 has a song obviously inspired by Weird Fishes/Arpeggi; hopefully it's not too similar. What really adds a magical entity to the song is its almost Beethoven-esque chord progressions and resolutions. I will forever hold the argument that this syncopating, repetitive yet unpredictable melody is one of the greatest ever created. And the fact that it's being played through Jonny Greenwood's subtle, clean-tone electric guitar in triplet arpeggios that make little mathematical sense... it's just perfect.

I wrote a new melody that incorporated confusing counting methods and arpeggios in the song Tree Branches, on track to release at the end of this month.