what's it all about?

sometimes we try too hard in relationships and our efforts can often be destructive rather than our perceptions of them being either helpful or loving.  this piece was written as an apology for a very good friend of mine, after i'd spent just one moment too many trying to be insightful and probing.

i learnt a valuable lesson that day about the importance of just being there sometimes rather than actually trying to help.  i'm delighted to report that all is well again in this case, but it is only a facet of that person's love & patience that helped restore the status quo.

instruments & tone sources

all guitars are the fly.  i was inspired to write the main guitar riff by a tremelo setting on the pod.  all the guitars are pod.  the guitar melody line is a heavily overdriven sound with harmonic setting on the ebow II giving that really singing lead line.  the synth repeat melody is for my friend jesse in san fran; he is an avid collector of vintage keyboards and the minimoog monophonic patch will hopefully bring a dampness to his eye (probably out of shame).  

the solo lead guitar is a brit hi-gain amp on the pod to get that very 'just on the edge of feedback' tone which i love.  the parker fly also helps this sound.  there are times when you get the feeling that your intervention in the parker's sound are pretty minimal.  it almost plays itself, but i have to be there.

the main percussion loop is the roland handsonic, and the 'live' drums at the end are manually played on the zoom 234.  the bass is steve's trusty washburn through the joe meek again.

production comments

this was the first track i wrote entirely on the computer, at that time running Audiodesk (the non MIDI version of digital performer - both MOTU).  it was a huge liberation from working on the VS which is superb for recording on, but for use as a creative writing tool leaves quite a bit to be desired (though if i was interested in upgrading, the new vs2480 actually corrects this shortfall).  audiodesk and indeed DP, both allow you the freedom to shove sections of audio round as easily and simply as in a word processor.  locking it all together is very straightforward and gratifying.  it meant that i could write all the riffs and then repeat and string them as and when necessary.

to be true to myself, once i'd done all the shuffling around, i then went and replayed all the critical parts again, like the main tremelo guitar riff.  but the drum loop was cut and pasted through to fit length.

again, this track was an attempt to try and steer clear of the temptation to make everything guitar based on this album.  all the guitars don't sound too normal except for in the actual solo, and again at the end, the 'lead' guitar is somewhat overshadowed by the solo synth line.

i didn't use midi for the keyboards here again.  i'm not a keyboardist by any means which is why i got into guitar synths all those years ago, but for this album i really wanted to play some real keys.  so all the keyboard parts you hear are live with no midi trims or corrections etc.  for many of them, they are the result of many rehersals and re-rehersals of the same part till they sounded competant enough, but i think it was worth it - except that everyone will assume they are all guitar synth!! hey ho.

this was the first track to develop this technique of smoothing lead guitar sounds by putting subtle harmony guitars underneath.  the end lead line is actually three guitars, all with the same sound; a main and two harmony supporting guitars.  rather than doing the whole thin lizzy or brian may thing though, here they are purely there to almost odd overtones and harmonics, enhancing the melody line rather than doubling or tripling it.  i think it works quite well, and in prepping some of the older material for the release of pfac (as everything eventually got mixed on the mac), i used the same technique to boost some of the lead lines.

this is a fundamentally different approach to that found in dignity however, where the guitars are serving as harmonies.

the other point of note is that the main riff is not slapbacked or push delayed in stereo.  the slightly ping-pong feel of that part in the mix is achieved by playing the same part twice straight through, and letting some of the randomness out naturally.  i prefer the feel because i think anything done to achieve this effect electronically tends to become tired after a few bars and you don't notice it anymore.  this way, there's always something slightly different going on in each ear.  play it on headphones - and concentrate on that jingly riff at the beginning and you'll see what i mean.  neat huh?

because of all this detail going on in this track and the newness of it, i think the prize for favourite track definitely goes to this one.  hope you like it.