"Emphasis" & how it was made.

the music and vocal melody for much of "emphasis" came all at once. it's a rare situation when that happens, but when it does i am very grateful!

originally i had imagined the direction of this song to be a bit more rhythmically stiff, full-band and more musically complicated. but the more i played around with it, the more i realized it was a very lyric-focused song. it felt more suited for a stripped down, folk-like song arrangement rather than a full band situation, allowing the lyrics to be the focal point.

over the last few months, i have rediscovered my appreciation for randy newman's catalog of work. in the tiny moments in between working on our music lately, randy's were some of the only songs that i felt like hearing. the structure and approach of "emphasis" was definitely inspired by mr. newman's ballads. he has a way with simplicity that i've always appreciated. when i wrote the very simple parts for this song, it was an obvious place to look for affirmation that some songs just weren't born to be anything but simple. and that's a good thing.

after some time of refining the verses for this song, it became clear that yes, simplicity was key, but at that point, i only had one part of the song written and quickly realized that it needed a chorus too. so, after much trial and error, the chorus was finally written and we realized that all of the ingredients were there and the last step was to spend time writing the lyrics.

i played around with a few themes lyrically for this song... at one point it was going to become a subtle, but very optimistic love song (that direction ended up becoming the song, "next to me") but after trying some different words over the parts, once again the direction defined itself in spite of my plans. the theme ended up following a lyric i wrote early on for this song, but tossed away several times because it wasn't the optimistic love song theme i was hoping for...:

"death is promised to the bee
who's sting protects the colony.
was its life worth nothing more
than honey for the queen?"

so, the entire theme was born out of that question. (as you can see, it just did not want to become a love song from the very beginning) whatever our beliefs or non-beliefs may be, how do we answer the many incredibly difficult questions that life unapologetically presents to us? this song is my attempt at wrestling with some of those questions and ideas. to be honest - heading down that road as a songwriter on a deadline, was a rather scary thought. not exactly a topic that cam be whipped up quickly and i feared that the song would just be a sad series of difficult questions without any answers or reasonable resolution. every answer i could come up with was extremely complicated and unsatisfying, so eventually this lyric came about:

"the smartest thing i've ever learned
is that i don't have all the answers.
just a little light to call my own"

it may not be a particularly satisfying answer to such big questions, but it is a sincere one. it felt freeing and right for this song to resolve with such a simple idea.

much like our song "watermark" (and a few previous songs from other records) i decided that recording the piano and vocal together live, without a click track, made the most sense for this song. i've become pretty fond of recording gentle songs like this in that way, because it tends to make the songs feel more real and unforced, rather than rigid and over-processed. every song is different, but songs like this really depend on the piano and vocal playing off eachother, so recording them separately can come across a little less... believable sometimes. also, recording without headphones or anything really in the way, just makes me feel more comfortable playing. (i get easily distracted and discouraged when gear gets in the way!)

i felt like this song could easily benefit from a standard string arrangement (violins, viola, cellos, etc), but that felt a bit obvious and unnecessary for this one. almost indulgent in a way. so, i took a different route and decided that a single cello, playing almost as a duet to the vocal would be a more interesting route to go down. so, i asked my friend and incredibly gifted cellist, melissa bach to perform on this song. (melissa performed on "storyboards," which is where we first met her) melissa was chosen for this song because she has a very solid, soloist quality to her cello-playing and i felt like she would completely understand the direction right off the bat. i didn't want something specifically written out or pre-planned.. i wanted it to be freer than that, so she was game for just recording takes and seeing what happened. dan and i drove into the city with a small recording set-up and melissa was kind enough to let us swing by and record in her and her husband's home. we spent an hour or so letting her just improvise with the song and it was gorgeous straight away and clear that it was the right direction to go with this song. she played beautifully and was just a perfect fit. looking forward to doing more with melissa soon!

mixing and mastering were smooth sailing and before i knew it, "emphasis" became the 2nd track on the "november" EP. real proud of it!

nearly a year after its release, the kind folks who select the music for ABC's Private Practice tv show placed this song on an episode, late 2011.

thanks for reading!

love, ryan

EMPHASIS

Death is promised to the bee who's sting protects the colony.
Was it's life worth nothing more than honey for the queen?
Life is a branch and it is a dove, handcrafted by confusing love.
Sign language is our reply, when church beels make no sound.
In hollow towers and empty hives, we craved sweetness with a fear of heights.
Was it all just a grain of sand in and hourglass?

The smartest thing i've ever learned is that i don't have all the answers,
just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

Death is a cold, blindfolded kiss.
It is the finger pressed upon our lips.
It puts an unwanted emphasis on how we should have lived.
Life is a gorgeous, broken gift.
Six billion+ pieces waiting to be fixed.
Love letters that were never signed, sent to where we live.

But the sweetest thing i've ever heard is that i don't have to have the answers,
just a little light to call my own.
Though it pales in comparison to the overarching shadows,
a speck of light can reignite the sun and swallow darkness whole.

"Bright & Early" & how it was made.

during the final stages of recording our "keep no score" record, i made a little idea demo out of an idea i had on the piano. i added a little rhythm guitar and although it seemed unfitting stylistically for "keep no score," (and was written too late in the game) i kept it on the back burner until recently (over 4 years later), when that tiny seed of an idea turned into "bright & early," the opening track of our "november" EP. although the song has since taken a very, very different shape than it was originally demoed, it still resembles the original concept pretty closely and i'm very glad that it finally got completed! i suppose songs just have different clocks built inside them.

of all of the yearbook songs so far, "bright & early" is most certainly our problem child. now that it's said and done, we are very, very proud of how it turned out, but in terms of being a difficult song to complete, this one takes the cake. nearly every step of it's creation was a large, complicated challenge.. from the arrangement of it's parts... recording the piano (which was accidentally tuned a bit sharp by our piano tuner)... finding a drum beat that compliments, rather than overwhelms... to the lyrics being just downright challenging to finish! clearly, it had some behavioral issues and goes down in the books as one of our most troublesome songs in our entire catalog of music! in fact, it got so difficult on so many occasions that we contemplated throwing it out altogether, or at least putting it back on the back burner yet again. BUT once it was completed and sent to mixing and mastering, it has become a favorite of ours. all of that hard work makes the completion of it that much more rewarding, i suppose!

i will forever remember working out the vocal melodies for this song right before dan's wedding over the summer. after wrestling with it for days, i had the chorus section drilled into my head, so when my wife and i headed downtown chicago for dan's big day, it was on loop in my mind. and downtown is where i came up with a few melody variations in my head that are what you hear in the song today. so it was a good weekend - dan got married and i won a wrestling match with the vocal melody. :) i think dan's wedding might trump that though...

our pal (who has been a part of our recent tour lineup) aaron mortenson came over and played drums for this one... just as dumbfounded as we were with the right direction of the song, we worked out the arrangement of drum parts and just blindly recorded it, hoping to make sense of it all later. he played incredibly well as usual (he's truly a gifted drummer) after a couple weeks of living with the recordings, we became concerned that perhaps the parts we requested that he played weren't a right fit for the song. we questioned our original direction. so, we moved onto something else to give it some space. in that time, we wrapped up our "october" EP and then came back to this song, hoping for clarity.

eventually, after i finished lyrics.. and piling musical ideas high upon the track - dan came over and showed me a bass part that he had worked out, and that was apparently the missing piece. and from then on, it all just worked and felt right. we made some quick edits throughout the song, added a few more final touches musically and it all just came together without trouble. we wrapped the whole song up within a day or two after, feeling overjoyed by such a victory over this formally bratty song!

the bass part is actually not real bass. dan tried out something new for this song and recorded a keyboard "upright bass" sound, which is what gives it that more percussive feel. we would have never imagined that an keyboard upright bass patch would be something that we'd ever like or use, but it fit like a glove.

the lyrics for this song are part 1 of a story. (the second part, is our more recent song "from the ground up") i've noticed that when life becomes challenging, those who love us gather around us and do their very best to offer up encouraging words. things like "in the end, it'll all be for the best"... "everything happens for a reason" and it's nearly always said with the best intentions! but to the person facing the struggle, those words can be very small and sometimes confusing. sometimes it's not about worrying that things won't turn out okay, it's more about questioning why the difficult things happen to us in the first place. this song was written from that perspective... it's the thought process behind that arch of conflicting feelings. more specifically, it's a fictional story about someone losing their home to a fire and dealing with the aftermath of losing something so personal and dear. suddenly things that are known to comfort become destructive reminders of loss. (ie: warmth)

our recent song "from the ground up" (part 2 of this particular story) focuses on the rebuilding and relearning that "bright & early" concludes with. (will write more about that in the "from the ground up"'s "how it was made" post)

although i wouldn't call it a main instrument in this song, i was finally able to dust off my electric guitar a bit! it was fun to play it again and experiment. (made me want to write a little more with it) i used my reverend guitar and it felt great! the rhythmic strums that happen early on in the song were originally influenced by the old jazz guitars that happen in a lot billie holiday's songs... unfortunately and fortunately that was a failed experiment. it's "unfortunate" because it sounded nothing like the jazz guitarist style i was aiming for, but was totally "fortunate" because i like how it accidentally turned out!

so that is the epic and dramatic tale of how "bright & early" was made... we're in talks now with several movie companies who want to buy the rights to this future blockbuster. (sarcasm aplenty)

thanks for reading! will continue the "how it was made" posts real soon! "emphasis" is up next.

love, ryan
sleeping at last

"Watermark" & how it was made.

"Watermark" & how it was made.

thanks for reading these "how it was made" posts... they've been really fun to write, and it's so nice to hear positive feedback!

today, i'm going to write about "watermark," the last song on the "october" EP.

although it wasn't the first song we began working on for yearbook, it was the first song that we completed.

the piano melody was hidden away in one of my digital recorders for a few years, before it became watermark. a few years back, i wrote the primary piano piece (the piano first heard in the song) and always liked it, but could never figure out what i wanted to do with it. for some reason, when i got home from a mini vacation to disney world a couple months ago, i remembered that little 30 second recording and grew fonder of it and began working out vocal melodies to it. i'm pretty sure writing a vocal part was the reason it didn't get turned into a song sooner... couldn't come up with something over it, but this time the vocal melody came right out, so i dug right in.

after playing with it for a few days, i knew that this song would benefit from recording it organically, to record vocal and piano together live, with no click track/guide. we used this same concept to record "naive" and "clockwork" from storyboards, and this song felt like it would work best in that scenario too.

this time, however... for the piano we tried new mic positions... a mic on each side of my upright piano, aimed almost directly at the wall the piano was up against. weird, for sure... but out of all of the positioning we've tried with my piano, this is so far the most true and accurate sound we've gotten from it. (in past, we've pulled the piano away from the wall, with mics behind it, etc)

this was the first song we got to use our newly purchased neumann m-147 tube microphone and our UA 6176 compressor/preamp! our knowledge for gear is minimal at best, but we're fortunate to know what we need to know... so after some fiddling around and knob turning, we got a sound that we fell in love with. recording this song definitely set the precedence for recording the rest of the songs, in terms of the type of vocal sound... piano mic-ing, etc. we're pleased with the direction.

i have a little bit of record-button phobia. when nothing is recording, i can play through songs without mistakes or hesitation. press record, immediately my brain sends messages to my entire body to mess up as often as possible. it's a completely phycological issue, that i've never been able to fully shake, but fortunately it's never effected my takes in such a way that i can't get it done eventually. just a bit frustrating at first! after getting over that, and playing a few times through, i finally got into a pocket and felt like the takes were decent. and of course, right on cue, traffic noises battled me for hours during the takes. honking... loud engines... trucks, etc. so much noise, that seemed to disappear only when i pressed stop. literally. so, i tried takes in the morning... same story. afternoon... same story... late night... less traffic, but louder stereos on occasion (again, pretty much only while recording)... so, that was a discouraging start to recording yearbook, but eventually i got what i needed and moved on. so, i'm sure if you listen close enough, you can probably hear a couple monster trucks driving by in the background somewhere...

a little FYI... in the digital booklet of "october" it says it was recorded at "drive by studios," the above traffic issue explains that name.

shortly after recording the vocal/piano... the string arrangement was put together! at first i thought i wanted something very simple and minimal, but after working on it, we decided that something slightly more complex and fuller would be the right way to go. more cinematic.

earlier this year, a gal named joanna hui reached out to us and mentioned that she played violin and would love to play with us sometime. we replied and say that'd be lovely and we'd love to hear her play! she sent over a video of her and her sister playing a few songs and we were blown away by the talent... so when we thought of string players for "watermark," joanna came to mind, right off the bat. being from chicago and her being from michigan, we had to coordinate a time when she was in town and when we were ready to have her record something! so, watermark began to develop and matched up perfectly for her visit in august. we asked if she knew of another violinist and a cellist that she enjoyed working with and she was kind enough to connect us with her sister, jessica. and jessica was kind enough to seek out a cellist named, alex kruser.

once we had an idea of who exactly was going to play, we sent off our inaccurate pro-tool created charts and some midi versions of the parts to joanna, who was kind enough to distribute the parts to each of the other players, while making sure nothing got mistranslated in the pro-tool charts...

next was the question - where are we going to record this string trio? so, jessica hui, who was staying at a nearby hotel, asked the hotel if it'd be alright for us to record there... they kindly gave permission and so, the trio was recorded in a hotel suite! dan and i brought our new gear and wore our engineer hats (not actual hats.. mind you) and got to work! each of them played so beautifully, we were blown away! such talented folks and so much fun to be around too! had a really fun afternoon recording those strings.

after all of that was in place, the song was just about complete. we wanted to add just a little more subtle magic, so dan recorded a little harp part, as well as his custom atmospheric "spaceghost" keyboard patch... (which is a secret weapon/recipe that we've been using for a couple years now! it's all over storyboards. we love it.) and lastly, some simple bass 2guitar to give the song some weight.

lyrically, this song was a challenge. a fun one... but definitely a challenge. it started with the first line, naturally. (actually more often than not, a line from somewhere in the middle is where i begin, but this time, i began in the beginning) ...

"you were carved out of the sea."

from that line on, i knew i wanted write this song as a story. so i decided that it would be fun to write a story inspired by a concept trailer to an upcoming animated film a recently saw. the trailer had no narrative, and was completely visual.. so the story i created probably has very little to do with the actual film's story, but it was a really fun place to live in and write from in my head.

i wrote it from a parent's perspective, speaking to their child, encouraging him/her to live bravely.

once it was all finished on our end, we sent it to john goodmanson to be mixed. he sent it back to us pretty quickly and it sounded excellent right out the gate. so, watermark was overall a really nice way to begin the yearbook project for us! lots of experimenting with new gear, recording techniques, logistical stuff (getting files to and from mixing online, etc.) and we're really pleased with how it all turned out and the tone it set.

thanks for reading! "november" will release soon... can't wait!

love, ryan

"Next To Me" & how it was made.

today i'm going to be write about the 2nd song on the "october" EP, entitled "next to me."

it didn't take too long to realize that it's probably the cheeriest, toe-tappin' song we've ever written. i'm excited about that! every musician has a type of music that is challenging for them to write and for us, it's "happy." not to say that our songs are terribly sad or grouchy sounding... but even when there's lightheartedness in the music, usually the lyrics aim in a more serious direction.

"next to me" is the first song i've ever written fully on the instrument, the "mcnally strummstick." (pictured below) my wife got one for me right at the tail end of making our "storyboards" album last year and it only made a very small appearance on that record (it's on "unmade") - it's a super fun instrument to play around with, as it's tuned to a scale and technically there are no "wrong" notes. (but i have to admit, the strummstick isn't half as fun as the ukulele. fyi.)

i wrote the main chords of the song and decided that, rather than spending time figuring out a vocal melody, or even an arrangement for the parts, i'll just record the strummstick and see where it goes from there. so, i spent a little time heading down that road, and piled instruments on top of it to see where it would lead; mellotron vibes, harp, tons o' background vocals, you name it. after the heap was recorded, it was all about the process of elimination.. going through each piece and seeing what works and what doesn't and editing it down accordingly.

so, when gathering up the song possibilities for "october," dan and i decided that "next to me" would be a fun addition to our first EP. so, we took a closer look at the song and finalized the arrangement of parts (verse, chorus, etc.)

eventually, the vocal melody started to appear. then dan wrote some piano chords which filled it out really nicely and then in my usual get-really-close-to-the-deadline fashion, i began writing lyrics...

certain songs are very welcoming to words and seem to fit with singing just about anything... and some are not so warm and welcoming and require a lot of tweaking to get words and their shapes to fit correctly. fortunately, "next to me" was the kind and generous sort, and almost immediately the lyrics worked. within minutes of writing, i had a pretty good idea as to what i want the song to be about. in fact, writing lyrics "next to me" was one of the easiest songs i've ever encountered! things just worked and new ideas flooded out all over. i probably finished 85% of the words within an hour or two (which is crazy fast for me..) BUT that last 15% was completely uncooperative and took me nearly a week to finish. literally just for a few lines. so, the process was too good to be true. it's okay though, it gives a sense of accomplishment to finish it with a struggle!

i recently got married (last march) to the love of my life, cayt. so, the lyric direction for this song naturally tied into the lovey-dovey hearts that have been hovering since the wedding. i wanted to write a love song for my wife! and rather than "umbrellas" which is certainly a love song, but it's more of a prayer for my future family and a promise/reminder to do my best as a future father, husband, etc. "next to me" is a straight up love song... no obstacles to overcome. it's a love song, inside the theme of childhood and the pure carelessness that can/should be a part of it. when we grow up, our worlds become much more intense and complicated. and at any age, when you fall in love - it feels a bit like reconnecting to how it felt to be a kid again... to have feelings, trust and emotions run so deeply, that force caution to take a backseat. so, this song was written from that place.

when i recording my vocals for this song, in between takes i cracked opened an old photo album from my childhood (which, thanks to my amazing mom, my childhood was wonderful!) as well as my recent wedding pictures. it's easy to get stuck focusing in singing a good take, rather than remembering what you're singing about. so those pictures helped a lot.

the main downbeat rhythm you're hearing (sounds like a kick drum) is actually my foot. so this song is literally a toe-tapper! i laid a mic on the ground and stomped away.

dan came up with the very cool piano parts that are soaked with delay in the chorus parts.. it's got a nice rhythmic pulse, but still very pretty and melodic.

and dan's bass line for this song is one of my favorites. it gives the song a bounce that I like a lot.

the duo tremolo violins throughout were played by me, which is pretty much the extent of my violin skills.

dan played the tambourine and the maraca. not 'maracas' mind you, but a single maraca. in fact, it's a special maraca... i bought it earlier this year in walt disney world! in the "mexico" pavilion at EPCOT. so, if you thought to yourself, "gosh, I feel like there's a disney flavor in this song..." - that's why.

once the song was near finished, i felt like it would be a nice fit for a female background vocal, so we asked the incredibly gifted, stacy dupree (of eisley) to be our guest and lend us her voice. she kindly accepted and soon after, we exchanged recordings via email. she sent over what she come up with and it sounded even better than we had imagined! such a lovely fit. she was even gracious enough to record the 3 part choir section that i had in mind for her as well, to combine with my existing choir. (you can hear our little 6-part choir in several different sections - the intro, middle verse and towards the end of the song) she did such an amazing job. a huge thanks to her for such a lovely contribution to the song!

i should wrap this up, otherwise, there won't be time left to finish the "november" EP!

thanks for reading! "watermark" is up next.

love, ryan

p.s. now that you've read all about it, you can listen to the song here (& please feel free to embed this youtube "video" anywhere you'd like!) :

"Homesick" & how it was made.

after each EP releases, i thought it would be fun to dedicate a post to each of the 3 songs... how they came about, thoughts on lyrics, recording techniques, and misc. notes and stories relating to each song.

so, now that "october" is out and about, i'm going to start by featuring the very first song of YEARBOOK...

"homesick"

not only was this the opening song of the EP, it was also the very first song that i began working on for yearbook. before we even announced the project, i wanted to spend a few weeks testing the waters of writing music in such a consistent fashion.. (before committing to such a huge project!) so, almost immediately after the idea for yearbook came about, sat down at my "studio" desk and listened through some recent recordings i've made... (i've mentioned before- i use a little digital recorded to grab mini musical ideas as they come!) and the ukulele chords and vocal melody for the verses in "homesick" were there, waiting to be worked on. i think in that tiny 30 second recording, i even had the lyric "you spend your whole life, just to remember the sound..." - so that gave me a lyrical direction, as i liked that as an intro line. (usually the words i sing in these min recordings are completely nonsense, so i was glad to hear words that i very much liked be present from the beginning)

after dan got home from his honeymoon, i showed him the parts that were there and we both agreed that we felt like it was a right choice for the first EP... so we took a closer look at it all and shaped the arrangement by playing the parts live together a bunch, and eventually the overall layout of the parts became pretty clear.

the background "choir" vocals you hear throughout the song, were actually recorded with my iphone, using the amazing "FourTrack" app (i've blogged about the app before)... i was using the app as a sketchpad for the choir ideas, but ended up liking the sound so much that we ended up using the recordings. so, the "choirs" you're hearing were all recorded using the iphone. i'm pretty proud of that! thanks to "FourTrack" for being awesome... and thanks to the iphone for being my favorite gadget of all time.

my upright piano (which i love dearly) was a bit out of tune when we recorded it. we both really liked the sound of that for this song, as it felt like the right character for this song, however, when i recorded the ukulele parts (which are quite simple and easy to play) - we ended up with a giant tuning mess on our hands. took me HOURS to get the uke tuned in such a way that all of the chords i was playing, would match the general out-of-tune nature of the piano. so, that was frustrating. eventually, i got it sounding right and now i don't think twice about it. not a fun day of recording that. i do however love how my ukulele tone came out in the recording - it's my KALA mango tenor. seriously such a great instrument... i'm hoping to one day win an award for the saddest songs ever written on the ukulele. i'm on my way!

you'll notice that there are two sections where there is some violin happening... i'm pretty proud to report that i played that! i am NOT a violin player by any sense of the word, and it took a lot of tries to get it sounding the way it does, but i'm proud nonetheless! it's played pretty untraditionally- more atmospheric than musical, but that's just fine by me - fits the spookiness of the song. speaking of spooky, dan and i decided that there isn't really "ukulele" in this song... there's "spookulele!" - since it is on the "october" EP... (get it?)

the lyrics were written at different times throughout the last couple months... i spent a week or so on the first main chunk of the song, lyrically.. and then let it rest while we worked on other songs.. then , right before october released and i needed to record the final main vocal, it was about time to finish it. it came quite quickly and i was very pleased with the additions that were made... the entire section where i sing "cry wolf, cry mercy, cry the name of the one you were raised to believe..." was originally going to be instrumental, but i'm really glad that those words fell from the sky, because i feel like it really ties the song up thematically.

oh and the drone noise you're hearing in the intro and throughout the song was also created with the iphone! i used an app called "sampletoy" - it allows you to record sounds and play them back in loops, and it lets you manipulate the sounds via the touch screen (pitch, tone, etc). super fun... so i recorded fast ukulele chord strums on it and that's what you're hearing for the drone.

fun to write about the process! hopefully it's interesting to read as well... not just fun to me to type. ha.

thanks for reading! will blog about how "next to me" came about - soon!

love, ryan