 |
        |
 Back To Ampersand Index PAGE 10 - Crayfish (Track 4) - Every night we were staying at that particular campsite in Quetico, we would all watch a group of about 8 local crayfish form a circle in one area of shallow water and have a wrestling match of sorts. Two would fight in the middle and whenever one could hold down the claws of the other, it would back out and be replaced by a new competitor. I've read that crayfish often form social rankings through this non-violent method (as opposed to lobster, who supposedly always attempt to kill the opponent in such matches... although there's crayfish fighting videos on the internet that indicate otherwise). Anyways, the part I actually wrote on the acoustic guitar in Quetico ended up as the harp part in the final version. Here is a December 29th, 2002 version of the track, which I intended as the demo for the tune. I liked my guitar solo so much that I decided to keep it and it's the same one that appears on the final album (minus two or three changed notes that were altered on the computer so I could keep the original performance but still be happy with it). While listening, do keep in mind that this was performed as a demo, a recorded reference intended just for myself, which is why it sounds like I'm sightreading the acoustic guitar part, because I was. I also have no idea what bigger picture the ending part was supposed to be a part of. Anyways, enjoy this mess of a composition: crayfish_archive1.mp3 When I first wrote this tune, I was thinking it would sound like something from a Chick Corea or Pat Metheny record. When some of the drummers I worked with asked what I wanted, I used to say "just play something like what Paul Wertico would play on a Pat Metheny Group record." Of course, I hadn't met Paul yet, and after I couldn't find anybody to play something that sounded appropriate over it, I just set the demo aside and forgot about it. This track wasn't grouped with the other early compositions, but I still really liked it (especially as a documentation/memory of the music and playing that interested me in high school). When Paul originally offered to play on my record in early 2005, I really wanted to get his playing on this track instead of eventually settling on some drummer "copying Paul Wertico's style." Since I've sort of moved on from being interested in that style of music, I was pretty certain I wouldn't ever write other compositions like this one, and I didn't want to release it as one song unrelated to anything else, so I decided to take on a bold challenge: to arrange this same composition so that it would fit with the record I was doing. This was a really interesting limitation to impose on the production of this track and was fitting for this project in the sense that each piece was constructed in a completely unique way. For fun, one day I decided to build things on top of the demo and develop it a bit. Here is a December 8th, 2004 version of the track: crayfish_archive2.mp3 I used the MIDI out from my Roland GR-20 guitar synth to replay the acoustic guitar part from the original demo (played well this time though) to trigger a polyphonic Minimoog patch that sounds sort of like a Fender Rhodes electric piano. The same MIDI information would be used to replace the Minimoog with harp about 14 months later. This version (along with the demo included earlier) contains a few sections not included in the final version. Immediately after coming home from Quetico, I decided to take out parts of these sections because they just seemed silly to me, but I ran into problems trying to rearrange them and after a few of my friends told me they liked them, I just decided to worry about it at a later time. That later time ended up being December 20th, 2005 in Paul's studio during the drum recording session, and he told me that those sections didn't really sound like anything else on the album and asked me to cut them out. I happily made another effort to do so, but after they were removed, it still didn't transition very well (the same problem I ran into 3 years earlier). He told me to just write a two measure transition and insert it at the edit point (in the final album, the section from 1:28 to 1:30). For some reason that idea never dawned on me as a possibility, but I think it was the thing that saved this track. The track starts off with a melody that is played by a Minimoog doubled with a flute. On the left is a harp that has an effect on it which makes it sound a bit like a jaw harp. At 0:24, a voice recording comes in, but not one of my friends this time. The text of the recording also has a bit to do with the title of the track. The guitar solo begins at 1:48. It's the only guitar solo of its type on the record because of the unique history surrounding the development of this track. I did run the guitar through iZotope Trash, and mixed that sound with the original clean tone to create an interesting layered effect that leaves the solo both clean and distorted. From 3:05 to 3:25, everything in the track except for the drum machine and dry harp sound is run through a leslie speaker effect (the spinning speaker used on B3 organs). Starting at 4:45, I decided to run everything playing in the track thus far (minus the drums and drum machine) through the Line 6 DL4 Delay pedal, modelling an Echoplex (I think). It's a subtle effect, I know, but if you listen closely, you'll hear how it changes the track a little at 4:48. Sarcasm aside, after doing this to the main track and creating a lengthy performance with the delay controls that lasts about two and a half more minutes, I decided to write an arrangement around those weird sounds. At 4:56, the string quartet arrangement from the end of Boolean Mortality is introduced. Boolean Mortality is in Eb Minor though, and I wanted the arrangement here to be a half step lower, in D Minor. I couldn't decide if I wanted to pitch shift the recording from Boolean Mortality down a half step, or transpose the parts down and create a new recording, so I just did both and layered them on top of eachother. At 5:13, I inserted the guitar/electric piano solo from Sinking of The Zenobia. At 6:06, the flute, piano, and Minimoog from the first part of Dead Pixels are inserted. When I was already in the stage of bus mixing (a month before sending the record to get mastered) I decided that the section between 5:13 and 6:06 got too boring, so I plugged in a guitar and just played the guitar solo that starts at 5:32. When it got to the Dead Pixels melody at 6:06, I just played along. By this time, I had already done all of the other sections on the album where performances are revisited out of context in different pieces with various effects on them, so I wanted to see if I could play so that it naturally sounded like it was pasted in and modified to fit. There are no effects on the guitar except for distortion. At 6:43, the Minimoog melody from the very beginning of the tune is revisited (with an atonal harmonization). At the time of doing the crazy delay effect to the track, I already had figured out the order of the tracks (which I made in late spring of 2005) and I knew that Wormwood would be following this track. When I recorded Wormwood, I left a large amount of that buzzing sound at the beginning of the recording, and I decided to run that through the same settings on the delay unit to create a similar mess to the one made with the remnants of Crayfish. I then reversed that performance so that instead of a normal sound becoming more and more mangled, the mangled sounds align and eventually spit out the dry sound of the buzzing that I fed in. The mangling gradually switches over from the two performances just before the Dead Pixels melody ends, and I then connected the buzzing to the beginning of Wormwood. Here's a compilation of some sections that I sounded interesting with certain tracks: crayfish_compilation1.mp3  Back To Index |