PSRSotwNotes04.07-24

Peter's Song of the Week Club!

07/24/04

A Thousand Miles Away

Peter's Comments:

Okay, I'm starting to regain my bearings.

This was mainly an experiment in song structure -- I noticed there's a bunch of Elvis Costello songs that have this sort of structure

[C A C B C B C A [C

That is, two outer verse structures 'bookending' two inner verses, with choruses in between and (sometimes) as intro and outro. ("Everyday I Write the Book" and "The Other Side of Summer" are examples.) The chorus came first (sounding suspiciously like "One Week"), and the rest was hastily filled in.

Lots of little things going wrong in this song. Generally, the whole thing seemed to get away from me and the large number of tracks started turning into mush.

I've finally decided I need to actually spend a bit more time on getting things right with my recordings. Unfortunately, I made that decision after I'd already written lyrics and recorded the rhythm guitar part, so both of those are unsatisfactory. Also, I have a nasty feeling one could play the Nickelback game between this and Fire Bomb.

I sound down on the whole thing, but I think it's an ok song -- I've certainly done worse. I'm happy with the melodic bass lines I threw together, and the occasional mangled dissonances in the background vocals (though they come from not yet knowing enough music theory) are actually pleasing to me. The bits of vocal counterpoint are especially cool.

Oh-kay, time to get started on the next one....

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