Skeleton of an (anti-?) apocalypse

My parts for "Days to Midnight" are (provisionally, at least) done.  I think it's generally good practice to have as many recorded instruments in place as possible before letting other musicians loose on a song, so they have the best idea of what's going to work well.  This is where being a keyboardist gives me an advantage, as I can easily create placeholder "guitars" and "basses", whereas if I were primarily a guitarist I probably couldn't make placeholder keyboards.

There's actually a bit less piano in the song this time.  I think the busy piano parts in the original "verse" sections don't work too well, so they'll (hopefully) have some rhythm guitar work instead.  In the "refrain" and "solo" sections, meanwhile, I didn't follow the original very slavishly, instead basically sitting down and improvising a part around the chords and what I could remember of the arrangement.

For the synth pad, I chose a soft, fairly bright "strings" sound rather than the not-very-convincing "pipe organ" tone used in the Escapade 2 version.  This actually brings the feel of the song more in line with the Escapade version, if anything, which is only appropriate given the far less pessimistic lyrical tone.  For the "Strange Days"-like looped synth line in the "intro" sections, I fleshed out the arrangement a bit by giving it to two instruments: a "plucked" synth tone in the foreground, and a more sustained bright bell sound tucked into the background.

(I should note that in 2009, when I wrote the music of this song, I hadn't heard any Doors beyond their self-titled debut album, whose atmosphere I found off-putting.)

I removed the "Westminster Quarters" quote in the "re-intro" after the solo.  Besides not really fitting with the re-worked lyrics, it clashed harmonically and, as it now turns out, I'd got the quote wrong!  My guess is that what I was remembering, when I arranged this for Escapade all those years ago, was not the actual Westminster chime but a simplified version in my maternal grandparents' old clock.  I can't verify that, as I no longer have access to said clock.

I basically did the lead vocal in one take - it seems that the "Look and See" history is repeating!  There are a few very slight rough edges, but it's interesting that those little imperfections become much more acceptable when the performance is captured on a microphone that's actually intended primarily for singing into.  It probably also helps that, because of the song's age, I've had plenty of time to think about how to phrase the melody effectively, even with significantly changed lyrics.  As in the Escapade 2 version, I added a supporting harmony part underneath where the melody goes into my (still pretty weak) falsetto at the end of the refrain.

I sang the backing vocal parts through... how should I put this?  Through an accessory for the lower face that, not so long ago, was horribly familiar.  This has the effect of slightly obfuscating and depersonalizing them, without making them sound artificial in the way that electronic encoding in post-production would have.  I found it startling, though, that the effect is akin to a mild version of the ludicrous close-miking of the vocals throughout Escapade.  Still, I like the symbolic value of having, in this first track of Chronicles, "good versions" of both previous Escapade vocal sounds.

Finally, it seems I was correct that a slightly slower tempo makes this song a lot more impactful.  At 170 BPM instead of the 180 of previous versions, the solo section in particular already rocks out more than either of its predecessors.  This is especially impressive since, at this stage, the solo section is just a pounding piano and placeholder MIDI guitar and bass.

So this is already promising!  Drums are (hopefully) coming next.