So take the train

The beast that is "Faraway Island" has officially been tamed!  With that, I feel we may already have overcome Chronicles of a Dead End's biggest technical hurdle.  Again I've included, in this video, brief snippets of the previous versions; the Escapade version in particular shows most clearly just how badly I was overreaching, attempting to make this kind of music on my own.

Besides the line-up already introduced, we have Lynsey Tibbs (via Musiversal) on vocals.  She has a 3-octave range, but isn't one to rub it in the listener's face, instead simply using it to make heady heights seem completely effortless.  I'm also impressed by her stylish vibrato, which she doesn't overuse but treats as just another vocal effect.

The landscape on the planned album cover, by the way, is based on a photo I took during a 2018 visit to the actual place that inspired this particular song.  The colour filter I put it through is a sly cross-reference to the (ridiculous) original Escapade artwork, in which I was attempting to apply some sort of trippy psychedelic effect to my 18-year-old face.

Who needs Roger Dean?

Next up is... the piece of music that started the whole Escapade saga: "Modern Art".

Welcome to prog...

"It's a bit of a long song," commented the vocalist during the recording session for "Faraway Island".  In fact the sections with vocals only account for 79 of the song's 211 bars (that comes to 3 minutes out of nearly 9) but it's true that the part somehow feels longer than that.  Its classical-like complexity also makes it challenging to sing, which is why I struggled so much with it in previous iterations, and also why I chose to bring in another vocalist this time.

Nonetheless, there are some beautiful moments in the end result.  Section "B" in particular soars to exactly the kind of heights that I might have ill-advisedly attempted to pull off myself on the original.  There's a very brief bit of harmony in a certain spot corresponding to where I added harmony in the (omitted this time) "B" reprise section in the Escapade version.

Before the vocals were recorded but after I sent the work in progress to our vocalist, though, I got the bass recorded and mixed in.  It turned out that a real electric bass guitar has a less penetrating timbre than the MIDI bass that I used as a placeholder, so I had to have the synthesizers a fraction quieter than before, allowing the bass to cut through the mix as more than just a background presence.  It's a very active bass part that needs to be heard and not merely felt, particularly in the "B" and "C" sections.

I did in fact end up having to use volume-envelope trickery on the acoustic guitar part.  It turned out that in the later "A" sections, having the guitar at full blast combined with all the other instruments piled in basically swamped the vocals.  I think what makes this such a difficult song to mix is the sheer diversity of its arrangement: it juxtaposes some of the densest textures and some of the sparsest ones in the entire set.

It's such a densely layered song, in fact, that its project file comes to a staggering 1.71GB of waveforms, and that's with one crucial part still missing.  That would be the lead guitar, which this time will (hopefully) include an improvised solo to enhance the "C" section's build-up as well as (revised versions of) the familiar written lines.

The island appears on the skyline

No, I can't say I knew this day would come, in that I couldn't be sure that the acoustic guitar part for "Faraway Island" would turn out as well as it did!  I'm particularly impressed with the guitarist's attention to detail in the dynamics, which as a bonus means I should be able to get away with using little volume-envelope trickery (maybe even none at all?) in the mixing of this part.

Speaking of, I noticed during the session that a few synthesizer tones were more penetrating than I thought, so I mixed those parts a bit quieter while I was at it.

In the coda, I'm particularly struck by how the bright, clean sound of the steel-string acoustic guitar means that the switch to the Phrygian mode here doesn't (to me, anyway) have the sinister connotations this scale often does.  Instead it's more of a sudden rush of exotic warmth, contrasting the contemplative mood of the rest of the piece.  At the same time, the fact that it's the same instrument means that it doesn't sound out of place as a conclusion.

Anyway, as with the drums in "Days to Midnight" I felt that this was the part that unlocked the emotions in this song.  I was actually moved to tears, at one point, while mixing the guitar in - and that's with the "vocal" still being a placeholder MIDI flute.  It's very telling that, even as of the 2020s, MIDI instruments are still (at best) a mixed bag.

"Island rhythms" doesn't usually mean a prog epic

You might well say that, but as it happens the kaleidoscopic coda of "Faraway Island" actually does call for some tribal-ish extemporization on the tom-toms and snare.  In the sheet music I prepared, I marked this passage "Think the 'Strawberry Fields Forever' coda but less sinister".

Not to my surprise, mixing in the drums revealed that the keyboards did indeed require more work.  I ended up replacing the vast majority of the programmed string parts with me playing them on the Jupiter-80 with a more mellow tone.  The only programmed parts I did leave in are three brief passages which I don't think I could play accurately enough.  In all three of these passages, there's plenty else going on anyway.

Interestingly, I also re-instated an element of the Escapade 2 version that I was previously sure I wouldn't.  That is, I felt that the transition out of the "C" section needed an extra element, and as an experiment I overlaid a repeat of the train station ambience from the intro there.  It works astonishingly well!

As the bass guitar part in the coda has the combination of being extremely simple (one note over and over) and requiring down-tuning, I opted to play it myself to save a bit of our professional bassist's time.  It did not save my time, though... tightening up my own sloppy timing in post-production probably ranks as the most tedious audio-editing job I've ever taken on.  Let's hope it's worth it.

Pulling out all the stops

Unless I'm forgetting something, every keyboard instrument I own has found its way into the in-progress mix of "Faraway Island".  The thing with synthesizers is that one often needs to layer multiple different tones for the mix to sound satisfying.  This proved a particular challenge in the brief passages of this song which are only keyboards - and I may well decide between now and the final mix that I still got the tone choices wrong.

In the case of the solo verse, this meant playing the part on the old Jupiter-80 and superimposing a pre-programmed string synthesizer playing the same notes!  If nothing else, this does promise to be a great moment and the pay-off that the "C" section always needed.  Can't be sure until the drums are in, and that's exactly what's (hopefully) coming next.

Poetry Corner II

I went into this set of lyrics expecting to re-work them much more ruthlessly than I ultimately did.  I think that might be because, in the original version, there's one line (in the first verse, no less) that disproportionately jumps out at me as cringe-inducing:

"And I have to work the day to get my bread"

In the context of this song, I have two big problems with that line.  The first is that not all work is created equal: in the years since the Escapades, I've become much more aware of how fortunate my peers and I are to have not been born in, say, a coal-mining town around 1890 or so.  The second is that it brazenly ignores the non-financial reason why work - be it paid or not - is important: keeping oneself at least somewhat busy is paramount to good mental well-being.  There's a reason why it is so common for people's health to go into a sharp decline right after retirement.

The other bit I've always thought was awkward is the "B" section (which appeared twice in previous versions of the song, but won't this time).  Again the problems hinge on one line:

"I knew the day would come"

If we take this song to be a metaphor for the longed-for end of hard times, then this line clashes with the reality of how painful it is when you don't know if (let alone when) things will get better.  Moreover, as the later stages of the COVID-19 era illustrate so vividly, finding one's feet emotionally after such a season is extremely challenging in its own right.  (This does, as it happens, beautifully contextualize the dark, instrumental "C" section!)  Therefore, I started by re-writing the "B" section with this in mind, before turning my attention elsewhere.

While the "B" and "C" sections treat the titular island as a metaphor, the "A" sections are a far more literal musical postcard.  I left the chorus completely unaltered, but revised the verses with (as it happens) a recent visit to the real-life place fresh in my mind.  I also added a new third verse, replacing the repeat of the first that, in previous versions, was yet another factor in the last 3 of this piece's 9 minutes being ludicrously anticlimactic.

I'm tired of all the noises of my home,
Where I'm lost in my head,
And I fight every day to get my rest.
Can't you find a way to escape?

So take the train from home tonight,
And all around's the morning light,
Come with me,
And I'll show you a faraway island where you can be free.

The sun is brighter there, the woods are green,
And the clear river flows,
And the rocks lead the way to the calm of the soul.
Not to go, you'd be a fool.

So take the train from home tonight...

Did you know the day would come
When the island appears on the skyline
And we'd see the death of the scapegoat?
Now we face a new unknown
But the island's a place where we listen
For a guide watching from the sky.

So take the train from home tonight...

[section "C"]

And so the love I'm feeling all around
Stills the undying storm,
And at last all my thoughts are on solid ground.
Can I find a way to bring it home?

So take the train from home tonight...

Somehow, until now I haven't mentioned the biggest difference in my lyrical approach between the Escapade era and the present day.  That is, I no longer try to force rhymes.  I now think it's much better to have effective imagery that doesn't rhyme, rather than contrived imagery that does.  And if I can come up with a good rhyme, that's a bonus.

(I love the irony of how the poem that inspired "Modern Art" - the song that started this entire saga - pokes fun at poems that don't rhyme.)

I'm tired of this structure

We come now to the first real challenge of this project.  The sprawling "Faraway Island", in its Escapade and Escapade 2 incarnations, has some lovely ideas but fails to hold my attention for its entire length.  This mostly has to do with its overly rigid formal structure exacerbating the production weaknesses.  (In all fairness, it also doesn't help that on the Escapade version in particular, I'm audibly struggling with the vocal even by that album's standards; let's just say I do not plan on singing it myself this time.)

So before turning my attention to the lyrics (which could use quite a bit of work) I've sat down and refined the song's structure and arrangement.  The extention to the intro I wrote for the Escapade 2 version will be retained, as it contextualizes the "C" section nicely:

The very opening, minus the echoed piano and sound effects

The distinctive chord progression of the "C" section, plus the first note of the organ solo

The first real change is one that my younger self would have been unwilling to make.  Previous versions of this song included an earlier-than-expected instrumental verse in the first "A" section (à la "Nowhere Man"), with the intention of telegraphing the song's scope to the listener.  I now feel that this solo is redundant in that spot because the big, sweeping intro has already served that function.  More pressingly, though, the solo needs to be held in reserve for later.  There's a reason why an instrumental verse is almost always late in a song - "Nowhere Man" is the only exception I can think of, off the top of my head.

Both the "B" and "C" sections have their origins in separate sketches.  This is significant because, in previous versions of "Faraway Island", I truncated the short guitar solo that tops off "B", thinking that its second half wouldn't fit.  It turns out, however, that with a little tweaking it does fit after all.  It also makes a far more interesting transition back to "A" for that triumphant chorus!

The guitar part sounds as written.  Yes, I know it should, strictly speaking, be written an octave higher.

The "C" section consists of a set of five variations on an unusual chord sequence somewhat reminiscent of early Pink Floyd, transcribed above; the final two change key.  I've decided to elaborate the bass part in variation 3, and (hopefully) variations 4 and 5 will have an improvised guitar solo of gradually building intensity.  This section needs a far more dramatic build-up than in previous versions, if it's to avoid being the point where the song becomes boring.

Not unexpectedly, I've decided to remove the second "B" section altogether.  It simply didn't work as a pay-off after "C".  What I think will work, though, is the very same synthesizer solo that I chose to cut from its original place in the first "A".

Just need to find the right synth tone, now.

And from there to the end, it's pretty straightforward!  I've written a new guitar fill for the final verse, based on one lick from the original "B" solo that would otherwise be lost in the process of restoring the original second half.  The final chorus and coda, though, will be as per the Escapade 2 version.

And with that, it's time to start thinking about the lyrics.

Slight diversion

While I want to be quite strict about only working on one track of Chronicles of a Dead End at a time, I've already had to renege on that just a little bit.  It just so happens that the holiday from which I have now returned, was my first post-2020 visit to the real-life place that, in part, inspired "Faraway Island" - a sprawling song that will be track 2 this time.  And I decided to bring my recording equipment with me, hoping to capture some sound effects to use in the song.  The trip proved a fruitful one, but before I go into detail I'd like to recap the two previous versions.

The Escapade version of "Faraway Island" begins and ends with what sounds like static filtered through beach noises.  That's, in fact, basically what it is: I generated some white noise, then filtered it using the PSR-5700's "seashore" effect as an impulse.  (This is essentially the same technique that I used to generate a synthetic "choir" based on my voice in that album's version of "March for the Age".)

The Escapade 2 version, then, features stock Jupiter-80 sound effects at 4 points: a "train" sound during the slightly re-worked intro, which is repeated after the long instrumental "C" section, plus "wind" at the start of "C" and "running water" at the very end.  Based on this evidence, I have come to believe that this kind of stock sound effect is only really useful for comedic effect.  This song is definitely not meant to be funny!

Nonetheless, the Chronicles version will be mainly taking 2 as its structural model, as I think I was basically on the right track in thinking that "C" could use more stuff adding to it, lest it grind the track's pace to a halt.

Not to be confused with the now-infamous video-conferencing platform.

First, I captured a few minutes of the ambience of a not-particularly-busy railway station.  It rapidly became clear why the "train" sound effect sounds so jarringly out of place in the Escapade 2 version: real-life trains sound nothing like it!  I'm already pretty sure I know exactly which part of the recording I'll be using - taking great care, of course, to make sure that no clear voices are discernible in the finished track.  For the intro, I plan to combine this with the heavily-echoed, staccato piano chord from the Escapade version and the pre-echo of "C" with which I replaced it for 2.

Second, for the "C" section itself I decided to record actual seashore sounds.  Finding a good spot to set up my equipment proved challenging, but it was worth it for an extraordinary stroke of good fortune.  About 40 seconds after I hit "record", a seagull started up a plaintive song, which then developed into a remarkably intricate duet.  This was an incredible, mind-expanding experience, as it's the first time I've appreciated for myself the complexity and expressiveness of birdsong, even if as humans we can't fully comprehend it.  I understand, at last, why so many composers (most famously Messiaen) have been entranced by it.

Finally, for the very end of the track I recorded the much gentler sound of a stream trickling over some pebbles.  I have to give the Jupiter-80 some credit: the "running water" sound effect that ends the Escapade 2 version of "Faraway Island" does sound remarkably similar to what I ended up with.

As I have yet to record anything else for this song, it remains to be seen exactly how these will fit into the final arrangement.  Still, this is really exciting!