More thoughts on MIDI

Because there's so many instrumental layers to "Escapade" (the song), I'm taking a slightly different approach to producing it compared to the previous 6 tracks.  Rather than starting with just my keyboard parts and a few placeholder "guitars" and "basses", I've opted to start by programming all the parts, drums and all, and replace them one by one.  That way, I have a basic idea, right from the start, of where every instrument should be placed in the mix (in terms of gain and pan positions).

So as it stands, it doesn't sound very good!  In fact, it currently comes together as a shrill, expressionless, synthetic cacophony.  The fact that I don't at all enjoy hearing the song in this state, though, is probably a good thing, considering that my idea of a "polished studio sound", applied to my own music, conspicuously used to be exactly that.  Moreover, this has got me thinking more deeply about why I (seemingly) had such a tin ear for production back in the Escapade and Escapade 2 eras.

Like (I'm sure) many people, I found starting out as a composer extremely frustrating.  Time and time again, I'd hear my musical efforts played by real musicians only to be disappointed that it didn't sound at all like it had in my imagination.  It often seemed like I wasn't being taken altogether seriously, although admittedly trying to glorify my student exercises the way I did can't have helped my case.  MIDI, by contrast, cannot say "I'm afraid I can't do that", nor can it question my artistic vision.  Consequently, that shrill, expressionless cacophony of MIDI instruments became, for me, the sound of me being firmly in control of my music.  And so I grew to enjoy it.

Definitely not the case now!  I actually sometimes get a bit nauseous just thinking about the extraordinarily wimpy sound of Escapade.  Sadly this colours my perception of Chronicles of a Dead End a bit, too, particularly on "Days to Midnight", no doubt because that track follows the original arrangement relatively closely.  I find it hard to keep the Escapade and Chronicles versions of the song separate in my mind.

As for Escapade 2, I had become aware by then that the PSR-5700 sounded laughably dated to 2000s-10s ears (it's a 1992 model, by the way), but was still clinging fast to the mindset that the sterile "perfection" of MIDI (filtered through, let's face it, laziness) was a desirable aesthetic for my work.  So while Escapade sounds like it came from a place of extreme confusion (accurate), Escapade 2 just comes off as a massive strop.

A different sort of hybrid

As with "Modern Art", I've opted to hybridize the starkly contrasting Escapade and Escapade 2 versions of "Look and See" for the Chronicles of a Dead End version.  Unlike that one, though, this is more of a case of maximizing the strengths of both previous versions, rather than minimizing weaknesses, even if there are also plenty of those!  After all, it brings me quite a bit of relief to note that, having now prepared the arrangements for all 7 songs, I'll probably never have to listen to anything from Escapade or Escapade 2 ever again in my life.

The hybrid approach is crystallized in the intro.  Here, I've opted for the Escapade approach of 10 bars of lush, symphonic layered synthesizers before the piano enters, rather than having the piano there from the start as in the Escapade 2 version.  However, the melody is played using the exact same Jupiter-santur tone as in the latter, the difference being that I'm actually playing it this time, instead of feeding this not-particularly-difficult line into the Jupiter-80's "MIDI IN" port.

Beyond that, the basic idea behind the arrangement is a kind of progressive scaling down, starting out with almost operatic fervour and gradually diminishing, with the final verse (the "present" part, if you like) being just a very hushed vocal and a sparse piano part.  I can't, off the top of my head, actually think of any other rock or pop song that reverses the usual dynamics in this way!  The parallel that most readily springs to my mind is a classical one: the heartbreakingly beautiful chorus "The Shepherds' Farewell to the Holy Family" from Berlioz's L'Enfance du Christ.

The final verse is marked pppp.

In the vocals department, I went for all the theatrical intensity I could muster for the "main" (i.e. "past") part of the song, and also used heavier reverb than usual to emphasize that this is essentially a flashback.  Ultimately how I'll mix this is far from certain, though, as not only are there bass and drums to come, but I've opted for some acoustic guitar to fill out the texture as well.  This seemed to me to match the singer-songwriter elements of this track, which is ironic in view of the fact that (again, like "Modern Art") there's no guitar at all in either previous version.

Poetry Corner V

Of the four tracks on Escapade 2 that are either drastically different from their Escapade counterparts or completely new, "One of My Goof Attacks" is easily my favourite.  As with "Them", I think this is partly because by its own nature it withstands its parent album's systemic faults better than its surroundings.  In this case, the song doesn't have the inherent earnestness of (say) "Days to Midnight" or "After the Party" so my lack of emotional commitment to the project doesn't hurt the track as much.

There's not that much to talk about with this song.  It has the distinction of being the one that needs the least amount of reworking, to the point that I'm even leaving the original lyrics intact.  I include them here solely for the sake of completeness.

Just another time today,
Just another thing gets said,
And I don't realize,
I've had a goof attack.

Suddenly the air is funny,
Suddenly I'm feeling red,
Only then you'll say to me,
I've had a goof attack.

I never see it coming,
I never stop myself,
It happens just like that,
I have a goof attack.

In starting to record this, though, a surprising challenge manifested itself: it turned out that a little of the "organ" (which is actually Jupiter-80) tone I chose goes a long way.  That wouldn't be a problem, except that in the Escapade 2 arrangement, the organ goes completely solo for 4 whole bars near the end, resulting in a similar problem to the one I previously encountered in "Faraway Island".  I decided to write a new drum part to go underneath this passage.

In the incremental layering of vocal harmonies from one verse to the next (inspired, I'm pretty sure, by Elton John's "Grey Seal") I chose to sing all the parts myself, despite that in verse 3 this necessitated quite a lot of falsetto.  I considered having Lynsey on the top part, but previous experience has taught me that while layering one's voice onto itself is a difficult challenge, layering it onto another's is even harder.  The whole experience of recreating this arrangement ended up demonstrating what difference a proper vocal microphone makes.  In particular, I vividly remember, when recording the climactic "WHOA!!!!" in the Escapade 2 version, having to dangle my stereo microphone off the edge of my desk and use only the signal from the side pointing away from me, lest the volume clip.  This time, I only had to turn down the input level on my recording device!

In a weird way, I find it encouraging that the placeholder synthesized "rhythm guitar" currently in the mix sounds really quite bad to me: this implies that I'm hearing such things more objectively than I did in the Escapade or Escapade 2 era.  The tone, probably created with power-chord-laden metal stylistics in mind, is actually too distorted for this old-fashioned, crunchy blues-rock song, as what are supposed to be "chords" end up as rather inharmonious scrunching noises.  It's very telling that, in the bluesy proto-hard rock of the likes of Jimi Hendrix or Cream, guitar tones are very often lighter on the distortion than you might think.

Spot the MIDI!

In my younger days, I spent so much time experimenting with the PSR-5700 (which I would ultimately give away during the 2012 Escapade 2 sessions) that after all these years, I can still clearly remember exactly which MIDI instrument is which.  Therefore, I thought it might be fun (and maybe instructive?) to listen to Escapade straight through, making a complete list of the General MIDI sounds used in every song.

Technical note: I count my MIDI instruments from 1-128, not from 0-127 as some do.  This was the numbering system used in both the interface of the PSR-5700 and in the software I grew up with.

I don't currently own any General MIDI-compatible devices so this demonstration was entirely silent.

The instruments on each track are listed below in order of appearance.

1a. March for the Age

• 39 Synth Bass 1
• 95 Pad 7 (halo)
• 89 Pad 1 (new age)
• 48 Timpani
• 52 Synth Strings 2
• - Standard Drums

1b. My Next Escape

• 29 Electric Guitar (muted)
• - Standard Drums
  
• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• 52 Synth Strings 2
• 25 Acoustic Guitar (nylon)
• 81 Lead 1 (square)

2. Days to Midnight

• 15 Tubular Bells
• 13 Marimba
• 51 Synth Strings 1
• - Standard Drums
• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• 30 Overdriven Guitar

3. Modern Art

• 76 Pan Flute
• 36 Fretless Bass
• - Standard Drums
• 81 Lead 1 (square)
• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• 52 Synth Strings 2
• 98 FX 2 (soundtrack)
• 89 Pad 1 (new age)
• 104 FX 8 (sci-fi)
• 127 Applause
• 82 Lead 2 (sawtooth)
• 119 Synth Drum
• 93 Pad 5 (bowed)
• 15 Tubular Bells

4. What Is Mine

• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 89 Pad 1 (new age)
• 101 FX 5 (brightness)
• 104 FX 8 (sci-fi)
• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• 86 Lead 6 (voice)
• 11 Music Box
• - Standard Drums

5. Them

• - Standard Drums
• 31 Distortion Guitar
• 89 Pad 1 (new age)
• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 98 FX 2 (soundtrack)
• 17 Drawbar Organ
• 29 Electric Guitar (muted)
• 30 Overdriven Guitar

6. Faraway Island

• 123 Seashore (sort of - used as impulse to filter white noise)
  
• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• 51 Synth Strings 1
• 30 Overdriven Guitar
• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 26 Acoustic Guitar (steel)
• - Standard Drums
• 18 Percussive Organ
• 82 Lead 2 (sawtooth)
  

7. My Last Escape

• 1 Acoustic Grand Piano
• - Standard Drums
• 33 Acoustic Bass
• 29 Electric Guitar (muted)
• 89 Pad 1 (new age)
• 52 Synth Strings 2
• 25 Acoustic Guitar (nylon)
• 48 Timpani

I'm particularly struck by how many entries in this list have a program number between 81 and 104 inclusive, or feature the word "Synth".  I think this reflects something I've believed, to a greater or lesser degree, all along: that synthesizers are best used in ways that don't even try to pretend to not be synthesizers.  It's just unfortunate that, combined with what resources I perceived to be available to me back in 2009, this resulted in a completely inappropriate production style for the music I was writing.

Making a similar list for Escapade 2 would be an exponentially more difficult endeavour.  The Jupiter-80 is not General MIDI-compatible, so I had literally thousands of different tones to choose from for every part - particularly the "obviously a synthesizer" parts, and there's rather a lot of those!  In some cases, I can remember the name of what I chose, usually in a "what was I thinking?" context, but there'd also be a lot of trawling through hundreds of lead or pad sounds in search of something I recognize.  I don't think it's worth the effort.

"I have a bad feeling about this"

Even though "Them" is hands-down my favourite track on Escapade, I approach it this time with some trepidation.  Its original lyrical subject matter (jealousy and paranoia in the face of perceived romantic competition) is, to put it lightly, a touchy subject nowadays.  Thankfully, at least, the original lyrics are (as usual) extremely cryptic so they don't bother me as much as they potentially could.

Keeping them intact is, however, out of the question for a somewhat esoteric musical reason.  The Escapade and Escapade 2 versions of this song both take advantage of a synthesized bass's ability to go much lower than an actual bass guitar can.

Carole King said it best: "I feel the earth move".

Obviously, this calls for a 5-string bass guitar, but even those only go down as far as B0 in standard tuning.  Transposing the song up 1 semitone would theoretically work, but would also put the song into the fiendishly difficult-to-read key of G-sharp minor (that's 5 sharps).  So I've opted to transpose it up 2 semitones, into A minor... which puts the vocal part a bit beyond my comfortable range.

Lynsey to the rescue!

Which, in turn, means that a radically different lyrical approach is called for.  Truth told, I'm still undecided between several different angles I could take.  However, while I don't know what the vocalist should be singing, I do know how I want the vocals to sound.  I arrived at this by a circuitous route.  Some time before planning Chronicles of a Dead End, I cooked meatloaf (the food, that is) for the first time in my life.

Not my most hated of all loaves, it turns out.

As you might expect, the conversation at the family dinner table soon turned to Meat Loaf (the musician), who had then recently passed away.  And that conversation, of all things, got me interested in listening to his work for the first time, ever.  Ironically, what jumped out at me the most had nothing to do with Meat Loaf at all: namely, Ellen Foley's gloriously heated co-lead vocal in "Paradise by the Dashboard Light".

Anyway, I soon realized that Foley's part was exactly how "Them" should have sounded all along.  As an aside, I find it amusing that Foley's singing technique runs circles around Meat Loaf's notorious lack thereof, while at the same time being at least his equal (if not his superior) in sheer dramatic force.

Not that I'm suggesting that "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" would be a good lyrical model for this.  It wouldn't.  It's just a point of departure, really.

That aside, a big part of why I like "Them" so much is because it's the one time that the goofy, and at the same time somewhat eerie, video-game-music-like quality imparted by Escapade's production is not completely out of place.  In the interest of preserving something of that, I've opted to program more of the keyboards than usual on the Chronicles version; exceptions are the organ throughout and one quiet synthesizer solo in the middle.

As a composition, I actually think it's pretty far from Escapade's strongest offering.  In particular, I was never quite satisfied with the way the song started with a "Won't Get Fooled Again"-like long power chord amid noisy drums, but (back then) wasn't really sure how the song should begin.  This time, though, I had to think of something different, because "Days to Midnight" (which is the album opener this time) already starts with a similar gesture, and I don't want to repeat myself too much.

What I ultimately decided on was to cannibalize the drum intro of another song I'd written around the same time, but never released.  The passage has a flavour of the primal power of Japanese taiko drumming, I think.  I considered bringing in an actual taiko artist, but without knowing what kind of notation (if any) they'd be familiar with, that would be difficult.

While I was at it, I abridged the "development" section quite a bit.  It's an interesting idea, but I'll freely admit that the extent to which I stretched it out for the Escapade version was filler.  As a result, the Chronicles of a Dead End version of "Them" is going to be about a minute shorter than previous versions, even with (like "Days to Midnight") the tempo slowed down a notch.

Modern Art and more

Chronicles of a Dead End is a prog album.  I wasn't 100% sure of that going in, but the fact that the bassist and the guitarist both commented (approvingly) on the prog feel detectable in "Days to Midnight" left me in no doubt.

It would be an exaggeration to say that you can't have a prog album without an acoustic guitar instrumental serving as a relaxed intermezzo of sorts.  Nonetheless, there's a reason why it's a common choice, either as a pure acoustic guitar track or a band instrumental with acoustic guitar as the lead instrument.  Furthermore, "Modern Art" seems almost tailored to be adapted into the latter, as there's no guitar at all in the backing instruments - just piano, bass, drums and (in the Escapade version) various goofy synthesizer effects.

Needless to say, the version on the main album will not feature those!  It turned out to be surprisingly straightforward to transcribe the basic accompaniment of the Escapade version and adapt it to the calmer structure of the Escapade 2 version.  Accordingly, the Chronicles version will restore the piece to its original key of E minor.  This also opens the intriguing possibility of making two separate mixes of this track: the "normal" version on the main album, and a special "Goof Attack Remix" restoring the weird synthesizer passages as a bonus track.

Another possibility for a bonus track is a new version of "March for the Age".  I know I said before that it's not a very substantial composition, and it certainly made for a poor opener on both Escapades.  But during some "Faraway Island"-related downtime, I experimented a bit, and I ended up feeling that taken on its own terms it works quite well as a synthesizer showcase.  (I recreated the rumbling fade-in by slowing down the roar of an industrial-grade dehumidifier, and was amused to notice that you can't spell "dehumidifier" without "MIDI".)  No, I wouldn't say that "March for the Age" or the original "Modern Art" is conventionally good music, but they're essentially harmless, and I'd say they're both part of the Escapade mythos.

I also considered a version of "After the Party", but decided against it.  There is salvageable material in the song (its chord changes are conveniently similar to the "Escapes"), but as an entity in itself, it's too deeply rooted in crushing futility for comfort.  Moreover, I knew for sure I'd goofed up with that song when I ended up making another Asia-related comparison in my head: "Nothing's Forever" is a track on their (shockingly good) 2008 reunion album Phoenix, and makes my basic point (which is exactly what the Asia song title suggests) in a way that is neither depressing nor dull.  So, um, I'm going to stick with my first idea of cannibalizing elements of "After the Party" to flesh out the "Escapes".

"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.

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.