monday song #1: ghost story
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the first installment of monday songs.
the descending/ascending piano line came first. it suggested to me a kind of hopeful melancholy. the piano part and melody came very quickly, the result of fiddling with different accompaniment styles, in this case the piano playing the guitar, something i want to do more of.
the first lyric hook was “why does it alway have to be…” but i had no idea what that meant, only that someone was saying it to the person singing the song. then i got “a broken heart a valentine” and from there it was just wrestling with meaning, tying the two parts together, and uncovering the rest of the story.
the squeal of kids was an accident: cormac and maude running through the house with friends when i was recording a vocal. at first i thought a decent take was ruined, upon hearing it in context, it had the sense of faraway delight, a happy sound, but lonely in its distance. a memory perhaps, or a dream.
hat tip to elliott smith who haunts this one, and to the white album beatles, as is often the case these days.
November 24th, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Hell of a start, Andrew. Thought you might like that I listened to this with Olbermann in the background. Mashup?
November 24th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
Very nice! I like the idea of a weekly song. Keep it up, I’ll be listening
November 24th, 2008 at 8:01 pm
Good work man, I like it! And I was going to subscribe to the podcast but got a 404 error. I’ll come back next Monday.
November 24th, 2008 at 8:05 pm
i’m working to get the podcast link working correctly. pretty sure the itunes link works, but the podcast link is adding some extra info that is breaking it. after a bit of research should have it sorted. thanks for listening!
November 25th, 2008 at 11:41 am
Keep ‘em coming, Andy! -GV
November 25th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
added it to my itunes podcasts. cool.
November 25th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
i fixed the subscribe links this morning. glad to hear it is working! thanks for subscribing. more soon…
December 8th, 2008 at 9:55 pm
I’m so glad to get invited into this. Your work is so clean, thoughtful, melodic and articulate. Keep it coming!
December 9th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
loving it!
December 9th, 2008 at 9:09 pm
I like the contrast of the light, pensive, somewhat sweet feel of the music with the rather biting lonely lyrics. I get the sense of someone who is deeply disappointed, but trying to sort of convince themselves that it’s not really that bad. Is it?