The fourth track is a radical departure from the first three in that it's actually in a major key!  I like minor keys so much that major keys are somewhat of a rarity for me.  The major seventh chord, however, is something I've been drawn to ever since I picked up a guitar.  This track also features Synful Orchestra a bit more prominently.

Click here to download track four: Dance of the Directionless

I think I spent more time on actual "composition" on this track than the first three, which were more in the area of stream of consciousness for me.   In other words, I spent more time having to think about it and work parts out.  This track started like all the others though, with just drums.  This was the next thing I recorded after "Just Stop Talking."  It looks like the recording started on July 6th.  At this point, I was ready to have four close mikes on the drums, since I felt good about the mike placement from the earlier attempts.  I still used the condenser on the kick drum, and then dynamic mikes on snare/hi-hat, high toms, and low toms.  The positioning of the mike on the low toms picked up the ride cymbal quite well.  With no overheads, and only close mikes, I didn't have anything to really capture the crash cymbals.  Hence, the crash cymbals are overdubbed.  

I recorded around twenty minutes of drums in five/four time.   The only real conscious decision here was that I wanted to do something in five.  This is one of those timings that sinks into your brain as drummer, especially if you're into "prog" bands like Yes or King Crimson.   I think its use in rock can probably be attributed to Bill Bruford.  And I think Mr. Bruford probably got the idea from the drummer in Dave Brubeck's band, Joe Morello.  Who apparently got the idea from hanging around in Turkey.  Anyway, it's been done and overdone enough in rock that it's no longer unique or unusual, unless all you ever hear is bubblegum pop.

The drums were mixed to stereo with some compression, and chopped into loops, as well as some longer sections.  And of course lots of fills.   The next thing I did was to improvise the bass line, and then the guitar chords over it.   The low string on the bass was tuned down to a D from some other thing I was doing, so that probably influenced the chord changes from A to D.

The main guitar melody came from just singing over the track as it looped around and around.  I initially didn't think that any melody would particularly work, and I was just soloing endlessly over the two chords.  Which was really, really boring.   To make a long story short, I came up with this melody, which also suggested the alternate "chorus" section in F sharp minor. 

I decided to have the strings come for a middle section, because I felt like I'd already recorded enough guitar solos for the time being.  The string sounds are violin, viola, cello, and double bass.   I'm always more attracted to this configuration rather than the traditional string quartet.  I do try to stick within the proper range for each instrument, though I know I blow it sometimes.  I ended up using the section string sounds rather than the solo string sounds, but I think Synful sounds best with solo strings.  The violin and viola parts are really counter-melodies to the original melody.  The violin part feels a bit to me like a Tony Banks keyboard solo from the 70s, though that wasn't the intention.  My wife said it sounded like it should have those riverdance people dancing over it, and this image has stuck in my head.  I don't they ever really dance in five though, do they?  Hence the title.  The cello comes in playing the guitar melody from the beginning, which ties it together.  The D section of this part is the part I like best in this piece.   I copied the violin part from the middle to the start to try to create some continuity.  After programming all the notes in, I have to manually adjust the velocity and duration of each note so that the instruments sound more "real."

Wow, this description is getting long, huh?  As you can hear, I ended up with a guitar solo section despite my effort to originally have none, and a long minor key section to boot.   I think I was just blowing off steam with the solo but I liked it, so I kept it.   The ending was the hardest thing, and there was no ending for a long time, but it seemed to work out. 

When I first played the track for my wife she hated the lead guitar sound.  Since she is my number one fan, I do take her suggestions seriously.  It's the same lead sound I use most of the time on the electric, which I created on the Roland GT-5.   I thought that it was probably a valid point that maybe I was oversaturating these recordings with that same lead sound.  I replayed and replayed and replayed that lead part with every sound imaginable, including acoustic guitar, mandolin, clean electric and even programmed strings, but in the end I liked the original sound best.  It may be excessively distorted, but it has a fluidity to it that just works for me. 

By the way, I "master" each recording using Waves Ultramaximizer.  I put some compression on individual tracks so that I don't have to compress the final mix too much.   If it doesn't sound good in my living room and in my car, I go back to the drawing board!

That's it for now.  Please tell me what you think of all of this.