"The Ash is In Our Clothes" & how it was made

"The Ash is in Our Clothes" & how it was made.

"the ash is in our clothes" was the 11th track in the "yearbook" collection (part of the "january" ep.) not only is it the first instrumental released within yearbook, but it is the first instrumental piece of music that sleeping at last has released in over a decade.

several years ago, i purchased "kontakt," which is a software sampler. (for those of you that don't already know, it's essentially an enormous library of virtual instruments, all of which are stored onto a hard drive and can be played via a midi keyboard.) whenever i get a new "instrument" i usually end up writing something on it right away, since i'm excited about it like a new toy. the heart of this song was the result of me messing around with "kontakt" for the very first time.

most of this piece was written sometime in between the "keep no score" album and the "storyboards" album. i had so much fun putting this one together and was really excited with where it was all heading, but when i was writing "storyboards" - it didn't quite feel like the right home stylistically for this piece of music. so, i kept it locked away.

as i mentioned in the "how it was made" blog post for the song "from the ground up," i contributed a few pieces of music for a project that a friend of mine was putting together (pre-yearbook). my pal's name is samantha lamb. she's a fantastic artist/photographer from oklahoma. this song felt right at home within her project, so i carved the song out a bit further for her lovely art installation. and then when the idea for yearbook popped up, i knew right away that this was a song i wanted to include and expand upon even further. the title for this song, was a lyric i had written a long, long while ago - it felt fitting for this song, and for miss lamb's art installation.

let's talk about some of the sounds that make up this song:

the piano that you hear in the beginning and in the end, they were recorded a bit differently than most of the piano on yearbook. rather than recording my upright with my usual mic/settings into pro tools, i recorded these sections with a small handheld recorder just resting on top of my upright. i added heaps of reverb and was very excited with how it turned out... there is almost a "quiver" in the reverb that i like a lot.

the string-like droning is a sound you can hear all over the place throughout yearbook. it's called "bowed piano" and was played via kontakt... it is exactly as it sounds, piano strings that were played with a bow. it's one of my favorite sounds and i really enjoyed its texture in this song. i feel like it gives the right balance between tension and string-like beauty.

there is a children's toy instrument called a "tronichord" that was released in the mid 80's. it makes a pretty great sound (example here) and i've tried and tried and tried for several years now to fit it into a song, but it never quite "works." but FINALLY in this song, it fit like a glove. you can hear it begin at about 1:45... it's a digital trill/harp-ish sound. i love it and hope to find more songs that'll suit it in the future. glad it worked on this one!

my pal jeremy larson recorded a cello line i wrote, that replaced a mellotron cello beautifully. the tron cello felt like the right idea, but it needed the movement of a real cello. mr. larson did a great job playing it.

towards the end of the song, you'll hear a little "strumstick" briefly, which is the instrument that is prominently featured in "next to me." it's a fun instrument... like the "tronichord" instrument, it has limited use. a very strong presence that only works in the right setting. i liked the idea of having it in the end, as a sort of lift in the mood.

i approached the arrangement of the song sort of like a story. it begins with a very sorrowful piece of music, gradually turning into a determined, motivated, maybe a feeling of courage-out-of-the-ashes type of sound (the middle), ending with a lighter, but serious tone - a time of repair. in the end you can hear, just barely, a recording of some birds singing. i liked the idea of what that means in the scope of this little "story." almost like proof that there is peace ahead.

all in all, this was a really fun piece of music to work on. it was so fun to tap into my love and appreciation of film scoring, and to give my voice a bit of a break in the process.

thanks for reading!

much love, ryan

"January White" & how it was made.

"January White" & how it was made this was a fun song to write. writing a "happy" song in the dead of a chicago winter requires a lot of wishful thinking. so this song was a fun escape from the cold, un-"happy" winter in which it was written.

it was one of those songs that didn't require too much chasing down- it unfolded fast and presented me with the always-welcomed problem of there being too many parts, rather than too few. sometimes that ideal situation can go... less than ideal. it's easy to get distracted by the "editing" process where you begin to lose touch with what you were excited about in the first place, BUT yearbook's schedule is always a firm reminder to keep moving along!

i got married early last year and as a wedding present, my beautiful wife, cayt, gave me a mini KALA ukulele. yes, ukuleles are already "mini" but this one is really, really small! it's called a "pocket ukulele" from the incredible brand, KALA ukuleles (who SO kindly assisted my wife in this gift!). so aside from being a really wonderful and special gift, it's always a fun thing to have nearby to play around with. it's actually very playable, compared to most "pocket" instruments. so around Christmastime last year, i found myself messing around with it, not to "write" anything, but just to keep my hands busy and suddenly the main chords for "january white" came together.

after the gist of the arrangement was developed, i decided to bump this song up to the big leagues - a tenor sized ukulele. so although i didn't record the song with my pocket uke, it's super special to me that it was written on that little guy!

pretty quick after the chord structure was set, i knew i wanted to have more playful rhythm for this song. so i tried out a few ideas, by looping the ukulele part and playing drums on my lap and stomping the floor. to "document" the idea, i tossed a mic on the floor and recorded my make-shift percussion, intending to have a full-on drum kit to eventually take it's place.

after sending it over to a very talented friend, he spent a few hours and recorded a beautiful performance of drums for the song, but something didn't quite feel right about that direction for this specific song, so i went back to the drawing board and decided that i still liked the patterns from my floor-stompin', lap-slappin' drums, so it wasn't completely off the mark... but, i eventually i realized that the sound i was looking for was exactly what i already had - non-drum-drum sounds. so, the rhythm in this song is just a bunch of knee-slaps and floor-stomps.

to make the percussion even more "organic" - the shaker sound you're hearing... well, that's a bag of organic coffee from my friends at "land of a thousand hills coffee company"! it had the perfect sound i was looking for! AND it's wonderful coffee from wonderful people doing real, tangible good in this world (learn more about a thousand hills, here)

lyrics... this song was a treat to write! it only took a 3 days to wrestle into shape. and overall it was quite an enjoyable process.. lots of ideas, and most of which fit the melodies like a glove. usually, there's a bit of wrangling, but this song was very kind to me.

i knew right off the bat, i wanted this to be about wiping the slate clean, starting things new again. being the first yearbook song of 2011, released on january 1st, it felt like a rather fitting direction.

the last song of 2010, "snow" wraps up with the lines:

like fresh plates and clean slates, our future is white new year’s resolutions will reset tonight

so when i wrote that, i knew right away i wanted to pick up where that new year's theme left off, with whatever song came next in the "yearbook" sequence. so "january white" was written as the answer to "snow."

we could paint our walls a lighter shade of blue, or we could pack our bags and change the entire view to january white.

that line has double meaning... the first of which is: throughout the last year my wife and i have been discussing plans for our future - where we want to build a family, who we want to be as people, etc - and i liked the idea of writing about the choice between changing something subtle in your life, verses changing it more drastically when necessary and how a new year gives new perspective on decisions like that. my wife's and my bedroom walls are painted blue, so that felt like a fun and personal way to get that meaning across. (especially since we've been doing a lot of talking about home decor, etc. these days!)

meaning 2: i also chose the color blue, because of the sad, down connotations with the color, and i liked the idea of making decisions in life to either be sad in a different ways (shades), or to aim towards something else entirely - happiness. we could settle for a little change, or we could work hard for something more drastically good.

well, we could let our guards down a little easier this time, we could trust that when there’s joy, there’s nothing dark behind in spite of history, hope is january white.

that line is a nod to an incredible author, speaker named brene brown. recommended to me by my friend, tim jackson, i checked out some videos of her speaking. and in what i think was a TED talk she gave, she warns of the dangers of what she calls "foreboding joy" - which is essentially not trusting when good and hopeful things appear in our lives. this is something that i constantly struggle with... always trying to beat disappointment to the punch is very tiring. it's such dangerous behavior and so her talk stuck with me and i wanted to lace that message into this song... (probably mostly as a reminder to myself to not let "foreboding joy" enter into my world!)

so there you have it - a little background on this ukulele-driven new year's day 2011 song!

love, ryan

listen:

lyrics:

JANUARY WHITE

so let’s press undo. rearrange the old and call it new- january white.

every calendar is playing the same old trick: a year will disappear, replaced with counterfeit but we’ll never really mind.

‘cause if nothing else, we're given a little time to change the game, a chance to redefine everything we are, in our january white.

this year is a sealed envelope, a culmination of hopes, the lottery result that we’ve been crossing fingers for.

we could paint our walls a lighter shade of blue, or we could pack our bags and change the entire view to january white.

if nothing else, we're given a little time to change the heart in which we change our minds; our hourglasses turn.

this year is a sealed envelope; with apprehensive hope we brace for anything. i swear, i understand that nothing changes that, the past will be the past, but the future is brighter than any flashback.

well, we could let our guards down a little easier this time, we could trust that when there’s joy, there’s nothing dark behind. in spite of history, hope is january white.

this year, we’re starting over again letter openers in hand, a chance to take a chance. i swear, i understand that the past will be the past, and nothing changes that, but the future is brighter than any flashback.

"Snow" & how it was made.

"Snow" & how it was made. when yearbook began, a large part of the idea was obviously to document an entire year in the form of music... but i wanted to make very sure that "documenting" wasn't too "cute" - for example, i knew right off the bat that i didn't want to write a specific thanksgiving-day song... or an easter ballad. BUT... Christmas? i knew from the beginning that in addition to doing the annual sleeping at last cover of a Christmas song, i wanted to try my hand at writing my first original Christmas song. i also knew that it was going be a pretty big challenge, since there are so many incredible Christmas songs already out there.

so when the month of november rolled around, i began trying to figure out the approach i wanted to take for this song. the first word that came to mind was "family," so immediately i knew that that was going to be the centerpiece of this song. Christmas at it's best, is all about the closeness and warmth of family. but unfortunately, i know far too many people to whom Christmastime reminds them of the parts of their family that have been broken for years. in those circumstances, holidays are a truly challenging time for them. rather than the outpouring of love, togetherness and kindness that Christmas is meant to be about, it can be a time of feeling more alone and broken than any other time of the year.

so, i decided to write the song from that place. i of course didn't want this to be the saddest Christmas song ever written, so it was very important to me to be gentle with the subject and to focus primarily on hope.

you hear that note that drones in the very beginning of the song? well, that single drone is the very first sound that this song was born out of. i sat down and was playing around with sounds on my guitar.. i ended up looping that single note and set the guitar down and sat down at the piano. i played a few chords and quickly realized that this song needed to be completely simplistic and serve the lyrics, so the chords came together quick.

the first lyrics i wrote were the opening lines

"the branches have traded their leaves for white sleeves all warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe"

rarely do the first lyrics i write actually end up being the opening lines in a song, so i was thankful for these little image-based story-set-up type of words.. it helped the flow of writing the rest of the song. so, ultimately the core of this song came together in an afternoon.

one of my favorite films ever is "it's a wonderful life." although it first released in 1946, it's a new favorite of mine, actually... a few years ago, dan and his wife, therese told us about an annual event at a local movie theater that right around Christmastime, where they bring in the actress that played "zuzu" in the films, who signs autographs and does a small introduction to the film before they play it on the big screen. having only seen it once when i was very young, i hadn't really remembered much about it. goodness, what a beautiful and heart-wrenching film! brings tears to my eyes every single time i've seen it since. so i knew that somehow i wanted this song to have some sort of connection to the film... emotionally in the approach to the theme and Christmas in general, as well as maybe trying to subtly tie in a few images from the film. maybe you noticed, maybe you haven't, but here are the lines that i made reference to "it's a wonderful life."

"let our bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow"

those lines are in reference to the ever-famous line that little "zuzu bailey" says at the end of the film "every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings."

next up is maybe a little more obvious and specific....

"like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts"

those are of course in reference to george bailey's triumphant realization that he is loved and is important to those who love him, as he finds "zuzu's petals" in his pocket.

(side note: there's a scene where george bailey is sitting at the bar, praying for his luck to change... he says a few words to God, a single, barely noticeable tear falls, he gets up to leave and someone punches him square in the face. it's incredibly challenging for me to explain why that scene is so special and why it means so much to me, but watch it. i'll attach it below. to me, it's not only one of my favorite scenes in cinematic history- it resonates with me deeply)

the core of this song was recorded live - vocal, drone and piano together at once. i wanted the vocal and piano to play off each other and be as connected as possible, so that's the approach i went with. it was an especially difficult one to record, due to lots of traffic driving by (in the snow, which is apparently louder than dry roads) and how quiet of a song this is. every noise can be picked up.. i'm sure if you listen close enough you can hear some interesting things in the background.

so, there was a video project we put together around this song last december... we invited listeners to send us video footage of "snow" wherever they are in the world, so we could compile a community-made video for "snow." to serve as almost a visual Christmas card of sorts. my good friend and incredibly talented video dude, bob davidson collected all of these lovely videos of snow and assembled them into a beautiful music video. so proud of how it turned out!

hear the song (and watch the video) here:

and here are the lyrics, in their entirety:

SNOW

the branches have traded their leaves for white sleeves all warm-blooded creatures make ghosts as they breathe scarves are wrapped tightly like gifts under trees christmas lights tangle in knots annually

our families huddle closely betting warmth against the cold but our bruises seem to surface like mud beneath the snow

so we sing carols softly, as sweet as we know a prayer that our burdens will lift as we go like young love still waiting under mistletoe we’ll welcome december with tireless hope

let our bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow may the melody disarm us when the cracks begin to show

like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts

the table is set and our glasses are full though pieces go missing, may we still feel whole we’ll build new traditions in place of the old ‘cause life without revision will silence our souls

so let the bells keep on ringing making angels in the snow may the melody surround us when the cracks begin to show

like the petals in our pockets may we remember who we are unconditionally cared for by those who share our broken hearts

as gentle as feathers, the snow piles high our world gets rewritten and retraced every time like fresh plates and clean slates, our future is white new year’s resolutions will reset tonight

love, ryan

p.s. here's that prayer scene i was talking about, from it's a wonderful life... (this youtube clip cuts before he gets punched, but it's still powerful.)

"From The Ground Up" & how it was made.

let me preface by admitting that i've dropped the ball on these "how it was made" blog posts! i wish there was more hours in the day, but due to tight schedules, i've had a tough time being able to give these blog posts my full attention. i do however intend to post about every "yearbook" song, so bare with me! let's pick up where we left off: "from the ground up" from the "december" EP. in the spring of last year, a good friend of ours named samantha lamb asked me if i'd be willing to write a few short instrumental pieces of music to accompany an upcoming project (which is gorgeous, by the way!) she had been working on, entitled: "the perpetual picnic."

sam is a great friend, a fantastic photographer (she's responsible for many of our press photos, in fact!) and she's an endlessly creative artist who makes really, really beautiful things. needless to say, i gladly accepted the invite and got straight to work.

right around the same time that sam asked me to contribute to her project, the concept of "yearbook" had just begun floating around in my head. we decided to keep the "yearbook" idea quiet for a little while, in order to really think it through before making such a huge commitment... so, when sam's project came along, i figured it'd be as good a time as any to jump head first into writing new music.

"from the ground up" was one of the first pieces i came up with. the version i had sent over to sam was completely instrumental... but very much resembles the overall shape and spirit as it now appears on the "december" EP of "yearbook." as i was writing it though, i had intended to eventually expand on it, with the hopes of using it on "yearbook" collection as a full song, with lyrics... so it was a "two birds with one stone" situation (what a horrible phrase... i like birds.)

the base of the song began with a very simple ukulele part that i written. rather than spending time constructing a fully thought out arrangement, i felt like it would be fun to just jump right in and press record and see what happens! after recording a semi-blind arrangement of the ukulele parts, without overthinking anything, i played a bit of my mcnally strummstick over it. then added lots of keyboards and such... and hours and hours of trial and error, "from the ground up" took shape. (which is an appropriate title for a song built in such a way!)

(random fact #1: i recorded the entire ukulele with only this digital handheld recorder)

(random fact #2: there are several small piano melodies that we were recorded with a very old micro-cassette recorder, giving it the warble and dirty sound. this is a trick i used a TON on the "ghosts" album. i have a small micro-cassette recorder collection. was fun to fire one up again!)

a few months went by, "yearbook" had already been a couple months underway, when we were putting together plans for the "december" EP, this song just felt like the right fit for the EP, as well as the feel for the month... so we ran with it.

we knew we wanted real strings, so we asked our very good friend jeremy larson to perform a small arrangement that we had written for it. he did a fantastic job, per usual and his performances definitely gave it the human touch we were hoping the strings would. in addition to strings, dan added some bass and we both added all sorts of little misc. bells and whistles. (well, no whistles, i guess.. mostly just bells)

it's hard to write vocal melodies to something you get used to hearing instrumentally. this is a truth i have stumbled upon many times in my years of writing songs. thankfully for this song, i had a few tiny melody ideas that i had kept around from when i was first putting this song together, so that gave me a little head start.

when it came to writing lyrics for this song, i knew i wanted it to be very image based. simple, but rich with imagery. after writing out a few general ideas, i began to realize that it was a song about renewal. not in the general sense of the word, but a specific story in which the character is putting his/her world back together, after losing their home, in a very challenging chapter of their life. it became clear to me, that i was writing part 2 of the song "bright & early." so that gave me my direction for the lyrics - the ending of the story i started in "bright & early" so if you listen to "bright & early" and "from the ground up" back to back, it tells a single story.

here's the song and lyrics:

FROM THE GROUND UP

one by one, the knots we’ve tied, will come undone. like picking locks, we’ll sow our seeds beneath the sun. our accomplice is the rain, with patience, that of saints

it grows and grows, our home sweet home.

it took me 27 years to wrap my head around this- to brush the ashes off of everything i love. where courage was contagious, confidence was key.

right as rain, as soft as snow, it grows and grows and grows, our home sweet home.

we’ll try to document this light, with cameras to our eyes. in an effort to remember what being mended feels like.

we’re home sweet home.

thanks for reading! more of these "how it was made" posts soon!

love, ryan

update: several months after the release of this song, the FOX television show BONES used this song in the season 7 finale episode.

"Accidental Light" & how it was made.

it's fun to see how a song can go from literally nothing more than a rough idea, and then turn into a fully formed, mixed and mastered song, that often hardly resembles the original idea. and with "yearbook," that process is shrunken down to just a week or so, from idea to completion.

"accidental light" is unlike many of our songs (which generally take shape out of more substantial ideas) - because it was mostly born out of only one chord on the piano.

i have a small library of musical ideas that i've recorded (with my little digital recorder) and right before "yearbook" officially began, i narrowed down this library into a best-of list. from time to time i'll open up the little collection of ideas and see if anything hits me in a particular way - with the hopes that a new song might suddenly appear. in fact, several of the "yearbook" songs have begun in this way. (ie. "watermark," "homesick," etc. all of which began as a tiny recorded idea from this collection) for accidental light i kept working away, unsuccessfully on one of these small ideas... trying to twist and bend it into a song i'm excited about, but i couldn't quite get it there.

after being frustrated and feeling like we needed to move onto another song, i went back through the library of ideas again and there, in one of the short recordings was this one chord that sounded a little unusual for me. (i think it might have been an accidental chord i played in the recording) but for some reason it stood out and all of a sudden, it became the core of "accidental light." with it, i wrote the versus, which made perfect sense with the parts i had been trying to bend into submission (which eventually became the choruses.)

it was a lot of fun to hear a song start with a such a different musical direction and watch it make a u-turn and turn into something entirely different, all because of one chord.

for this song, each instrument we added drastically changed the feel of the song. which is uncommon for us... usually, when we try to add something, it either blends in as support, makes the part a little better, or just doesn't work at all. with "accidental light," every addition shifted the direction of the song somewhere else entirely. we really enjoyed that.

after we signed off on the arrangement and tempo of the song, i began recording my upright piano. it was a very quick process, which i'm always grateful for. i believe dan had the general outline of a bass line that he was working out... but when drums are planned, we try to wait to until drums are finished to nail down the exact bass parts. then i wrote a general outline of vocal melodies and recorded a scratch track of them (when i don't have lyrics i sing anything that pops into my head... which i'm told is fairly passable, which makes me a little tempted to just keep it and not write actual lyrics... but i won't, don't worry. no cut corners 'round here!)

after all of that, we asked our pal jason toth to play drums. jason is from chicago and is a supremely talented drummer... a very tasteful and simple player, whom we love working with. (in fact, he was our drummer for the entire "storyboards" record.) we sent jason the rough recording of the song and a few days later, he swung by our studio to record his parts. unfortunately dan was sick at that time and was homebound, so jason and i worked at it alone. jason set up his kit in our very cramped studio room, showed me a few ideas, which were fantastic. so we took a little time to carve out the placement of his drums and quickly started tracking, which was smooth sailing.

sent the drums over to dan, who began working out the final bass lines as well as exploring some keyboard stuff, while i began writing the lyrics.

lyrics for this song went fairly smoothly - some moments of stress and fear of not finishing, but it's all par for the course. for some reason every lyric that came into my head, had to do with racing. maybe it's because subliminally in my mind yearbook's constant deadlines are there... we're always racing the clock. not sure! but the line "heals lift..." came first and i liked it, so i "ran" with it. (see what i did there?)

i'd be willing to bet that pretty much every songwriter out there has reached a point where they have either referenced, or wrote a whole song about the challenge/process of writing songs... and "accidental light" is full of references to my songwriting process.

for example "my heals lift at this imaginary starting line" - that's me acknowledging that the deadlines i've created for myself, only exist because i put them there. i created the race that i'm stressed out about. it pokes fun at that.

the lyric that probably most clearly references songwriting is:

"though it's all been said,
and this empty dictionary is all that's left,
i'll try to change the world in a single word.
my hands are shaking, ready or not...
invisible ink well it's all i've got.
so, i'll concentrate and pick from these barren trees.

all of that references the feeling that probably creeps inside of every creative person's mind at one time or another: everything has been done already. every melody has been sung... every lyric has been written... every painting has been painted. it's daunting to realize how little our ideas can seem sometimes. but i try to remember that people aren't creating just for originality in itself, they are creating for much more than that... for themselves, for the hope that their art could move someone else in some way too. originality is a byproduct of being genuine. so those lyrics are me wrestling those ideas out of my head. we don't know how something we create will effect the world, if at all, but it's worth creating because clearly, each of us were given the tools to do something, and i believe for a lot of us that something is to create.

at some point during my lyric-writing frenzy, dan worked out some great, new keyboard sounds for this song. very spacey and i'd say they're a bit different sonically for us too, so it was a real treat to hear those sent over. it yet again, took the song into a new direction, giving the song a more lush and full sound.

i asked my friend, david hodges to sing on this song, and he did such a fantastic job. truly a professional by every measure of the word. looking forward to doing more together!

in retrospect, i find it very interesting and significant that david was our guest for this particular song... because one of the first times i hung out with david, he and i had a conversation about writing songs - (if you don't already know, david is an extraordinarily gifted songwriter, who has accolades coming out of his ears - grammy and the like!) it came up that he writes upwards of 50 songs per year... which totally blew my mind. i told him that (this was pre-yearbook) that i'd be lucky to write about 6 or so songs a year. literally. so we both discussed our processes a bit, intrigued by each other's polar opposite song count. i was envious and in awe of the diligence and creativity required to write so many great songs in a single year... and david, was no doubt perplexed by my sloth-like speed as well. so i just love that david is our guest on a song that touches upon the writing process - it feels very appropriate!

a HUGE thanks to david for his beautiful contribution! here's david's website, if you'd like to know more about him.

david's vocal was the last piece to be added to "accidental light." then it was off to mixing, followed by mastering, followed by being released!

thanks for reading these "how they were made" posts... hope you're enjoying hearing how these songs came about. i will write about "From The Ground Up" soon.

love, ryan

_ACCIDENTAL LIGHT

on your mark, get set...
a million miles past the finish line
my heels lift
at this imaginary starting line.
the trigger slips;
my heart was racing well before it’s time.
time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
as the road up ahead disappears.

though it’s all been said,
and this empty dictionary is all that’s left,
i’ll try to change the world in a single word.
my hands are shaking, ready or not.
invisible ink well it’s all i’ve got.
so i’ll concentrate and pick from these barren trees.

time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
and every road i discover disappears under my feet -

some call it reckless, some call it breathing.

have i said too much or not enough?
is it overkill or is it giving up,
to measure out the distance of an echo’s reach?

if it's all broken mirrors and a chance roll of the dice,
then i'll risk everything for a glimpse of accidental light.

time’s running out, it’s always running out on me,
and every road i’ve discovered disappears under my feet -

some call it reckless, i call it breathing._