"Dear True Love" & how it was made.

"dear true love" is the 13th track in the yearbook series.

when the idea for yearbook was just starting to develop in my head, i knew there was a thin line between writing songs that naturally "fit" each month's feel/mood and songs that were directly about each month (ie. a st. patrick's day song... or an independence day song.. etc.) obviously i become very intent on yearbook documenting my year, my creative process... by writing whatever felt right as i wrote it. NOT writing a series of holiday songs. BUT on occasion, i felt like it would be fun to write something that was directly related to the month of its release (ie. "snow," from the "december" EP, "january white" from the "january" EP, etc.) so when the EP for "february" rolled around, i could help myself but write a love song in honor of valentine's day.

i knew right off the bat that i wanted this to be a very simple love song on its surface. but i thought it would be super fun to hide within it another completely unrelated theme. pretty much for my own amusement... and i suppose to challenge myself a bit.

if you've ever read the blog before, you've probably gathered that i adore movies. i really do. so when i was writing this song in january (to be released on feb. 1st) me and my pal dan decided to write blog posts of our top 10 movies of 2010. so as i was writing this song, i decided it would be interesting to incorporate each of my top 10 movies of the year within the lyrics of this simple love song, as stealthily as possible. the challenge of course was to do so without it being obvious at all. i think i managed to do it! it was tough, but i'm really proud of how it turned out... and it amuses me every time i hear it and remember my favorite movies of that year. ha.

so here are the lyrics and the movies they secretly allude to:

dear true love,
i’m a writer without any words, (THE SECRET OF KELLS)
i’m a story that nobody heard (GET LOW)
when i’m without you.

i am a voice,
i am a voice without any sound. (THE KING'S SPEECH)
i’m a treasure map that nobody found
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i'm a lantern without any light, (TANGLED)
i’m a boxer much too afraid to fight (THE FIGHTER)
when i’m without you.

so with this ring
may you always know one thing:
what little that i have to give,
i will give it all to you.
you’re my one true love.

i am a memory,
i'm a memory bent out of shape, (INCEPTION)
a childhood already bruised with age (TOY STORY 3)
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i’m an artist without any paint, (EXIT THROUGH THE GIFT SHOP)
i’m the deal that everyone breaks (TRUE GRIT & THE SOCIAL NETWORK)
when i’m without you.

so with this ring,
may you always know one thing:
what little that i have to give,
i will give it all to you.

you’re my one true love.

i am a whisper,
i’m a secret that nobody keeps. (HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON)
i'm a dreamer of someone else's dreams (INCEPTION... again!)
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i'm a farewell that came all too soon. (TOY STORY 3... again!)
i’m a hand-me-down that dreams of being new (TOY STORY 3 ... yet again!)
when i’m without you.

there's actually 11 movies there... because i had a tie between my top 2... toy story 3 and inception. (hence the reason they were referenced a few times throughout the song!)

anyway, check out my original top 10 blog post here... to see the list that inspired this silly challenge.

onto the music - so this song was written on a guitar that my wife gave me for Christmas just a month before i wrote it. it was a taylor mini and i like it quite a lot! i recorded that guitar for this song as well... it only felt right! a love song being played on the guitar that my wife gave me. aww romance.

i asked a few pals to be guests on this track and they did an INCREDIBLE job. first up is the brilliant Eva Holbrook, who played mandolin so so so beautifully on this song. couldn't have been happier with her contribution! she played on the song "101010" as well and i knew that i wanted to make sure she was a repeat guest on yearbook, if she'd do me the honor. such a talented and sweet person!

then, i asked my pal Ryan Francesconi to be a guest. ryan is also a musical mastermind... i'd even say he's one of my favorite musicians of all time. i met him a couple years ago, after seeing him perform in joanna newsom's band. i'm a huge fan of joanna's and was blown away by ryan's contributions to her music... ryan has since become not only a member of joanna's band, but her bandleader as well. such incredibly talented folks, they are! anyway, ryan had contributed to a few songs on the "storyboards" record and i was very much looking forward to inviting him to be a guest on yearbook. try played a bit of banjo and slide guitar on dear true love and i absolutely loved it. he was running off to tour w miss newsom right after he was able to record this, but i'm so grateful that was able to make it work!

lastly my best mate, dan perdue added some super tasteful organs and a touch of bass. lovely!

there are some recordings that come together without much hassle and struggle... and when that rare time comes, i'm always grateful. dear true love is one of those songs. it was a lot of fun to create!

thanks for reading..

much love, ryan

here are the lyrics without distracting movie reference notes...

DEAR TRUE LOVE

dear true love,
i’m a writer without any words,
i’m a story that nobody heard
when i’m without you.

i am a voice,
i am a voice without any sound.
i’m a treasure map that nobody found
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i'm a lantern without any light,
i’m a boxer much too afraid to fight
when i’m without you.

so with this ring
may you always know one thing:
what little that i have to give,
i will give it all to you.
you’re my one true love.

i am a memory,
i'm a memory bent out of shape,
a childhood already bruised with age
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i’m an artist without any paint,
i’m the deal that everyone breaks
when i’m without you.

so with this ring,
may you always know one thing:
what little that i have to give,
i will give it all to you.

you’re my one true love.

i am a whisper,
i’m a secret that nobody keeps.
i'm a dreamer of someone else's dreams
when i’m without you.

dear true love,
i'm a farewell that came all too soon.
i’m a hand-me-down that dreams of being new
when i’m without you.

"Wires" & how it was made

it's no secret that i love my apple gadgets. "wires," which is the 12th song in the "yearbook" series, definitely plays into my adoration for technology.

ever since the iphone was released, and the proceeding birth of the "app store," i've been a bit obsessed with mobile music applications. everything from instruments, sequencers, drum machines, to tuners and metronomes. i really don't know what it is, but i have enjoyed small gadgets ever since i can remember. probably started with my first gameboy...

anyway, after diving into practically every music app for the iphone i could find, i stumbled upon a few apps that inspired the music for this song. i decided i want to build a song from the iphone up, so that is what i did.

the first sound you hear is something i wrote on an ultra simple iphone app i love called "melodica." the idea was the keep that instrument/sound as the core, always underneath, supporting, and always changing a little bit throughout the song. even if it's a note or two different, it is always evolving over the course of the song. it was a lot of fun to write a song in that fashion.

throughout the song, you'll hear an almost organ-like sound, playing chords, with an occasional "sparkle" of notes (that's what i guess i call it when something trills in a beautiful and melodic fashion). that is my all time favorite iphone/ipad music app: SoundPrism. i've blogged/tweeted and beyond about my love for this app and the folks behind it (audanka software). full disclosure: since falling in love with SoundPrism, i've been privileged to have gotten to know the team behind it and have since been, in a way, endorsed by them. with that said, i only talk about their instrument so often, because i love it so.

anyway... there's some other iphone instruments sprinkled throughout this song, especially in the micro-electronic drum department. had a lot of fun working on percussion in that way. my pal dan perdue and myself enjoyed programming and layering different percussion ideas from iphone world.

there's a layer of the percussion that i was pretty excited about that did not come from the iphone... it starts at about 1:04.. oddly enough, it sounds very digital, but in fact it was extremely acoustic. it's the sound of me just playing jazz wire brushes onto more jazz wire brushes. (and yes "wire" brushes is quite appropriate for a song titled "wires"...) i was quite pleased with how that sound layered into the "digital" aspect of the song.

i was very happy with the ending of this song. i wanted the song to essentially overload and explode in the final seconds, so dan and i just kept laying things - keyboards, drums, iphone feedback and loops...until it felt like there wasn't any sonic room left in those final seconds for anything else.

the title "wires" has two meanings:

1. because of the digital nature of the song, i thought it felt like a fitting title.

2. just about every lyric in this song refers to a "wire" of sorts... here's a few examples:

"Carefully cut the wire and wait."

"A loose thread that we must pull."

"Time is the string in between
The arrow and the bow."

"We're shifting our weight
In this tightrope ballet."

and lastly...

"We're down to the wire."

i had a lot of fun writing those lyrics within that theme...

(side note, the lyric "we're down the wire." definitely, definitely was inspired by the intense deadlines that yearbook presented. i thought it was fun to put a little of that stress into the lyrics. :)

a few months after "wires" was released, the ABC television show "Private Practice" ended an episode with this song. another sleeping at last song, "emphasis" was in the same episode as well, right before "wires" played. it was truly a privilege to have two songs in the same episode! so fun to hear my iphone beeps and blips on the TV too.. :)

thanks so much for reading! i have fun writing these little "how it was made" posts and remembering the process of each of these songs. thanks for listening!

much love, ryan

lyrics:

WIRES

Carefully cut the wire and wait.
Life is a series of narrow escapes.

A chain reaction,
A loose thread that we must pull.

The birth of religion
In the challenge of the unknown.

But all desperation
Leads to a fork in the road -
We live for understanding
Or for control.

So very carefully we'll cut the wire and wait.

With one eye closed,
We'll draw back,
Catch our breath and let go...
Time is the string in between
The arrow and the bow.
If there's one thing we've learned
As our pulse returns -
Timing is everything.

If life is a series of narrow escapes,
We're shifting our weight
In this tightrope ballet.

We're down to the wire.

"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.)