"Pacific Blues" & how it was made.

"pacific blues" is the 22nd song in the yearbook series, track 1 of the "may" ep. a couple months before this song was released, i reached out to an incredible company called GForce software from the UK. they specialize in sampling vintage keyboards and synths, preserving their unique characters and incredible sounds, converting them meticulously so as to be played on modern gear. in other words, they do awesome things. (learn more about them here!) anyway - having been a fan of theirs for nearly a decade, i decided to write a note to tell them so, spilling the beans about my adoration of their work. they responded with much kindness and shortly after, to my delight and surprise, we partnered up a bit.

i was honored when they sent me a brand-new super secret set of sounds they were preparing to release, for me to play around with in advance. that "secret" set of sounds has since been released: the "ChamberTron" set for their m-tron pro software. if you are unaware of what mellotrons or chamberlins are, read here. a brief history about the "chamberlin" instrument:

in other words, these little beauts are my favorite sounding instruments ever. i've been a fan for many years - it was love at first listen. so when GForce sent me their brand new chamberlin set, which was sampled with surgical precision, i couldn't have been more excited!

i was just about to begin writing the "may" ep, when these sounds arrived at my doorstep. i decided right away that it would be incredibly fun to write and record an entire song using ONLY this gorgeous chamberlin set of sounds. so with the immediate inspiration of playing around with the set, "pacific blues" started coming together.

the rule for this song was to ONLY use the chambertron pack, with only one exception - my voice.

as i was writing this one, the melodies and tone felt in some unusual way related to the previous yearbook song, "pacific" - so the writing process went along, i decided to lean this song musically and lyrically even closer, with the idea that both songs should be related. they might sound more like distant cousins, than brother and sister but for some reason, i always hear the two songs as being immediate family in some way.

those slightly odd trombone sounds in the beginning are the origins of this song. those types of sounds aren't usually a favorite of mine, but i just loved these... they sounded slightly goofy, but also had this perfect contrast of sadness. so, i started there and began building the song around those quirky trombones.

next came that constantly moving upright bass line. again, a bit unusual for a sleeping at last song, but i loved how it fit. since the chamberlin instrument is a semi lo-fi vintage instrument by nature, there isn't a ton of low-end bass in any of the sounds. and i didn't want to artificially add bass, so i decided a fancier, more active bass line would do the trick.

after playing around with chamberlin "vibes" (bells, etc) sounds and some other horns and strings, the shape of the song began to surface.

the vocal melody for this one took a bit of time to find. it was the trouble child of this song... took several days if i recall. but thankfully, the lyrics for this song came together very quickly... so it made up for it.

this song is very much about wresting with faith. i wanted to write about the struggle directly, without any fabrications. so the opening verse felt right:

"if i could rearrange my words, i’d say what i mean. if i could learn to count the cards, i’d risk everything. imagine how brave i’d be if i knew i’d be safe. if i could only know the end, i’d be a prodigy of faith."

which is all obviously a bit absurd on the surface, but in my head that's exactly the math that goes on. if i could know the answers, then i'd trust so much more easily. i liked the idea of uncovering how silly of a concept that is... how it directly negates the definition of faith and trust. it's childish logic, but at the same time, for me writing this down honestly was almost like taking mental inventory. when i talked, or even thought about faith in any measure, i would clean all of those ridiculous ideas up and make them feel more presentable. less absurd. which is what inspired the next lyric:

"if i had a treasure map, oh the answers i’d find. i’d dust off the artifacts ’til i made ‘em all shine."

it made me happy that the words for this song came somewhat easily... like i had tapped into some very honest part of me that i haven't worked through yet. it felt like these words were in a hurry to come out.

this entire "may" ep was mixed by the very, very talented chris bethea, whom i'll talk about in more depth in the next post or two, but chris did a fantastic job! as a mixer, it's extremely challenging to work with a song made up of sounds from one instrument - especially a vintage and very lo-fi sounding one. it doesn't leave a lot of room for dynamic or definition or even variation. but chris tackled this song head on and did an incredible job!

thanks for reading! oh and the kind folks at GForce software did an interview with me about my experiences using their instrument for this song - check it out here.

much love, ryan

listen: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/48716061" params="auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=000000" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

lyrics:

PACIFIC BLUES

if i could rearrange my words, i’d say what i mean. if i could learn to count the cards, i’d risk everything. imagine how brave i’d be if i knew i’d be safe. if i could only know the end, i’d be a prodigy of faith.

if i had a treasure map, oh the answers i’d find. i’d dust off the artifacts ’til i made ‘em all shine.

everything i know is borrowed, broken or blind, and what i’ve seen of beautiful feels merely implied. is it the treatment of symptoms or a touch of divine? i guess the truth is that the truth is of complex design.

how i ache to know.

God knows that i know we’re little boats in the great big sea. setting sail after sail in the hopes of finding a breeze.

every compass i have followed i’ve trusted and denied. so it goes with an ever-changing definition of right. is it the treatment of symptoms or a touch of divine? i guess the truth is that the truth is of complex design.

if ignorance is bliss, then i guess i’m in heaven. but this hesitant kiss sends me back to the grasp of the sea.

setting sail after sail in the hopes of finding a breeze.

"in the meantime" & how it was made.

"in the meantime" is the 21st song in the yearbook series, the concluding track of the “april” ep. this song originated from a very small idea i had right before yearbook began - a piece of music that would be built around this particular rhythm on guitar... i liked the idea of having this frantic, and almost out of control type of acoustic acoustic guitar rhythm, while layering simple, gentle and romantic melodies over it. i liked the idea of that contrast.

when it came time to write the final song for the "april" ep, i remembered this fraction of idea via a small recording i made of the guitar rhythm, and began sorting out the chords and structure of the song.

it took many hours of me playing that rhythm on the guitar in order to play it sturdy enough to record. i'm not a very technical guitar player, so fast movement and many fingers picking at once definitely stretched me a bit. i loved it playing through it though... it felt like a good workout or something! it's funny to play this song now, as i can pick and up play it with no trouble, but when i was first working through it - it was wobbly at best.

as i was working out the arrangement, i decided to reflect the subject of the lyrics with the music... (more on that in a minute) as i mentioned in the previous blog post (read here), this song was written as the 2nd half of the song ""intermission," which was very much a song about the frustration and challenge of transition, being stuck between point a and point b. "in the meantime" was intended to be an answer of sorts to those feelings... a different and more healthy thought process... not necessarily a conclusion, but a more hopeful way to interpret those feelings.

"in the meantime" was written about the art of patience. especially in relation to faith and trust (since both of which require an immense amount of patience to fully understand)... so this song is very much about making the best of our meantime, our middle place.

in sorting out what it means to truly be patient in these lyrics, it felt necessary to address fear. in my life, i've been realizing more and more every day that fear is truly the most paralyzing emotion there is. it drives every negative reaction i have to the surface... frustration, confusion, sorrow, anger, doubt and of course, impatience. the lyric that best captures the thought process about fear that i'd like to have is:

"fear is illogical math- an impractical skill to have."

so that lyric is a reminder to me that fear (when left unchecked) is rather impractical, to put it gently.

my answer to the challenges of being stuck, suspended in mid-air, are in the final lyric of the song... a prayer:

"here, in the meantime, in the gospel of nearsight, may we learn to live a nourished life."

so the arrangement of the music was meant to represent all of these mood swings. i wanted the music to sound romantic and sweet in a way, representing ideals and hope but at its core, i wanted there to be a pushing, frantic feeling as well, to represent the challenges of impatience... i wanted the music to swell up and down, to represent the lack of control we have to tame our worries and fears.

after i finished up the lyrics and vocal melodies, i wrote to my pal brooke waggoner (who is one of my favorite artists/songwriters making music today!) an email and asked if she'd be up to singing some harmonies throughout this song. she accepted my invite and did such a beautiful job... really lovely to have her! mini side note: one happy accident that happened - i sent brooke an early draft of the lyrics to sing and there was one word that i ended up trading out for another, and after she recorded it the old way, i didn't notice and sang the lyrics the new way... after i finalized my vocal takes of the song, i noticed that we were singing different words... but i left it because i love the double meaning... the word is "farsighted" and the brooke sang the older version which read "foresighted."

"though our patience is always in short supply, we’ll leave our foresighted/farsighted worries behind."

another side note: brooke waggoner is currently touring the universe, as part of jack white's band, supporting the record they made together "blunderbuss." hooray for brooke!

i sent another invite to another pal of mine (and no stranger to yearbook - she's on a bunch of songs!) to contribute to this song, the incredibly talented laura musten. i asked laura to record some clusters of strings for this song, weaving in and out of the vocal melodies and honestly couldn't have done a more lovely job! was such a delight to hear her tracks sent back... her playing is so gorgeous and her ability to overdub is just wonderful. i love the lines she played - she really understood the idea behind the arrangement of the music, mirroring the lyrical subject. side note: laura recorded all of these violins on her laptop with garageband and a usb mic, and yet they sound rich and lovely as ever. in your face, expensive recording gear!!

yet another side note: i met laura through brooke, so it only felt fitting to have them both be a part of this song.

and lastly, my bestie, dan perdue contributed some lovely rhodes piano throughout.

this one turned out to be a fav of mine... from concept to completion, i was very pleased with how it all came together.

thanks so much for reading!!

love, ryan

listen:

[soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/13348230" params="auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=000000" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

lyrics:

IN THE MEANTIME

maybe there’s no answer here, at least one we’re ready to hear. no string of words will satisfy. no simple equation to edify us

here, in the meantime, may questioning nurture life.

fear is illogical math- an impractical skill to have. still, we talk of our future ’til we have no voice; we’ll try to outsmart it with noise.

but here, in the meantime, may the unknown harvest life.

we’re conditioned to mourn our empty glass long before it ever poured out our past. though our patience is always in short supply, we’ll leave our farsighted worries behind.

here, in the meantime, in the gospel of nearsight, may we learn to live a nourished life.

"intermission" & how it was made.

"intermission is the 20th song in the yearbook series, track 2 of the "april" ep. in my early days of writing music, I discovered delay effects for guitar for the first time and it changed my life forever. (totally dramatic, but also very true..) as a guitar player, I became obsessed. I didn't use delay in any fancy ways, just simple echo effects and that's all it took to fall madly in love with my electric guitar. i would set up my amp downstairs in my parents basement and play for hours. I loved it. but in recent years, my electric guitar has taken a bit of a backseat (and my delay pedal along with it!) in favor of my taste for more acoustic instrumentation.

for "intermission" I thought it would be a ton of fun to revisit my old habits of setting up my electric guitar and amp and just mess around (something I've not done in many, many years) - I had so much fun. I dusted off my trust line6 DL4 delay pedal and went to town.

one of my favorite features on that particular pedal is the ability to record short loops... click one button and it immediately begins recording whatever you're playing, click another button and it begins replying it, looping over and over. rinse and repeat and you can create a multi-layered cake of guitar sounds.

after an hour or two of messing around, I created the guitar loop that is foundation of "intermission." i thought it would be really fun to write the song in the same way the loops were originally compiled - which is how the song begins. one guitar, followed by another with harmonies, followed by another with more and so on and so on. I liked the idea of preserving the origins of this song in the actual final arraignment.

at first, the general outline of the song came together very easily and fast on this one - but once I got to writing vocal melodies and lyrics, that's when the brakes were slammed to a screeching halt. (never a fun time) ... halfway into writing the vocal melodies for this song, I realized that it reminded me of another song I heard a while back. as a musician, this is something that one encounters often - there are only so many notes in existence, and unfortunately sometimes you follow an idea into someone else's song and have to forfeit the song entirely. it's happened countless times before and is always a bummer - spending hours and sometimes days and weeks on a song and and realizing that it's someone else. ugh. I've always been very strict about it and throw things out the window right when an idea feels no longer my own. for "intermission" the melody kept leaning into a familiar melody and it took many days to flip it inside to and make it mine. eventually I was able to make it happen and in retrospect, I'm very happy to have invested those extra days of work to bend it into something that feels new to me.

musically, this was a fun song to put together... enjoyed programming the very simple, dry drums... guitar layers, synth patches, etc. a favorite sound for me is the little toy piano bit that starts around 1:30 - that's one of my favorite little keyboards in the word - the casio sk-1. love that thing.

lyrically, this song is about transition. it's about the challenges of being stuck between point a and point b. or as the song states, "somewhere between side a and side b" - (which by the way is a mini reference to the iphone game "superbrothers: sword & sworcery" - if you've played it before you know what "side a" and "side b" is no doubt.)

when I wrote this, most things in my life felt very caught in some middle space... everything felt a bit up in the air in one way or another.  for that very reason, i decided to make it the middle song of this ep (which also explains the title "intermission") so writing this song, writing down these thoughts, to get it off my chest, made me feel better - to get these frustrating thoughts outside of my head.

the song "in the meantime" is next up, which is another train of thought about being in some sort of middle place... it was written as a sort of answer for the thoughts written down in this song. a prayer of sorts.

thanks for reading!

love, ryan

listen: [soundcloud url="http://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/46796537" params="auto_play=false&show_artwork=true&color=000000" width="100%" height="166" iframe="true" /]

lyrics:

INTERMISSION

i’m so tired but i can’t sleep. my mind is full but i can’t speak. among the dust of the hard-to-reach, i’m stuck right here, somewhere between side a and side b.

i could call it compromise or just an intermission. some kind of consolation prize for the race i never finished.

i want to turn these tired gears. i want to feel the follow-through, some kind of equilibrium… something to set my watch to.

i’m here, somewhere between victory and a white flag. caught in this purgatory dream, i’m stuck.

but i want to set the record straight, i want to retrace my every step. if i could just rewind all the tapes then maybe i’d find my loose thread.

call it a compromise or just an intermission. some kind of consolation prize, so close, but never finished.

i want to turn these tired gears. i want to feel the follow-through, some kind of equilibrium… something to set my watch to.

Sleeping At Last on FOX's "Bones"

So thrilled to announce that my song "From the Ground Up" will be featured on the season 7 finale of the FOX TV show BONES. The episode airs this Monday (May 14) 8/7c on FOX.

Privileged to be a part of this show! Hope you'll tune in!

Much love, Ryan - Sleeping At Last

"Tethered" & how it was made.

"tethered" is the 19th song in the yearbook series, track 1 of the "april" ep. towards the end of each song's recording process, I spend about a day playing around with new sounds and ideas to put the finishing touches on the song. the sprinkles on the top of the sundae! when I was wrapping up "birthright," I was playing around with additional sounds and haphazardly laid my hands on the keyboard and played a few random notes. i liked how they sounded and immediately grabbed my iPhone to record the mini idea. that idea became "tethered."

if you've heard my music before, you're probably well aware that I have a soft spot for strings. I incorporate strings into as much of my music as possible. I'm a sucker for them. there's a style of playing called "pizzicato," which is where the strings are plucked on the violin (or viola, cello) rather than played with a bow. I always love how this sounds. it has a sort of romantic sound to me, playful, but earnest at the same time. so I try to toss in pizzicato strings throughout songs when it works. for tethered, I thought this would be the perfect sound for the foundation of the entire song.

being a completely novice (translate: terrible) violin player myself, I decided to take on the challenge of recording these pizzicato strings myself. so that's what you're hearing. it took a long while to play it right, but I am happy with the end result.

after the pizzicato foundation was laid, I played around with piano melodies. it came together quick and I really liked the strange rhythms that fit together in this song. after that, i tackled making the choruses "bigger" (a term that is used almost always in the songwriting process ha) - which lead me to my electric guitar. always fun to dust it off and see if I remember how to play the thing. ;) I enjoyed the thicker electric guitar swells in this. was fun to play. my best mate, dan added a bit of bass, keys and some sparkly bits in the end. i love how it all came together. this is a very, very simple song and I'm pleased that it remains so. it's always tempting to complicate songs, so approaching this song with a simple mindset let it breathe and I'm very pleased with he that works for this.

lyrics... this is a pretty direct, simple and personal love song. a couple years ago, my wife and I were indeed married by the ocean - on the shores of Oahu, Hawaii. and each verse, refers to different aspects of my wife's and my personalities. some examples:

"I'll be warmth when you are shivering cold" - my wife is always cold. always. bundled in blankets as often as possible.

"you be patience when I've had enough of this waiting game" - is a direct reference to me being an impatient person. always in a hurry. is what my family tells me I am. it's true.

the idea for these lyrics are centered around one theme: the game, cats cradle. if you are unfamiliar with the game, read about it here.

it's such a beautiful idea, a game of taking turns making a simple strand of string turn into something more. in my head, that sounded a lot like relationships - a series of taking turns and making something together that is better than what we could have created alone. I also loved the idea that, in this game, we make mistakes to we start over. there is no loser, no winner. just a small team, working together to make something beautiful for the sake of making something beautiful. its fairly obvious, but this concept is what inspired the title "tethered." and the first set up of this image in the song is the lyric:

"we tied string around our fingers to remember our ideals."

when i was scavenging the Internet for visuals of the game for inspiration, I stumbled upon these remarkably beautiful pieces of art by brian mallman:

"String Games (Cat's Cradle" by Brian Mallman

so as I wrote this song, those images were certainly imprinted onto my mind.

in february, 2012, the abc show, "grey's anatomy" used this song to close out an episode. privileged to say the least!

thank you for reading! love, ryan

listen:

lyrics:

TETHERED

we were married by the ocean. we were tethered by the sea. we tied string around our fingers to remember our ideals.

i’ll be brave when you are frightened. you’ll be strong when i am weak in the knees. i’ll be calm when you have had enough of these rushing waves. you’ll be the oxygen i need.

we’ll take turns to untangle the knots, though our hands may be tied, it’s all a part of the plot. cat’s cradle etiquette, we oblige, as we learn to enlace for the rest of our lives.

you’ll be balance when i waver. i’ll be warmth when you are shivering cold. you’ll be patience when i’ve had enough of this waiting game. i’ll be the anchor cast below.

we’ll take turns to untangle the knots, though our hands may be tied, it’s all a part of the plot. cat’s cradle etiquette, we oblige, as we learn to enlace for the rest of our lives.