“aperture” is the last track on the july ep (itunes) in the yearbook series. for the last 5 years or so, i've been obsessed with the ukulele. as a birthday gift, my wife bought me my first at a swap meet in hawaii. before i had one myself, i thought it might be fun to play around with one and maybe, if the right song showed up, add a little background ukulele to it. when i actually had one in my possession, i fell madly in love with it. couldn't put it down. i ended up writing most of my album "storyboards" on the ukulele. and now, i still can't get enough of it.
i haven't gone crazy as a collector of ukuleles, but i do own more of them than any other instrument. one of which is a KALA "pocket" travel uke. it's the most adorable instrument you've ever seen. ever. i got it as a wedding gift from my beautiful wife a few years back. while working on my yearbook project, i was taking a break from writing and picked up my pocket ukulele to have something to fidget with, and accidentally wrote "aperture." the first and only song i've ever written with this microscopic instrument.
the first sound you hear - the strange shaker sound, panning left and right- is a loop i created in the iphone app "noise.io pro."
speaking of percussion… i love tambourine most days. however, i find that its hard to make work in a lot of my songs. i should say, it's hard to make work well in a lot of my songs. for me, it usually feels like an after thought in the song production, rather than actually enhancing a song. in "aperture" i think the simple tambourine in the chorus is actually subliminally vital. it's a rare example in my music, where tambourine is important to the emotional playing field. i also like how it was recorded here.. not sure why, because it's the same way i always record tambourine, but i guess the instrumentation and tones of this song, give it the right sonic space. anyway.. that's a longer paragraph about tambourine than it should be. moving on.
from the moment this song appeared, i knew the production should be sparse. the lyrics should be front and center. so i spent a lot of time playing with simple sounds/colors. it's funny to me, because every time i write a song that is meant to be stripped down and have very little accompaniment, i think because there aren't many layers needed to record around it, surely it'll take less time to complete. this is ALWAYS untrue. because there aren't many layers, each layer and instrument becomes extremely important.. and that's exactly when i zoom in way too close and obsess over every tiny sound and moment of the song. aperture is no exception. it took quite a while to find the sounds that felt necessary to the song, but that also preserved the intimacy of the song.
lyrics…
as a whole, this song is about recording. not recording music, but recording memory, recording life. it's about keeping record. so visually, i had a ton of fun thinking through all of the different means of recording… archeology, music, art, personal memory and photography.
since i was a kid, i've been in love with photography. so as the first line came together in my head,
happiness is somewhere i have been before- a blurry photograph that i have since ignored.
i knew that photography should play a big roll in the record-keeping themes of this song. there are so many beautiful words connected to photography. it was fun to first write down a list of words that i liked, relating to photography.. "light" "edit" "aperture" "record" "memory" "pinpoint" etc... and see what kinds of things i could say with those visuals. it's also worth mentioning that because i handle the art layout of each of the sleeping at last projects, i've spend far too many hours in photoshop. because of this, a lot of these ideas and visuals were inspired by my time in photoshop… like this line (which is my favorite of the song):
i’ll be an editor, no, a curator of light.
continuing on with the keeping-record theme, i challenged myself with the task of fitting the word "archeology" into this song, without it sounding weird. maybe i'm wrong, but i think it actually fits quite well!
give me the heart of an archeologist, that i may dig until i prove that i exist.
being proud of myself for fitting a 5-syllable word into this simple song, i decided to go for another...
a subterranean cathedral in my midst
the heart of this song is in the chorus:
God, it has been quite a year- i’ve lived a little bit and i’ve died a little more. i know that i’ve asked it before, but please let the scale tip here in my favor.
it's a simple prayer… acknowledging the highs and lows of a year, in a glass half full/half empty kind of way, while asking that the overall results lean a little more towards good, than bad.
in a way, this song breaks down what the "yearbook" project did for my life. it kept a very personal record of my entire year. in these songs i recorded every up and every down of that year, and i remember thinking a lot about that as the project carried on. how strange it is to have such a specific record of the year.. and hoping and praying that in the end the good outweighs the bad.
love, ryan - sleeping at last
listen:
full lyrics:
APERTURE
happiness is somewhere i have been before- a blurry photograph that i have since ignored. i’ll carefully adjust the aperture once more, until i set the record straight.
i’ll brush aside the dim, make room for the bright. i’ll be an editor, no, a curator of light. i’ll let my better angels always set me right, until i even out the score. until i even out the score.
God, it has been quite a year- i’ve lived a little bit and i’ve died a little more. i know that i’ve asked it before, but please let the scale tip here in my favor.
what was once the sweetest melody i’ve heard is now a memory reduced to little words. i’ll tune the orchestra and play the overture, until i pinpoint every note.
give me the heart of an archeologist, that i may dig until i prove that i exist. a subterranean cathedral in my midst, where echos come to rest. where echos come to rest. is this where echos come to rest?
God, it has been quite a year- i’ve lived a little bit and i’ve died a little more. i know that i’ve asked it before, but please let the scale tip here in my favor.
until i set the record straight, until i set the record straight, until i can set the record straight.
