Roller Coaster

"I gotta get out of here."

A song can function as metaphor. Sometimes it can be a metaphor within a metaphor.

met-a-phor - A figure of speech in which a term is transferred from the object it ordinarily designates to an object it may designate only by implicit comparison or analogy.

This of course is not to be confused with the simile where two unlike things are compared by using the words like or as. In our current vernacular, the simile might be the most misused parcel of diction. I used to get confused when people would start sentences with "I was like..." and then not complete the thought. Now I just chalk it up with the rest of the casualties of the English language. With "irony," the "simile" has also garnered the same fate. It's sad.

The song "Roller Coaster" is a metaphor. I found a skeleton of it on my dictaphone as I sat down to review my fragments last week. I'm not sure why I never developed it. It's not the best song in the world, but, at least, it deserved being finished...to be made into a complete thought.

When people hear these kinds of songs from me, they often ask if I'm having relationship troubles. No, I'm not. That's were the analogy comes in. The song uses the portrait of a bad relationship to convey a sense of entrapment. The metaphor can then affect the listener in two ways. For one, someone may relate the comparison to her own relationship and think "yeah, I feel that way sometimes." For two, someone might hear this and say, "yeah, I need to get off of these anti-depressants," or, "Wow, I'm really drinking too much" or, "I'm smoking too much weed." Then, the listener might (assuming he likes the song to begin with) feel like he has to change something. To walk into light we must ascend from darkness.

In listening to the song (I have the track on as I write this), this honestly sounds the most like the stuff I've done in the past. The date on my dictaphone was late 2002, so that would make sense that it sounds like something that could have been on the MG4 EP. Being so, I approached the production with sparse instrumentation. Acoustic guitar, drums, one electric guitar (a strat) and a simple bass line (played with the thumb). I added a B3 patch (that's a vintage organ sound) to the background to thicken up the exterior.

Where I embellished this song was in the vocal sound. I sang in a low register for the most part. Then, I doubled and tripled the chorus parts. It made for a lush experience.

When producing a song, it's a good idea to try to give the listener a different experience each time a new part of a song enters. The first verse features just some hand percussion with the acoustic guitar. The second verse has the bass enter with some additional percussion. The chorus has the whole band enter...this is a good way to make the chorus jump out. The third verse brings things down a bit, but only by having the electric guitar drop out and play some accent notes. The second chorus features a panned and intensely EQ'd vocal answer..."I gotta get outta here." Then there's a solo/bridge. Then there's a chorus where one of the passing chords is changed slightly. All in all, the idea with production is to make the three minute journey one that is entertaining. One way to do that is to vary the sections of your songs.

So, thank you to everyone who immediately downloaded these songs and gave some initial comments. I am trying to move in directions that are exciting and new to me.

I'm surprised that the more positive comments have been surrounding the Axis Suite.

Maybe starting a jazz combo isn't a bad idea after all. If you think these sketches are cool, man, I'd really like for you to see a live combo deliver a performance of these tunes. I played "Axis 2: Candelabra" last night at Speakeasy Jazz at the open mic night. As I went to sit down, I said to myself, "Man, did that really just happen? That was awesome!" And really, isn't that what playing music should be all about? I think so.