Thom Barker Band: The Recording

The Thom Barker Band recordings were done at the new Sound of One Hand Studios at their location on Liverpool Court (off Innes Road) in south Ottawa. It was after they moved but before they renamed to Liverpool Court Studios. We recorded in the big room and Marty Jones was the engineer. The photo clearly shows their new (used) Neve console.

Marty Jones at the Neve

Both songs were straight guitars-bass-drums. Thom used his blue Yamaha acoustic and his yellow hair.

Thom at Sound of One Hand

I had recently upgraded to the John Pattitucci signature Yamaha six string bass (the TRB-JP). It's still my all-time favorite instrument with a single-digit number of strings. We recorded it direct through the good-old Sans Amp Bass Driver DI.

Ken at Sound of One Hand

Chris was still using his old Ibanez electric at the time. This was obviously before he developed full-on GAS (Gear Acquisition Syndrome). He tracked his parts from the control room, but the sound was mic'd off an amp in the big room. I remember us fooling with different amps (including the big Marshall in the picture and the smaller combo that Marty is messing with). I don't remember what amp we went with.

Chris at Sound of One Hand

Scott was playing his basic Tama kit (with one anonymous rototom).

Scott at Sound of One Hand

Forest: Cuba

Here is Cuba.

Cuba

It's one of the few guitar+bass tracks on the album where the timing wasn't a complete mess (except at the beginning and during a couple of the breaks). It's also one of the few tracks where listening to the backing vox doesn't cause me physical pain.

I think Thom was planning to do the solo on guitar, but I had been noodling around with some Latin stuff on bass and we thought it might fit. The main bass on Cuba was my old Yamaha TRB-5p, but I played this solo was on my Steinberger XL-2A. I had the Steinberger strung up tenor (A-D-G-C) in those days because I was trying to learn Monkey Businessman off of Michael Manring's Thonk album, which had been released in 1994. Between the high tuning, the EMG pickups and the SansAmp, that bass cut through the mix like a buzzsaw. When I later replaced the TRB-5p with the TRB-JP, I was able to do both bass parts live on the same bass.

Thom played the mando himself on the track.

Forest: She Makes Me

The only gospel song in Thom's catalog:

She Makes Me

Ok, it's not really gospel. It's just a simple, pretty song. But the chord progression (I-III-IV-I) screams gospel to me, and I wasn't able to resist pulling out a bag of gospel clichés in the piano and organ parts.

This is one of the few songs on the album where the feel isn't too rushed. Somehow we were able to relax on this one. But the lead vocal needs to be dragged a little. Nowadays, you'd just nudge the vocal track by 50 ms or so. I did this to the lead vocal on Life is a Circle off of Twice the Usual. It completely relaxes the vocal part. But in 1995, recording to analog tape, you did the best you could and lived with it.

The piano (E-mu PROFormance again) and organs (Roland JV-1080) were tracked separately (they're different parts). But when we played this song live, I would just layer the E-mu with the XP-50 and it came out pretty close to the same thing. I still like the organ sound for the solo, but dislike the main background organ sound in the verses.

And I still really like the gospel organ solo (starting at 2:58). It's just one B3 cliché after another. In particular I'm digging the four descending "blue" figures starting at 3:34.

On the down side, there's too much compression again on the acoustic guitar. I wonder why we thought we needed it. And the doppler effect of the Leslie simulation on the B3 organ just makes it seem out of tune. (A Leslie is a speaker that spins around inside a cabinet. It adds tremolo because the speaker is alternately louder (facing you) and quieter (facing away). It also adds vibrato because the speaker is sometimes moving towards you and sometimes away from you, causing a rise and fall in pitch like an approaching/retreating ambulance siren). In hindsight, I probably should have just turned off the Leslie simulation. (For the record, this is also why the organ at the end of Even After All This Time from Twice the Usual sounds out of tune).

The timing gets sloppy at the end, too.

But overall, a pretty cool song.

Forest: Could Have Been

Here's where things start to get a little scruffy.

Could Have Been

I really like the lyrics for this song. At first blush, they're positive: the verses are full of pleasant imagery and the chorus has explicitly positive phrases. But the "it could have been" raises doubt, making the ultimate message ambiguous.

Marty Jones suggested the crashing surf sound during the chorus. He happened to have just that sound in some sample library and triggered it directly from a button the front panel of the rack-mount sampler. I think I ruined this song for Thom some time later when I suggested it sounded more like a toilet flushing and he wasn't able subsequently to shake that impression. It didn't help that I also used to make toilet flushing sounds when playing this live.

Thom played the electric on this. He had some flavor of Fender Stratocaster and I think a Fender Twin Reverb amp. The lead part is ok, but I don't like the sound... again it's thicker, more phlegmy than it needs to be. But I love the sound of the rhythm electric (the part is in the chorus, hidden under the surf sound, and is mixed pretty low).

Technically, the recording is a mess. The acoustic sounds like it was recorded with a cheap mic (which I'm sure it wasn't) in the bathroom (which I know it wasn't). The timing of the bass part is terrible. The backing vox are cringetastic. And the tuning is just way off, all around. It's shocking how bad the tuning is on the whole album, really. I think I'll do a whole post on tuning and intonation (and all the work that went into it on Twice the Usual).

Forest: Why

This is another one of my favorite songs, and one of Thom's saddest songs for me. Obviously, there's a lot of competition for that title. But Why is sad in a different way. It doesn't have the angry hurt of some of the others. The calm, detached acceptance in this one is what makes it go deeper.

Why

If I remember correctly, Thom had a basic chord outline and asked me to write a piano part. Unlike others that ended up keyboard-only, Thom planned that this one would be from the git-go. In fact he may have come up with the original structure on piano. But my memory is a little fuzzy on that.

The take is ok... but it's still obviously done under the stress of pay-by-the-hour professional studio time. It's just not relaxed and there is some sloppy timing. The piano take for Down By Your Fire is better in this regard, but I had been playing Fire for years, whereas my Why part was only a week or so old when we recorded it. Once again, the piano is the E-mu PROFormance/1+, and it's not bad, even out there by itself.

I think three things give the piano part its particular character:

• the use of sixths and ninths all over the place
• splitting four-note chords into two consecutive two-note chords (first and third note in one, second and fourth in the other); this adds rhythm and opens up what would otherwise be more dense voicing
• horizontal and vertical "shifting" of the split chords; vertically there is shifting among different inversions of the chords up and down the keyboard; the solo is really just different shifts of figures already played in the chorus; horizontally, the split chords shift to different beats in subsequent bars and also shift off the beat occasionally

We recorded the piano first and then added the vox, so Thom had to get the timing just right to anticipate the re-entry of the piano after the big pauses at 1:02-1:04 and 2:33-2:35. I think Marty and I made him redo those entries like 20 times each. And the temperature in that vocal booth just kept rising and rising. Haha. Good times.

Forest: I Know Me

There's lots I like about this song, and plenty I don't like about the recording. But the former definitely trumps the latter for me.

I Know Me

The song also has a special significance for me. When we recorded this in August, 1995, Johanne and I had been dating for about four months. But our pre-dating "courtship" took place over winter 94-95. We were Ph.D. students together at the University of Ottawa, with the Rideau Canal just outside our office. Most days, after work we'd lace up and go for a skate down the canal in the dark, getting to know each other, falling in love. The line:

And where ice on Rideau Canal lights
Glistens in skating lovers' laughin' eyes

can still make me mist up a little.

Thom's voice kind of cracks on the word "free" at 3:31; I remember lobbying to re-record the line, but we left it in. I don't remember why we did, but to this day it's my favorite moment of any recording of Thom's vocal. It's raw emotion in a song that's already emotional for me and I honestly still get a chill when I hear it.

Where the snow flies free,
Where the cold cuts the skin...

It's the only cold weather imagery that makes me miss the Canadian winter.

As for the technical side...

There's way too much compression on the acoustic guitar; this sparse arrangement didn't really need much.

I think I came up with the string parts in the studio. We decided the track needed something extra. Marty found violin and cello patches on the Roland JV-1080 and I noodled for a bit and then recorded them. They're simple and they build verse-by-verse until dropping out to let Thom finish alone. I like the counter-melody they add.

We also re-recorded this in a more radio-friendly arrangement a few years ago when Thom was still in Austin. I should try to find the newer version.

Forest: Down By Your Fire

Down By Your Fire was the last song on Forest. But I'm blogging it first because I think I think it's the best track on the album.

Down By Your Fire

This is a great song. A great, great song. Thom used to play it with guitar only. And we played a guitar + piano version on the Regent Street album (1991). Listening back to the Regent Street version, I notice that some of the Forest piano part was already in place. Over time I started adding more of Thom's guitar part on piano and eventually he stopped playing guitar on the song altogether.

The instrumental part is much more relaxed than other tracks on the album, and has better time and feel. It's probably because I'd had the part under my hands for years by the time we recorded it (in contrast with the song Why, where the piano part was written just prior to recording it).

The keyboard sound is my E-mu PROFormance/1+ layered with my Roland D-50. The PROFormance piano sound can't really compete with modern, multi-layer, disk-streamed, non-looped, gigabyte sampled grands. But it actually holds up ok in this context, even out there all on its own. I guess the one part of the sound that bugs me is the ridiculous sustain. But in 1995, this was a really good piano-in-a-box (and it was already five years old at the time).

It seems I have some deficiency that renders me incapable of finishing a song on a straight major chord. I have to play the ninth. Chris Chénier's wife Nathalie once asked him after one of our shows: "Why does Ken always play that funny note at the end of every song?"

I miss playing this song with Thom.

Forest: The Recording

We recorded the album at the old Sound of One Hand studio in Ottawa (when it was still in The Market, before they moved to that business park off Innes Rd. and ultimately changed their name to the considerably less inspired Liverpool Court Studios, after their street address). Marty Jones was the engineer.

Despite what I said in an earlier post, I think this was before Sound of One Hand got their Neve console. I'm pretty sure that's not the Neve in the photo. But we did record to two-inch, 24-track tape. You can see the tape machine in the photo below, along with various testaments to Marty's shark obsession.

What other equipment did we use? I'm pretty sure Thom used his blue Yamaha acoustic. I don't remember what vocal mic we used, but it was a large diaphragm condenser. For keyboards I used my Yamaha KX-88 controlling my Roland D-50, the studio's E-mu Pro/Formance (piano module) and the studio's Roland JV-1080. We also used the studio's sampler, though I can't remember exactly what it was... probably an Akai S-series or Roland S-series. I'm thinking maybe a Roland S-550.

For bass I used my old Yamaha TRB-5p direct through an original Sans Amp DI. What a great little box. The original Sans Amp didn't have the knobs on the outside (like its successor, the Bass Driver DI), so you had to unscrew the back and dial in your settings with those tiny little plastic screws. That meant that you'd usually come up with a sound you liked and leave it that way. The sound Marty liked (the sound everybody liked back in '95 when they discovered the Sans Amp) was with the "Drive" cranked. So that's the sound on Forest. It's probably got too much dirt/wool/Ampeg for my current tastes, but it's sure full of character. And I'll be darned if it doesn't sound like we mic'd up a big ole tube amp through a huge cab. I also used my Steinberger XL-2A for the solo on Cuba.

Ok. Enough mumbo-jumbo. Let's get to the music!

Art Facts Video -- Take 2

I was pretty disappointed with my first attempts at piano video. The audio quality was nasty, the video was iffy, and of course, YouTube does its best to convert mediocre to horrible. So I'm trying again, attempting improvements on all three fronts. Johanne bought me new mic pres and converters for Christmas, so the audio should be much better. I picked up a thousand watts of lighting to improve the video. And I'm going to try streaming off of Google Video instead of YouTube, so I can at least have stereo audio in the video.

I'll post the first new video as soon as Google has finished processing it. In the meanwhile, here's a picture of my recording setup. In the photo, my new lights, my Essex with two AKG mics on it, and on the half-wall, left-to-right: hygrometer, metronome, headphones, Lexicon Omega (mic pres and converters), trackball, keyboard, monitor. Of course, Johanne's paintings hang off the picture rail, with a couple of gaps for the recently sold.

2x: Finding Twice the Usual (P.S.)

Just noticed that Twice the Usual is also available on Amazon.com. You can download the whole album or individual songs. These are mp3 versions, so the sound quality won't be as good as if you buy the physical CD from Thom's website. But it's still pretty cool to see the album on Amazon.

2x: 11. Say Goodnight

So here we are at the end already. Last song. So sad.

Track 11: Say Goodnight
Thom's songwriting journal entry for Say Goodnight

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass, background vocal
• K.B.: rhythm electric guitar
• E.G.: lead electric guitar
• D.P.: drums

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), drum programming, background vocal
• Christian Chénier: electric guitars

Notes

It may be kind of obvious, but we always used to do "Say Goodnight" as the last song of the night when we were playing live, so that's how I always think of this song: live and last. Making it the last was easy: put it after all the other songs. Making it "live" required a few tricks. The biggest issue was trying to make it different from the other tracks but still fit with the sound of the album.

• The most obvious "live" trick is the bar noises at the beginning and end. Even without any other tricks, this primes the listener into thinking "live".
• Another fairly obvious trick is the extra effects on the lead vocal. I put a short echo and extra reverb to sound like a loud PA system in a closed space.
• The drums are also quite different from the other tracks. I was out at Cedar Street one night listening to a great funk band, trying to put my finger on what made the drums sound so "live". The combination of mics, eq, amps, speakers and gobs of compression make them sound much more artificial. I tried reproducing that signal path virtually, but the Yellow Tools drums I used on the album are so acoustic sounding that it was a real struggle to color them enough. I needed to start from a more artificial source. If found some sampled drums on my Roland XP-50 keyboard that were just right. So I replaced the kick, snare and toms with the XP-50 samples. I kept the natural sounding hats, ride and cymbals from Yellow Tools -- the XP-50 metals were just too fake. I think the result sounds pretty close to a kit through a live PA.
• There's a spot near the end where it sounds like the guitar feeds back for a second (around 5:14). I'm not sure what's causing this sonic effect, but it adds to the live sound, so I left it in.
• The sparse applause at the end is reminiscent of some of the shows we did with... uh... "modest" attendance. I remember one show at The Pit in Ottawa during a snow storm in December. Beyond the barstaff and significant others, I'm not sure anyone else was there. Sure... we can laugh about it now.
• Light dimmers and questionable electrical at bars is always causing something to buzz. I recorded the amp buzz at the end by running my bass amp through the system while holding the free end of the patch cord in my fingers. I had to record the amp shutting off separately because it's such a loud pop that everything downstream in the signal path has to be trimmed.

Another great electric part from Chénier here. At one point he emailed me to say he was having trouble coming up with ideas: "Say Goodnight is giving me fits. How do you add lead to a 'cowboy on a horse' country song? It can't be done I tell ya. So expect very low key stuff." I'm not sure that what he came up with could be called "very low key"... you be the judge! (And I'm not going to dignify the "cowboy on a horse" comment).

In many places on the album I already had ideas for electric parts. For those, I'd email Chris trying to "textify" my idea. Somehow, no matter how ridiculous my instructions, he'd always lay down exactly what I had in mind. Here were my instructions for Say Goodnight:
...
Chug...ga-Chug...ga-Chug...ga-Chug-gaga-
Chug...ga-Chugschwinnnngg..ga-Chug-gaga-
"I"
CHANNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
"Say"
CHANNNNNNNNNNNNNG!
"Goodnight"
buh-Changuk... buh-ChangGannnnnnnng
...

The yelling in the chorus was also something we used to do live. So for the album I recorded myself about ten times yelling "I" and "SAY". But when I mixed the yells in with the music, for some reason it sounded like "Oy... Soy". When I played back the yells in isolation they were fine. So some weird interaction, frequency masking, reverb artifact, or combination of these was messing with the harmonic content. I ended up having to put on a high-pass filter, remove all the reverb and replace half of the "I... Say" parts with "Ah-ee... Sah-ee". Strange but true.

Coming Soon: 2x: Appendices

2x: 10. Not A Setting Sun

Track 10: Not A Setting Sun
Thom's songwriting journal entry for Not A Setting Sun

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal

Notes

There was no question that this track had to be a guitar/vocal solo. The recording is a single performance, with Thom doing vocals and guitar together. Careful microphone position allows some separation, but there is still plenty of guitar in the vocal track and vocal in the guitar track. That makes it very difficult to edit one without messing up the other. So I did almost no editing of the tracks... a little compression, a little bit of volume riding on the vocal track and plenty of eq and reverb. But really what you hear is the raw performance.

When we recorded the song, I left Thom alone in the studio with the system recording. After a few false starts, he nailed a good take end-to-end. I did a quick mix, and since there was so little editing and no other instruments, the track was finished pretty early in the project. I'd go back to it every once in a while and tweak the sound a little, and then leave it again. But I never listened to anything recorded in the room before that final take. Then one day very near the end of the project, I went back and listened to the rest of the recording from that day. That's when I found the "For Louis" that Thom speaks to open the song. He didn't say it before the final take, so I didn't know it was there. I don't know why I decided to go back and listen to the rest of the recording, but I'm glad I did.

Next: 2x: 11. Say Goodnight

2x: 9. No Forever

Finally cowbell.

Track 9: No Forever
Thom's songwriting journal entry for No Forever

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: lead vocal
• B.B.: bass, background vocal
• E.G.: electric guitar
• K.B.: organ
  
• D.P.: drums
  

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), organ, drum programming, background vocal
• Christian Chénier: electric guitars

Notes

No Forever almost didn't make it on to the album (along with Don't Try). Here is the actual email conversation (with minor edits to clean up the language):

• TB: dude, do you remember why we're not doing no forever on this CD?
• KB: On your original list it was in the "maybe" section. When I created my list from your list you told me not to put it on. There was some question whether it fit musically with the rest of the songs. I don't really see why it wouldn't. But if we're going to add songs from the "maybe" section, I'm definitely going to have to vote for "Don't Try". That trak rawks! (Honestly, I think it's a mistake to leave it off).
• TB: what was i thinking? why don't you tell me these things ... it's not like i know what i'm doing or anything!
• KB: I think I would have mentioned them eventually. So do you want to add both No Forever and Don't Try?
• TB: yeah, let's add 'em, it's not like we've got a big record company breathing down our necks or anything

This is really one of the few "radio-friendly" tracks on the album. It comes in at just under 3 minutes. That's because this version is much faster than we used to play it. We first recorded this song about ten years ago with the Thom Barker Band at Sound of One Hand Studio in Ottawa. That recording was way slower. I bet it was almost 4 minutes. I recently found a tape of it, and while the sound quality is way warmer and more professional (recorded through a vintage Neve desk to 2-inch tape), the new recording sports much better performances. Would I trade the new performances for the old sound quality? No. But I wish I could have both.

The cowbell at the beginning and near the end was a very late addition. The single hit cowbell-as-intro is stolen from the Rush song Superconductor.^* Believe it or don't. The fast, one-beat intro is a lot more sudden than a four-beat count-in, which adds to the urgent feel of the song. But it's not as cold as no count-in at all. The cowbell intro also prevents the cowbell at the end from sounding isolated and out of context. The three-beat cowbell break at the end comes from a mid-life version of the song. About six years ago we were playing this song with a guitarist and drummer in Austin. We always left that bar empty at the end for the drummer to fill it with some snare/kick fill. One day at rehearsal our drummer threw in this three-beat cowbell, just wailing on the bell. We laughed and laughed until I thought I might pass out. I'm not sure why it was so funny to us, but it obviously affected me. Long after I finished recording the parts for this song, when I was almost ready to close the book on it, I remembered that cowbell and decided to replace whatever boring drum fill I had in its place. Then it was inevitable that I had to replace whatever intro I had (probably a four-beat hats count-in) with the Superconductor ripoff.
^*The Superconductor count-in is a cowbell on beat 6 followed by a snare flam on beat 7. So I really only stole half of the intro.

The electric guitar solo is pure, undiluted Chénier at his funniest. I sent him the bed tracks with the instruction "make sure you play that funny solo you used to play." Of course, he didn't know what solo I was talking about. So I sent him a version with the solo (as closely as I could remember it) played on electric piano. Man, did it sound lame. But it was enough to remind him how he played the original. The variety of articulations is what kills me in this short solo: staccato, hammer-ons, bends, slurs, half-harmonics.... It's the whole rock-n-roll bag of tricks emptied out onto the floor and scarfed until our bellies ache.

Next: 2x: 10. Not A Setting Sun

2x: 8. What Will You Do

Track 8: What Will You Do
Thom's songwriting journal entry for What Will You Do

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass, background vocal
• K.B.: piano
• D.P.: drums, pandiero

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), piano, drum programming, background vocals

Notes

This is another one of the "mood" songs. I find this to be one of the sadder songs on the album and I was going for a pretty dark sound.

The bass in the second and third verses may sound a little busy, hitting with the kick, somewhat portato. But it propels the song a little better in this somewhat dead position on the album. Or maybe I'm just hijacking the album for my own amusement.

Piano appears starting in the second chorus, but more as a percussion instrument to brighten things up. It just pongs out octaves (with a little 9-8 resolution at phrase ends).
During the repetition of the chorus at the end it adds a third/sixth to the resolution notes, making it almost overly sweet.
I thought about adding a ninth to the final chord (as in It Goes On). In a completely uncharacteristic exercise in constraint, I left it out. Once is just right.

Next: 2x: 9. No Forever

2x: 7. The Quiet In Us

Track 7: The Quiet In Us
Thom's songwriting journal entry for The Quiet In Us

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass, background vocal
• K.B.: piano, background vocal
• D.P.: shaker, deerskin drum

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted (BEADGC) and fretless basses (EGADGC and BEADGC), piano, cat toy, deerskin drum, background vocals

Notes

This is probably the "pleasantest" song on the album, and many of the arrangement choices try to highlight that. In particular, the piano, fretless bass, cat toy shaker and deerskin drum contribute to the nice mood.

As with many of the songs on the album, I wanted fretless on this one, but couldn't get a decent recording of the Alembic. Unlike the others, though, I couldn't live without it here. So the bass track is a mix of fretted and fretless. I played the entire song on both fretted and fretless, EQing the fretless to remove most of its bottom end (which is where I've had the most trouble with the Alembic's recording). I then set a compressor+gate to bring in the fretless with a slow attack only when the high end is strong enough to trigger it. Unless you're listening closely, the result is that the song sounds like the bass is a single fretless track. In reality, the fundamental and low end is almost entirely fretted, with the fretless supplying mid-high frequency on sustained notes.

I've always heard piano in my head on this song. So I finally sat down and just played along with the guitar. What you hear is what came out. I think it fits nicely. I would have liked to play more piano on the album, but most of the songs just didn't seem to want it.

I've also always heard some big-ole drum on the low-G accents. I found an appropriate sample, but had to tune it to G and EQ the heck out of it so its boom didn't dominate the mix. Does it work? Dunno. I think I EQd it out of existence.

The background vocals really needed to blend smoothly to work here. I removed much of their attack (say 20-50ms) so that their entrance is smooth as can be.

The bass progresses from the beginning of the song to the end, as with other tracks on the album. The first verse plays roots, sitting on the G, moving up to C on accents:

The second verse drops down to the third of IV (C):

The third verse combines the two (one C, one E):

Near the end of the third verse, the bass FINALLY walks from the low E up to the G -- something we've been waiting for all song long:
We also have to wait until the final chorus for the bass to finally drop down to the low B. The E-F^#-G walk reappears here too.

You have to listen carefully, but the bass plays the five notes preceding the final V7-I cadence as harmonics (C-D-F^#-D-A). The harmonics are all natural, but some of them are pretty far up there.

Next: 2x: 8. What Will You Do

2x: 6. Don't Try

This is the one song where I completely abandoned the small virtual ensemble, adding many more parts than the five virtual musicians could produce. Maybe the ensemble was sitting around the living room and 16 people dropped by to say hello.

Track 6: Don't Try
Thom's songwriting journal entry for Don't Try

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass
• K.B.: organ
• E.G.: acoustic guitar
• D.P.: drums
• guest: acoustic guitar
• guest: pipe organ
• guest: choir

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted bass (C^#EADGC), organs, acoustic guitars (EADGBD^# and EADG^#CE), drum programming, background vocals

Notes

The organ intro explicitly acknowledges the influence of Jesus Christ Superstar on the lyrics: it's the main theme from The Last Supper. The B3 organ sound is also reminiscent of the B3 that pervades that song. I knew quite early on in the recording that I wanted to quote Last Supper, but it posed a bit of a problem: Last Supper is in 4/4, but this song is in 6/8. Matching the eighth-note tempo and then unambiguously stating the new time signature with the drums alone for two bars seemed to smooth the transition ok.

The organ melody following the chorus is again a brand new theme. It's only suggestive of the Last Supper theme, but the simple melody and the tonewheel sound remind us of the intro and keep it from feeling abandoned and irrelevant.

Of course the song needed a gospel choir for the chorus. I don't know a gospel choir, so I sang the parts myself. The main choir has eight voices singing standard four-part harmony. After the break I gradually bring in three more wordless parts (two voices each) moving among the main worded parts, giving a total of seven parts, fourteen voices. It would have been nice to have real singers.

This song is kind of unique in that it's in pure Strophic form: it has a single two-bar phrase (I-V-VI-IV) repeated over the entire length of the song. The lyrics break into verses and choruses, but the music repeats the same two-bar pattern in both. To distract from the repetition, the arrangement divides the song into three parts. It builds from the outset to the break, where it gets completely stripped down to acoustic and vocals. After the break it quickly builds up to where it left off and gets bigger and more complex through to the end. The instrumentation builds throughout the entire song. It starts with just organ, then one-at-a-time adds drums, acoustic guitar, bass, lead vocal, choir, two more acoustic guitars, three more choir parts and the pipe organ from the Notre Dame de Budapest Cathedral.

The bass arrangement includes a trick that breaks up the verses and keeps them from feeling too long. The bass theme progresses through successively lower inversions. But the change from one inversion to the next lower inversion occurs half-way through each verse, not between verses. This splits each verse into two shorter verses. After the break, the bass goes back to the highest inversion, but progresses quickly down to where it left off before the break. It then moves to its lowest variation, anchored on the low C^#, where it hangs out, bouncing off fills with the drums to the end of the song.

In the verse after the break I needed to fill out the arrangement just a little. The organ comes in half way through the verse, and I really like it there, so I didn't want to bring it in at the beginning of the verse. Instead, I added two more acoustic guitar parts. The altered tunings allowed me to play different voicings of the chords in the same octave, filling things out. The guitars continue through to the end of the song, adding to the building arrangement.

The bass also reminds us of the album's delayed chorus accent thing by overshooting beat one on its downward fills (5:40, 5:51, etc.). The most obvious example is at 6:13, where instead of continuing down, the bass fill turns back upward at beat one, and the drums follow by ignoring the downbeat as well, cymbal-accenting the eighth note following beat one (6:15). This particular "deletion of the bar line" is one of my favorite time tricks on the album.

The plagal (IV-I) cadence at the end is a final nod to the religious theme of the lyrics. It's not an exact plagal cadence, because the bass (electric, organ and choir) hits V-I. I'm sure there's a name for a plagal cadence over a V-I bass, but I searched for it everywhere. Please, if you know the name of this cadence, speak up. It's killing me.

Next: 2x: 7. The Quiet In Us

2x: 5. Body Of Mine

This track turned out to be one of my favorite recordings. The deep bass and electric piano give it a really dark mood for me.

Track 5: Body Of Mine
Thom's songwriting journal entry for Body Of Mine

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass
• K.B.: electric piano
• D.P.: drums

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretted bass (BEADGC), electric piano, drum programming

Notes

This was probably the most difficult song to match the timing to the existing acoustic guitar and vocal tracks. There are 49 tempo changes in the sequencer file, and it's still not quite locked. But I'm not too bothered by the looseness -- it still seems to have some feel.

I'm really happy with the way the noodling on the piano turned out. Its movement, ornaments and chromatic passing notes here and there add real spice, I think.

There's a double quote of Take the A Train at 3:09 under the lyrics "Underneath my feet the rumble of the A Street Train"*. In the first quote the bass echoes the main A Train theme ("You... must take the A Train"), but in root position of the I-minor of this song, as opposed to the second inversion position of I-major in A Train. At the same time, the second quote has the piano playing the standard first bar comping chords of A Train (third inversion of the VIm7 in A Train, which is Im7 here) but with a rhythm that fits here. Sounds kind of like a train horn, too.
*Of course, after working on the album for five years, I finally realized that the real lyric is "the 8th Street train", not "A Street". Haha. Oh well. Extra clever to quote A Train under "8th Street Train", then.

The bass and drums are pretty much rhythmically locked throughout this track. But as they play the same rhythmic figures, the piano has most of its rhythmic interest in the spaces the bass and drums leave.

There's a twist on the "delayed chorus accent", here -- an "anticipated chorus accent". The main chorus accent comes on the "and" of four of the bar preceding the first chorus group bar (and other chorus bars, too, with lesser emphasis).

Next: 2x: 6. Don't Try

2x: 4. Life Is A Circle

Time to slow things down a little...

Track 4: Life Is A Circle
Thom's songwriting journal entry for Life Is A Circle

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V.: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B.: bass, background vocal
• K.B.: organ, synthesizer, background vocal
• D.P.: congas
• E.G.: shaker

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker: acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker: fretless bass (BEADGC), organ, synthesizer, cat toy, drum programming, background vocals

Notes

Listening to the transparent, finger-picked acoustic and the somewhat spastic congas, I decided this track needed some kind of constant ground rhythm. It needed shaker! Johanne had recently bought a new toy for the cats: two balls wrapped in and joined together with twine. I remember thinking how great they sounded. So I set up a mic at head-height, figured out how to hold the balls and move them to get an even recording, and hit the big red button. But I'd forgotten that this song is six minutes long, and by the end my arm was about ready to fall off. Of course I could have stopped at any time and just copied what I had to the rest of the track... but I had such a great take going!

This arrangement has another brand new theme on the organ. The first entry (1:17) is a simple legato statement, with one subtle grace note embellishment. The second statement (1:55) adds a harmony note or two, has some staccato and glisses up to a higher note toward the end. The third (final) statement (3:25) adds more harmony notes and embellishes the melody with more runs, including a nice parallel thirds run at 3:29.

This was the only song I was able to get a decent standalone recording of my Alembic fretless. On all the other songs the recording (not the playing, honestly) sounded like krep. Breaks my heart.

Did we really need that blues fill on the bass at 4:43? Probably not. Too bad, it's my recording.

Two organ parts appear right at the end. They're variations of the original organ theme, played in different octaves and offset in time. The time offset is intended to be suggestive of a Simple Canon (aka a Round, like Row-Row-Row-Your-Boat), but I made the repetitions imperfect in various ways. That is, "the ending is a round, but not very circular", a kind of bad musical pun on the lyrics.

The organ parts at the end also have their reverb sends pre-fader. So as the volume of the organs fades, their reverb doesn't (making it sound like they're moving farther away). I didn't actually intend to do this, but I ended up starting to like it before I got around to fixing it.

Next: 2x: 5. Body Of Mine

2x: 3. It Goes On

This song is the first on the album to feature electric guitar. We were lucky enough to get my favorite guitarist of all time to contribute tracks: please welcome Christian Chénier.

Track 3: It Goes On
Thom's songwriting journal entry for It Goes On

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B. -- bass, background vocal
• D.P. -- drums, background vocal
• E.G. -- lead electric guitar, background vocal
• K.B. -- rhythm electric guitar1, background vocal
• guest -- rhythm electric guitar2, background vocal

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker -- fretted bass (CEADGC), drum programming, background vocals, acoustic guitar note
  
• Christian Chénier -- electric guitars

Notes

This song has a simple, common verse form (I-VI-III-VII in A-minor) stated simply on the acoustic. Chris came up with a really nice melodic rhythm electric theme which, along with the walking bass, provides movement and interest over top of the acoustic ground.

The guitar solo in this song is one of my favorites. It overlaps the end of the bridge, climbing to the official start of the solo section where it just soars. Lots of classic Chénier double/triple-stops and varied articulations throughout. More opposite motion between the bass and solo at 02:22 (guitar down, bass up) and 02:38 (guitar up, bass bottoming out to low C). There's more subtle rhythmic interplay among the drums, bass and guitar throughout, as well (for example, at 2:19 the snare's eighth+sixteenths figure is echoed quickly in the solo and then bass). Finally, instead of ending the solo at the final reprise of the chorus, Chris just keeps noodling right through the end. Very artsy.

With all the mids in this arrangement, the acoustic has been eq'd out almost to the point of being a percussion instrument. This lets the acoustic speak (great example at 01:03) without it taking up space in the mix.

I always heard an A-minor-ninth instead of A-minor on the last chord, but we didn't think of it when we were recording the acoustic. Over time I decided I couldn't live without the ninth at the end. So long after all the other tracks were recorded, I finally mic'd up my own acoustic and added one note: the open B string.

Rhythmic gimmick:

• 01:25 (bass + drums + vox)
• 02:54 (bass + drums)
• 03:12 (bass + drums)
• 03:22 (bass + drums)

The delayed chorus accent is similar to We Cherish Our Scars: The chorus is again grouped 2+2+2(+2), with the delayed accent coming on the "and" of two in the second bar of the first three groups. The delay is itself delayed in the fourth group -- you expect it on the "and" of two after the eighth notes on 1, 1-and and 2, but the eighth notes keep chugging over 2-and right through to the one of the next bar. The 2-and accents are given by snare, bass octave and electric guitar.

Next: 2x: 4. Life Is A Circle

2x: 2. We Cherish Our Scars

Track 2: We Cherish Our Scars
Thom's songwriting journal entry for We Cherish Our Scars

Virtual Ensemble

• A.V. -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• B.B. -- bass, background vocal
• K.B. -- organ
• D.P. -- drums

Actual Ensemble

• Thom Barker -- acoustic guitar, lead vocal
• Ken Barker -- fretted bass (DEADGC), organ, drum programming, background vocal

Notes

The organ on the post-chorus breaks is a new theme for this arrangement. The motion opposite the bass is straight out of the tertian harmony textbook, and it works like a charm.

The bass in the verses and chorus is much simplified in rhythm from older arrangements. The plain rhythms in the bass and organ are an attempt to reign in the busy acoustic rhythm. The drums are still probably too busy. Oh well. The bass rhythm in the verses also fore-echoes the accent delay in the choruses, with sustained high harmony notes accenting the "and" of beat two.

This arrangement also introduces a gimmick common to the up-tempo songs on the album. Drums and bass (and sometimes organ or guitar) come together to reinforce the rhythm on fills. It's almost overdone here, occurring at:

• 00:21 (bass + drums)
• 00:37 (bass + drums)
• 01:08 (bass + drums)
• 01:53 (bass + drums)
• 02:20 (organ + bass + drums)
• 03:18 (bass fill + drum accents)

The delayed chorus accent here is even more syncopated than in Even After All This Time. The chorus is 8 bars, grouped 2+2+2(+2). The drums are again responsible for the syncopation, this time delaying the accent to the "and" of beat two in the second bar of each of the first three groups. The first bar of each group houses snare and tom flailing but the drums mostly ignore beat one of the second bar. The accent (cymbals) is delayed until the and of beat two (right after the words "time" and "heart"). The fourth 2-bar group is a walk (bass and organ) up to the post-chorus section.

Next: 2x: 3. It Goes On