This was honestly a really difficult one but I think it’s 90% of the way there. I decided that I just had to bite the bullet now as I have been badly procrastinating on putting this out. The subject matter is pretty heavy, and there’s a lot of singing involved which is a very, very long way away from my comfort zone.
As to how I justify writing a 8 minute 40 second song, I have two justifications; firstly, I think it really does go some places in that time all of which build to a pretty powerful conclusion, and secondly because it’s prog rock and that’s just how these things are done.
This is the first time I have ever used Sonarworks’ SoundID’s VoiceAI, which transforms a vocal part to sound like another singer. It’s technically generative AI but a) you still have to sing the part yourself in the first place, b) the underlying performances are fully licensed and c) it runs locally. I think it’s far from perfect but it’s much better than listening to my actual singing voice. I also feel that it gives some additional distance which makes it easier to deal with the themes of the piece. I used my unaltered voice for backing vocals. The guitar parts are the usual Neural DSP plugins and I also used Logic’s built in instruments and amp sims. Toontrack’s EZMix 3 was basically essential to even beginning to get to grips with the mixing as there are so many different instruments competing for the same frequencies; it took the track from a barely-listenable mess of a demo to something actually presentable with very little fuss.
There are a lot of references to classic progressive rock in here. I think it should be pretty obvious that the introduction had a strong Wish You Were Here-era Pink Floyd influence creep in, even though that really wasn’t intentional at all. There are some double-picked guitar parts in the solo section which are definitely attributable to Ben Eller’s excellent video covering the technique, which is pretty commonly used on Mastodon’s Crack the Skye. I deliberately left the background noise in the acoustic solo part as it feels more like the second side of Mike Oldfield’s Ommadawn. Lastly, and most obviously, I was influenced by The Count of Tuscany by Dream Theater, which you can hear in the rhythm guitars and the overall structure.
In his autobiography, Mike Oldfield talks about the guitar solo at the end of the first side of Ommadawn and how he suddenly felt that he had to pick up his guitar and release a tremendous tension that had built up in him. I find it incredibly powerful and even before I understood exactly what was happening in his life at the time, it always felt utterly wild, almost possessed. The first part of the melody I wrote for this piece, the guitar interlude which returns in the outro was written in the same frame of mind, I think, just falling straight out of me onto the instrument all in one moment. I haven’t ever really been able to play it the same way again.
One really interesting thing about art is that it lets you process emotions and memories by turning them into a story. Whether the story is actually true or not is basically beside the point. I lost someone who I was on bad terms with, and who never gave any indication they would ever have wanted to reconcile. But, it’s my song, so I get to imagine that they reconsidered things in their last moments. The last note of the lead guitar, as the feedback shifts up an octave, represents the moment where they finally make peace with everything at the end. It’s probably terribly arrogant and self-absorbed of me to say it, but that note really gets to me every time.
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