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Unsung Song
Inspiration & History
This song was another collaboration between Dawn and myself. Both of our input also dated back quite a way as well. Unsung Song was a poem that Dawn had written when she was in high school. She wrote a chorus to it, and gave me the poem to see if I could write music to it. This was around the same time that Dawn had turned me on to the Cure's Disintegration, and Robert Smith's songwriting and guitar layering innovations. It's affect on my style is very apparent in this piece.
As I worked on the music for it, a melody that came naturally for the intro and in between verse sections was actually from a piece I had composed for piano in 7th grade. It was actually used as the intro and outro for an entirely improvised piece I performed for a summer band concert. However, it fit perfectly as a guitar melody in this piece.
As I recorded the clean guitar parts, I wanted to give it something extra, something that made it unique and dark without being distorted or "heavy". I recorded the clean rhythm guitar tracks in the typical Jake fashion through my Korg A4 onto my 4 track. I then took the line out of that track, ran it through the exact settings on the A4 again, in essence doubling all of the effects (as well as the EQ), which gave it the hollow-y darkness I was looking for. The lead guitar bits were done with my Korg G1 on a high gain sound through the A4 with the same setting as the clean tone. This gave it a very synth-type sound, and I rolled the tone knob back for the accents during the verses.
When Dawn recorded the vocals, she recorded 2 tracks, one in her head voice, and one in her chest voice. I made it a task to see which lines sounded better on which take, and the final mix was me actually switching from one take to the other, both together and panned side to side, and panning the vocals manually to get them to sound the way they do. This basically meant I had to "play" the 4 track as an instrument for a mixdown, constantly changing the pans and vocal levels through the entire piece. But I think it works that way. The vocals are very angelic and kind of swim around you if you listen to it through headphones (or speakers with good separation)
Technical Info
Rhythm Guitar:
Ibanez UV777 through Korg A4 Bass direct, track out through Korg A4 Bass again direct.
Bass:
Rickenbacker 4001 through Korg A4 Bass direct
Drums:
Yamaha RY-10 through Korg A4 Bass
Lead Guitar:
Ibanez UV777 through Korg G1 & Korg A4 Bass direct
Vocals:
AKG D65S through Korg A4 Bass
Recording:
Recorded and mixed onto Yamaha MT120S 4-track. Mixed to Sony MDS-JE320 for final mix. Transferred to PC and mixed and finalized with GoldWave.
-={E-Mail Jake}=-
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