Our First Running Music Release: A Quicky Overview
March 15, 2009 | in Music | 0 Comments Share
How To Turn Around A Bad Day is up, and we thought we'd offer a little musical insight.
At long last, our first song How To Turn Around A Bad Day is ready to download. Just click the link and check it out.
As the title suggests, How To Turn Around A Bad Day is about the cycle of feelings a runner goes through when they are shaking off a bad day with a good run. You start off kinda grumpy and tense, loosen up, get into your groove, and then your endorphin pals come by and before you know it you're having a good day.
The song has 4 big sections, with a lot of little changes and parts and pieces within each section. It flows something like this:
Rough Outline
- You're Starting Off Tense: driving, intense start
- Terse drums, riffy-funky-jazzy guitar riffs, alternating pounding and funk-ish bass guitar
- Syncopated guitar, funk-ish bass, swirling arpeggios
- Jazz/funk bass breakdown, guitar solo
- Latin-inspired guitar arpeggio transition, introduction of piano
- Afro-cuban drum section, piano, Latin-inspired bass pattern
- You're Warmed Up: melodic, dream-like "cruising" section
- Time signature change, with a subtle swing feel (but without losing sync with your stride)
- Introduction of pulsing bass, dreamy piano, arpeggio guitar and piano interplay
- Building of harmonic interplay between the guitar, piano and bass figure
- Build up, shift to minor mood
- Major, then minor guitar solos
- Return to guitar/piano interplay
- Time To Have Fun: the have-a-good-time section
- Simple, fun guitar riffs with quirky bass and timpani interplay; upbeat drum kit and hand claps (clap-clap!...clap!)
- Guitar and bass chorus parts, with a "climbing" feel
- Syncopated gritty funk-guitar bridge
- Blast To The Finish: gun it and go for broke
- A brief revisit to the various elements thus far over aggressive drums
- Layers of guitar, bass (over continued aggressive rhythm)
- Home stretch and resolution
Rationale, Odds & Ends
When you write a song, you sometimes can't help but be influenced by what you're listening to. (Strangely, when I started this song I was listening to Mastodon quite a bit, but you'd never know it from listening.)
I set out to create something that moved in a way similar to Pinback's From Nothing to Nowhere. I liked the perpetual motion; everything about that song has drive and forward movement. The repeated background voices, the guitar, the drums. It's a great song and provides great inspiration for running. I'm not sure the Pinback vibe came through; How To Turn Around A Bad Day is a lot more aggressive and driving, and has a lot of different things going on.
Oh, and it's purely instrumental. So no voices, lyrics, vocal harmonies to be heard.
I did draw on electric bass pioneer Jaco Pastorius quite a bit. One of the main basslines in the first "movement" of the song is a big nod to a riff he played frequently in live versions of his classic song Teen Town.
The syncopated guitar theme comes up quite a bit in this song. I think it works particularly well with stride-oriented music. Also: the AFRICAN DRUMS! Run to that and tell me you don't get charged up and want to haul ass. Latin and African clave patterns are in many ways based on movement. Sure, people dance to music, but there's also a march tradition to some patterns—and I don't mean "march" in the same Western European rat-tat-tat-tat rat-tat-tat-tat snare drum march. Western Europe's drum march cadence has nothing on African and Latin rhythms. They are badass to the core.
I think the last little tidbit I have to share on this is the final "home stretch" segment. It happened accidentally, but I felt like the two inter-playing electric guitars had a sort of layered, Jimmy Page Achilles Last Stand feel to them. It wasn't intended, but when I listened back to what I recorded I liked what I heard. But I *love* Jimmy Page; in many ways he was the beginning of rock guitar for me.
We hope you dig listening to How To Turn Around A Bad Day and truly hope it's great for you to run to. If you have any feedback, don't hesitate to email us at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)—we'd love to hear from you.
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