Backwards writing and cut and paste creativity!

SPRING FLOOD 271 SCOTIA STREET

How I play around with songs now is quite unique (I think) from the sit-on-the-bed with pen and paper style most people are familiar with. I call it backwards writing because the flow of the process is exactly the opposite of the conventional ways a song might be written.

First I record some sound snippets. Nothing purposeful, whatever sounds interesting.Then if they survive a few days on my hard drive, they get reorganized into longer strings. This becomes a much more computer-centric process of cutting and pasting sections of notes and drum beats together with the goal of stretching out the likeable stuff into a two to three minute piece.

One good example of this is Spring. The musical bed is based on four different complete recordings. Then I took the parts I liked the best and stitched them all together. Then I added more percussion. Then I cut up the track again. I had no idea how this would turn out in the end. It was like throwing paint on a canvas. But then, I didn’t care about the end result and had no real expectation of a final result.

It just so happens I love editing music too. I love the surprises you get.

Then I record the piece onto a CD and listen to it in the car going to and from work. I sing along with the music. It’s intentionally a very distracted process. I’m looking for subconscious help. I have sung along with an instrumental for days, dozens and dozens of times, with no real results. Then suddenly, usually when I am focused on something else, like a lane change or a red light, a line or a phrase bubbles to the surface. I grab it. Write it down later. Yeah, I look like a fool in the traffic. And it hasn’t improved my voice either.

Come to think of it, all of the lyrics I’ve used for the past five years on these projects were written while driving. I guess I could have called this project On The Road. I also thought of Writing Backwards as another possible title. (You may have noticed I also love titles.)

One of my favorite songs, The Last Waltz was written in 1969. It was first committed to tape in the backyard of a friend and when you listen to it, you can hear the ambient sounds of a summer afternoon. I include a few seconds of the original recording on the 271 CD because it has that energy of goofy young guys fooling around during summer vacation. With a very serious song.


Why a waltz? Because I wanted to try to write a song in ¾ time. Why the Last Waltz? Because for some reason I had become convinced that the world was going to end in August. Could it be that I had finished high school and was headed to first year University? It never occurred to me at the time but now it seems abundantly evident that I was terrified about the direction my life was taking.

Where would I be
Without an alarm
Without someone there
Always shaking my arm.

I still remember writing those lines. Over forty years ago. That’s how big an impact a few words and a couple of chords can have on my strange little brain. Many of the songs on 271 and Unevolved and Too Long Stupid Too Short Smart are a composed of old archival recordings, some between 20-30 years old.

Baloney was first recorded in Oakbank one night in 1993 when my two daughters were away at piano lessons. I used a classic DIY drum kit that had eight very basic clunky presets that was built by Larry Korba, a high school friend who loved kit building. All I had at that point was a drum track and a guitar. I’m not sure why I kept it but there was something I liked about the dopey percussion sound.

Larry Korba working on some electronic project.

Then in 2008 I transferred the cassette recording to digital and added another guitar track. In 2010 I decided to either fix it or send it to the big trashcan in the sky. So I cut out about a dozen bars with Audacity and recorded a bass line. You can hear the same drum machine in the piece So Long, the basic track and voice which was recorded on a sunny Saturday in the living room of our home on Sun Valley Drive around 1988-89.

This was a case of desperatly wanting to just record the idea before I forgot it completely. The words were literally spontaeous to the recording and were never written down; one take on a beat up old reel to reel recording machine that I had bought used for $25. It died shorlty after that but I was able to transfer the recording to a cassette tape before it expired.