Preliminary thoughts on sound

the songwriters in this band need to know... what should our songs be about? how should they sound? are we going to make happy songs, depressing songs?-sc


Alive, danceable.
i'm kind of into weird sort of almost meaningless lyrics sort of radiohead style. i love depressing music, but i would rather be in a dancey band. but dancey in a beirut sort of way. something alive sounding. sort of life affirming without being gross. like life affirming in an amelie way. *mklj
i agree - we can be singer-songwritery on our own, but since we have a bunch of people and a TON of liveliness among all of us, it seems that we should at least delve into things that involve some kind of rhythm or groove or fun, exciting sound. not that it has to always be like that. radiohead really is a great example - they span a really broad range of tempos and danceability. i'm not so worried that we'll be too drab or mellow - in fact, i think that we'll probably end up having a really well balanced sound. the point is: a resounding YES to songs you can dance to! *cw*

D7
i agree- 7th chords are a go! *cw*
"d7, my first favorite chord" *mklj

songs amelie would listen to - sc
yes *mklj
second that emotion *cw*
but all our songs don't have to have the same feeling, right? or at least not the same sound. i mean, i think they should go where we need them to go. *mklj

drunken ocean orchestra
you know, like a sound that swells. *mklj
i think it sounds really good when ciana (accordion) and vijay (violin) play long notes together -sc
yes yes yes! i think that richness of sound (like a vibrant tapestry or some other dorky analogy) is something we should go for. pretty bare-bones songs will come naturally after we're done creating a lovely, dark, layered chocolate cake of music. *cw*

snapshot/impressionism lyrics
where the words draw a quick picture of a moment. something like a snapshot or short story or fast painting. with details, but without all the details. something emotive without being overly specific. where your idea is still kinda blurry, but you get a strong feeling from it. *mklj

a light peppering of hand claps, not overdone
always a big fan of hand claps, in moderation. *mklj
such clapping should fill the role of an intermittent percussion instrument. not campfire singalong clapping. -sc
agreed *mklj
ooh like in the cure's "close to me". what better hand-clapping is there than that? -cw
close to me! can we cover that? *mklj
YES, let's do it. the cure tends to be pretty easy to play... cw

about covers..
I think covers are a good way to find things we like about music and sounds that we want to keep for ourselves, but maybe a good middle step between being a covers-only band and a no-covers band would be to personalize our covers a little more. like how radiohead call themselves a radiohead cover band - because it's not the same every time they perform it. and it doesn't necessarily sound just like the album. I'd be interested in playing around more with the various instruments we have and making sounds sound like us even if we're using other people's music. like the white stripes jolene doesn't sound like dolly's and sufjan's lakes of canada sounds 1000x better than the original. so maybe we can start there? *mklj
at this point, i think it is important for us to cover songs as closely as we can to the originals (of course, to the extent possible given our instrumentation). doing so will force us to learn and improve quickly. we should challenge ourselves to learn all the solos, little riffs, the correct strumming patterns, and not just to do what is most comfortable to us. this will also teach us to listen to music more closely, because it will probably involve a lot of playing back the same part of the recording over and over, and perhaps watching live videos. it is a bit of extra work, but i think it is more fun to really experience what our favorite bands go through, than to just sorta follow the chords we found on the internet. -sc