a quiet end

April 18, 2011 @ 5:54pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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birthplace st.

Early on it was decided that ‘Birthplace St.’ would lead off the EP, mostly because it had slightly more immediacy than the others. Despite knowing this, it was referred to simply as ‘three’ for the longest time and spent much of its life without a proper title. The biggest reason for this was that the lyrics were the last to be completed. They didn’t come easily for some reason, and were only fragments for the longest time, none of which I’m completely sure made the final or not. The initial ‘complete’ draft was quite a rushed effort stemming from the need to have finished lyrics to sing when I was pulling together the songs on relatively short notice for a show last summer. ‘Birthplace’ was one I wasn’t so sure about playing, if for no other reason than I felt like I had to force the lyrics to some degree, but with effort I managed to hammer something out I felt serviceable.

Revisiting it later in an effort finalize the lyrics and vocal parts for recording, I ran into the same problem. I didn’t particularly like what was already there, it really seemed forced to me, but it did have something of a theme running through it; something I’d had loosely in my head when rushing out those first words.  It took me a lot of time, rewrites and rewording to get something I was somewhat satisfied with, but even then I wasn’t sure how I felt about the end result, and yet again it’s getting finished had more to do with the imperative of needing to have it done rather than it’s feeling like it was ready. Running with what was already in place, I ended up keeping more of it than I thought I would, even though the slight dissatisfaction hung around the whole time. I said before that there were moments where I would have liked to have spent more time on lyrics in general, but had someone asked me at a certain point, I’d have said these were the ones I was least satisfied with, which is kind of funny considering they were also the ones I spent the most time on.

Looking at them now, it fits, or at least is fitting. ‘Birthplace’ had the intention behind it of pointing forward musically in some fashion, but also ended up thematically touching on the idea of new times generally. In this way it sits alongside ‘An Intimate History’ – which while being the last song considers different times ahead while surveying what has come before – as more future-oriented in its content, and is removed from the more recent past considerings of ‘Allies’ and ‘Resumption’. The first/song last song bookending and how it lines up with the subject matter of each was a fitting synchronistic accident. 

‘Birthplace’ wasn’t so much glancing forward at the rest of the EP that followed, but taking a longer view of what might come later. In this way too, it’s probably the song that most actively pushed the limits of the resources at hand. I’d originally intended it to be a much fuzzier affair overall, but it just didn’t end up that way for whatever reason. The early demos testify to this idea, with piles of overdriven guitars as an early stand-in for what I’d thought to make a gauze-wall of distortion. There was no active decision to not do this, only a sense of it sounding and working better with a different kind of wash. A rising minor scale, more obvious, guitar solo was the only major alteration when further into the recording process, replaced by something I felt was more texturally and compositionally interesting.

Another interesting thing is that ‘Birthplace’ ended up being the only song on the EP that is not in an atypical time signature or alternate tuning. I’m not sure to what degree this helps create the song’s immediacy that sets it apart slightly from the others, but it seems to be the one most people latch onto first, and not because of its position in the running order of the EP. The rest too, wasn’t consciously intended to be ‘less immediate’, or different to force some kind of diversity upon the songs as a group. It was always a question of what worked best, and which things best fit with certain tones and moods. Maybe it is these very differences, and the fact that there are quite a few, that help the whole to function as well as it does. 

A Quiet End - Birthplace St. by aquietend

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April 6, 2011 @ 6:35pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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allies

This song follows ‘Resumption’ as being the second that was culled from that initial writing push long before the EP was planned or the reality of A Quiet End as a musical project seemed like something that would happen. Like its partner from that time, ‘Allies’ started as a fairly simple acoustic tune, though one more understated and slightly darker than ‘Resumption’.  Its development for the EP was interesting as well. It was originally intended to have a sort swampy country-like stomp hovering beneath the surface, and maintain a fairly sparse arrangement otherwise, but instead it became a vessel for a more beat-oriented atmospheric affair. This happened somewhat accidentally, and did far more for the slightly-haunted sound of it than any stripped down more folk-style arrangement could have. ‘Resumption’ had a similar trajectory in this regard, its bright-yet-slightly-ragged initial feel gave way to one that was atmospheric in places, and far more broad overall; and like ‘Allies’, the song ended up being that much better for it. The relationship between the two songs, also adds another dimension to the various sets of relatedness generally, and like with the instrumentals, they work in a sort of tandem with each other, as well as enhance the overall context of the EP as a unified work.

It seemed that there were periods during recording where each song would at some point take over the mantle of being the problem one. ‘Allies’ held that position at least twice, once requiring a rerecording of the acoustic guitar part due to too much room noise that was unfortunately discovered too late. The second time came when despite having an arrangement I was relatively satisfied with, I added some late overdubs to the end third. It was nothing tremendous, just the feedback laden swelling guitar and some echoing guitar textures, but for whatever reason it seemed overwhelm everything that was in the mix. It may be that I kind of went overboard in piling on more parts to something that was fine without them, as it it ended up requiring a complete rejigging of all the pre-existing parts all the way back to the beginning of the song in order to balance it out. The most obvious remnant of having to do this is that the piano part, which I always enjoyed, ended up having to be more buried than I would have liked.

There was also a decision to be made in terms of whether or not to maintain the overall dynamic range of the song, and to what degree. In this way, it was similar to ‘…’, as bringing up the much quieter earlier section would either sit awkwardly against the much thicker and louder ending, lacking the ‘rise’ up to that peak in the song, or having compression push the end section too far actually causing it to crunch unpleasantly in places. Admittedly, having the access of a proper mastering studio would have made this easier, but I enjoy that the overly quiet start of the song has a kind of patience in reaching its more thick-sounding final third. 

The subject matter in most of those early songs was similar, all reflecting the mechanics of what seemed like a perpetual uncertainty machine. Understandable in their coming from the same short writing period, but while ‘Allies’ alludes to the same circularity that much of what ‘Resumption’ is about, it tends to more of a weariness in the immediate smaller picture events that make up a portion of the colure. 

A Quiet End - Allies by aquietend

And of course, the EP can be found here.

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April 2, 2011 @ 3:23pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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(…)

Following ‘all things always’ as the second instrumental track on the EP (click the link to read that entry), ‘…’ was written shortly after and both came together arrangement-wise within a couple days of each other. I’d hoped to create a stark difference between the two, while rooting them in a similar style and aesthetic that kept them separate from the more song-oriented tracks on the EP. While sharing the same dna, in terms of what they evoke, one is filled up with possibility, the threads of time winding together, while the other is at a loss in a sort of downtrodden acceptance of not knowing anything. In this way they end up representing the different ends of the darkness/light dichotomy to some degree, a theme I’ve found to often be unconsciously reoccurring. It’s in this way as well, that the instrumentals flesh out the overall contextual arc of the EP while maintaining a relationship with each other, one that has a dynamic of its own but also sees them stand independently as their own unique pieces.

In wanting to fill the EP out more, it would have been easy to pull another already written song from somewhere and add it in. In expanding it though, I wanted to add something totally new, something written just for this purpose and not added haphazardly just for the sake of having more. At first, I didn’t know if the instrumentals would be included it all, it was a kind of experiment in that way, and there was even a moment in the last month of finishing where I considered taking them out completely.

For whatever reason ‘…’ was far easier than ‘all things always’ to mix and master. There was still a little bit of trouble with the piano sound, thought not nearly as much, and then it took some time to balance out all of the elements texturally to get the proper amount of space while maintaining a full sounding mix. There is also a lot of dynamic range between the first minute, and the end of the song where it fills out more, and maintaining clarity so that it could have a sense of sweeping upward, and not crunch when it all really starts to swirl around at the end took some extra effort as well. There was also a bit of an issue in trying to get the violin to sound ‘natural’ for some reason, or at least when it was placed against everything else.

When I’d decided not to refer to the instrumentals as ‘Segues’ any longer, I had so much trouble trying to think of what to call this one. Everything I’d come up with seemed to try too hard to capture the tone of the music and sounded forced and silly. What I found though, is that I’d sit around asking myself what the music made me think of, and where it had come from for me, and what it meant. The answer I always seemed to get was always ‘dot dot dot’, something that seemed wholly appropriate for what the song represented, or at least where it sat in my mind. 

A Quiet End - (…) by aquietend

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March 28, 2011 @ 8:23pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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resumption

Before the EP as a project came into being in a more a more tangible sense, there was other music of different kinds. As noted in a pervious entry it was things made and mostly shelved away, or that were leant to the projects of others; these things still had the name ‘A Quiet End’ attached in some fashion, albeit often vaguely, and mostly only in my mind. It had yet to come into being as an actual entity, even though there were slight steps towards this, it was still mostly only a foggy notion somewhere.

A while before embarking on the process of defining the project more formally and making the EP, I returned to my hometown under less than ideal circumstances. I had been living on a distant side of the country for awhile, and my unplanned and sudden return seemed to be the latest upheaval in a series of seemingly never-ending collapse/rebuild binaries of varying severity in different areas of life. I’d worked on, and even finished some things out there – though not particularly well, I’d have to say – but had largely not done anything with them. I didn’t know what was going to happen; life seemed uncertain, where to go next was very much a question on every level, and I spent some time living out of boxes. One thing I did know was that I didn’t want to continue what I’d been working on or retread that same region of material, but going forward wasn’t fleshed out in any particular direction either. Static seemed like a bad option, and with what had just happened part of me wanted to keep moving, maybe for fear of falling into some familiar traps.

So I decided to do a bit of an exercise. Over the first few weeks I’d try to just write without thinking too much about it, see what came on a more immediate level, and then would maybe make something relatively small and simple with whatever happened along. No arrangements really, stripped back to just songs; maybe mostly acoustic, not scrutinized in the way I’m often wont to do with things. I thought it might yield something new enough that I’d want to do something with, and at the very least, would help in grounding some of the energy flying around.

A number of songs came out of these initial writing sessions, maybe six or seven over the course of a couple of weeks. By the end of the third, it was obvious that there were four that seemed to be more complete than the others, and fit together thematically. I’m not sure what happened then, life stepped in and the need to keep moving became more of a paralyzing feeling of being stuck; one that would persist off and on for some time. I had recorded rough cuts of the four and had intended to do cleaner, yet still simple, versions that maybe would see the light of day, but never quite made it.

A few months fell off the calendar where it seemed like nothing happened; somewhat lost, there was some toe-dipping here and there, and halfhearted work on different things, but the idea of working on a particular project would still take some time to arrive. When it did, with some encouragement and help, it seemed like whatever the notion of what ‘A Quiet End’ was, would finally become an actual thing, as opposed to something that previously only existed in theory.

Around that time, I took stock of the many songs that were packed away in their various states of being to try and decide which might lend themselves to a short EP, and were also feasible with the somewhat limited resources at hand. Those early four seemed worth revisiting because they lay on simpler end of the scale and were still relatively recent. Ultimately two of them were tossed to the scrapheap, deemed too obvious, but the other two were decided to make up the majority of what was at that time only going to be a three song EP, and ‘Resumption’ was one of them. It was the first of the original four that I’d recorded an early version of, and was probably also the first written in those early weeks. Then in beginning work on the EP proper, the acoustic guitar part on ‘Resumption’ was first thing set down. 

Writing this now, it sort of lends an interesting take on the title, mirroring on a smaller scale the bigger concept in the song’s subject matter. It was always called ‘Resumption’, named for one of the common themes in my life at that point. A sort of circularity found in picking up something that seemed done, and then having to leave it behind once more and come back again to something else also thought long over.

The lyric parts are not all from the same perspective, and some lines are intended to be in quotation marks to illustrate this difference. Without this explained, I figure it might sound like a mess of contradictions constantly running into each other, but isn’t that also what happens with your feelings when you can’t see where the circle ends?

A Quiet End - Resumption by aquietend

The EP can be purchased here for only 2$. If you’d like a free digital copy, please write to aquietend@intimatehistory.com.

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March 23, 2011 @ 6:15pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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(all things always)

A Quiet End - (all things always) by aquietend

The first of two smaller instrumentals pieces on the EP that were initially referred to only as Segue I & II — preliminary namesakes that make reference to what the original intent was behind them. At first the EP was only going to be three songs, less material meant it would take less time to make, and also that in being more concise it would lend an immediacy to people hearing something for the first time from what was essentially a new project. Easily digestible and simple to share, centering the focus on a small number of songs might draw listeners in more easily than something with some sprawl. It seemed like a good idea, but, and this is the point where my friends laugh, I’ve always been more inclined towards more widescreen notions, grand narratives, and overarching flow or purpose that falls on the more detailed side of things. Also, to me three songs felt more like a single than an EP, and in launching a project more widely for the first time, and calling it such, it felt like it needed to be slightly more extensive. Even a six song EP, which at the time was only five, is limited in how far it can extend itself as far as vastness goes.

It’s not that the instrumentals were included as filler; they seemed like an appropriate way of both fleshing out the music as a set of songs, and extending the scope of the whole. Acting as a counterpoint to more traditionally song-oriented bits of work, and trying to find the large in the smaller moments; they sprung more directly out of my own background with classical and contemporary music. Over the last few years as well I’d done some small film score work, and even a series of semi-improvised minimal piano works – things that remain largely unreleased – which probably influenced the urge to add something somewhat different to the group of songs, and also to represent another mode of interest. I thought that working up something in that vein could help add cohesion, and also draw out more dimension over the entirety of the EP. So I began with a vague notion of a couple of interludes of some kind (hence the parentheses), and working with the piano as a starting point, and even having them modulate keys from the preceding song to the one that would follow.

The piano part to ‘all things always’ came rather quickly, and the once that part was written, the arrangement did too. I thought recording would be a fairly simple affair, and happen faster because it was less dense arrangement-wise than the other songs. It did record quickly, but would become somewhat problematic upon reaching the mixing and mastering stage. Something about the piano was always difficult, it never wanted to sound right somehow, and even re-recording it didn’t seem to help. Then the whole thing together didn’t quite blend as well as I’d hoped, or quite how I had in mind anyway, and seemed to trip over itself often when it was all threaded together. In the end, it was probably the song I really had to settle the most with at a certain point, and I was tweaking the mix and master right up until the end.

I’m not sure at what point I’d decided on proper titles instead of just calling calling them ‘Segues’, but ‘all things always’ was fairly easy to name. When the piano part was first written, it came along with a kind of mental picture; one of looking at memories through a haze of saturated light, like that emitted from a setting sun seen through a wide window. It made me think of that feeling of being on a train, or riding in car for some extended period of time, and watching the horizon as the sun dips while you’re carried away by your thoughts. And the sense that occurs in such moments that the present, future, and what came before, all exist at once. 

As always, the whole EP can be found here.

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March 17, 2011 @ 6:34pm • Text Post • Tweet this • Share on Facebook

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an intimate history

Not only the last song on the EP, it was also the last one written, and its inclusion was a bit of a tack-on to what was already largely settled on. Recording was well underway, and the songs had long been decided upon, even if some of them were only in their preliminary stages; even the running order was firmly in place. Indirectly though, it felt like there was something missing. Not that I was pushing for another song or anything like that, there were plenty sitting in the cupboard ready to be brought out should the need arise, more that the idea of concluding the EP with ‘Allies’ didn’t feel quite right for some reason, and no obvious, suitable alternatives had sprung to mind. Then seemingly from nowhere, and with that lurking in my mind, ‘An Intimate History’ appeared as the obvious solution to this problem.

The song emerged in one of those strange and rare moments where an idea comes, and then immediately takes complete shape, almost as if it’s dictating itself. In the case of ‘An Intimate History’, I was actually on my way to the shower when the lazy bass part floated its way to the front of my mind. By the time I was out, the whole song had played its way around my head, fully formed, and I immediately set to work on putting down a rough demo to see if it would hold together as well in reality, and to try and capture the idea before it disappeared. In the end, the final recording matched up almost exactly with the original impression of the song, which is I think, also a fairly rare occurrence.

Lyrically, it’s probably the song I’m the most pleased with. Lyrics are something I would have liked to have developed more with some of the songs, and writing generally is something I take very seriously, but those of ‘An Intimate History’ were written in one go, and didn’t change much after that. In fact, I don’t think there was much in the way of editing at all, aside from a few scratch-outs and re-words immediately as they were put down. It has less words than any of the other songs, but also contains what I think is my favourite line on the whole EP; one that perfectly captures a core truth, and something that has been slowly shifting in the time around the writing and recording of these songs.

The title is a bit of a wink at my partner on the administrative side of things – it was something he came up with as a potential name for a record label we dreamt of starting eventually. It sounded good, but more than that, the name suggested the truth of our often shared personal history, one with ties and webs that extend beyond anything that could be understood outside of the people within them. Themes that were also found in many of the life events of the last two years plus. Originally, the song was called ‘Atom Bomb’ as a placeholder, but the more I thought about what it was about, the more it became obvious that it was a re-telling, or more, and examination of an actual intimate history. One that bookends the subject matter of the songs that precede it, and is a kind of final survey of a broad set of whys before moving on.

A Quiet End - An Intimate History by aquietend

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