Forgives You Everything |\\ 003
12/20/2025: Session 03 “Myself”
A weirdly sleepless night netted a ton of new ideas, which I hastily scribbled down. Had the day off and went about relearning and recording a song that I found on my phone. I can’t remember when I wrote it, but it’s one of two guitar-based songs that I wrote this year. The other is a tune intentioned for the band Vale and Year.
I took five passes at the initial guitar track, picking the fifth take. Next was violin. (Thanks Marisol for the violin!) I tuned the violin to E/B/F#/B and picked three spots to layer a bed of 10 violin tracks. Took a break to make dinner and returned to touch up the lyrics, record the main vocal, and layer in eight backing vocal tracks droning on an E note.
It might be done. I could hear a little brass section, but I’m also not trying to spend much money to make this record. We’ll put this song down for a bit.
12/21/2025: Session 04
Added accordion to “Myself.” Deleted most of it.
12/22/2025: Thinking
Played back “Myself” and don’t think it’ll make the cut. Partly because I think that this is idea is done better on our next-to-be released Watererer LP (see 2026, fall, I’d imagine). And partly because I don’t have any lyrics written for this new album, and I don’t think these lyrics should be what the album is about. Also, this song basically repeats the role of “Ballad” from our Genuflections album—where there’s a relatively simple song mixed in with densely structured, more heady tunes. But we’ve already done all that.
The things I like about it are the way the backing vocals and violins blend. I can probably salvage the violins. Also, it’s the first time I’ve had a bassline walk down chromatically, while the vocal melody pedals on the E.
“Forgives You Everything” bit: Here’s the tab.
12/26/2025: Session 05
I’m envisioning this record having double drum kits throughout. To realize this, I need to ask a few people some questions, but assuming that it is possible, I recorded a bunch of ideas using the close mic + two stereo mic setup today. Here’s one of them that attempts a long arpeggiated chord cycle. It’s currently marked as “Forgives You Everything,” the lead off track, but if this sticks, this section wouldn’t kick off the album.
It’s always hard to decide what is interesting or not at this stage. Once the drums are in, the music feels much more alive and determining good or bad is much easier.