My workflow seems to be changing from the evening time to the morning. Today is another instrumental though I was thinking about lyrics I could put over top of it at some point. Have a listen:
Today’s challenge was to only use two chords. Famous songs that use only two chords include Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” and Nirvana’s “Something in the Way”. Both songs are far apart on the spectrum of activity in using those two chords. Springsteen’s track is a “pump me up” type of a song while the Nirvana song is much more subdued. However, when I sat down to play the two chords, I came across an interesting pattern only to realize that it was probably from one of Quentin Tarantino’s movies, though I couldn’t find which song it was.
So I went up a few chords and settled on the F / C combination. Originally I was going to use the C / G combination but decided that was a bit too common. G / Aminor would’ve worked too but, when I started recording, I naturally went F / C so, I stuck with it.
The guitar part took a few tries to get right. I was surprised at how easy it was to create something listenable with only two chords. Makes me think I might be able to pick up guitar some day. haha All I’m doing is strumming up and down each chord and alternating every four beats or so. It’s not overly complex.
The bass tries to double up the guitar but, since I lacked a visual reference and my ear is only okay at detecting chord changes (and the fact that I hadn’t mapped out the song at all so I didn’t know where the guitar would change simply by listening to it), there might be some inconsistencies in what the guitar is playing and what the bass is playing. Nevertheless, it mostly plays along.
The drums took a bit more to track since I didn’t know how to complement what the guitar was playing. At first I used the SoCal kit in Garageband but that lent itself only to tom and cymbal work. I thought I could add some kick and snare but not with that kit. I changed it to the Vintage kit and it complemented the guitar and bass much more. But then I didn’t know the back beat since I still didn’t really know the timing of the chord changes.
I did a few takes and what you hear is a slightly modified version of the final take. A few of the kick strikes were early or late so I moved them around but left everything else in place.
I was thinking of putting vocals over top but two things happened: first, the only words I could think of were “water, water, take me away from here” in some sort of mythological-Nature has its way sort of idea; and, second, people started moving around and slamming doors which made it difficult to get a good take. I did try humming along with the track but felt it didn’t fit right given the movement of the guitar. Besides, I can come back to this later and add words if I like.
Moreover, I have mixed feelings about lyrics mostly because I think they don’t really say anything. And that’s probably why the words “water, water, take me away from here” came to mind.
In terms of mixing, the only thing I did was lower the overall volume of the track as it seemed really loud. I also tried to put a little bit of time at the beginning of the track as it does start rather suddenly and can cause a stir if you’re volume is turned up too high. Other than that, I left all of the instruments as is.
I’ll leave it as is for now knowing that it could be tweaked a little bit more. I’m happy that I was able to coordinate the guitar and bass and that I could even put something together with only two chords. This challenge has demonstrated the ease and effectiveness of simplifying things.