Recording - Plastic Sea

"Plastic Sea" is my favorite of all of the tracks I've made so far. It tells the story of someone who has is in a dark, uncertain place waiting for an answer to come so he can move forward. The demo of the song in now up for anyone who wants to give it a listen. Feedback is most appreciated.

It started as a small little tune I began humming while I was cleaning our apartment in Glen Carbon, IL. I began humming the echo'y "Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah" part and imagined a walk-down of the violin. Pretty soon a melody got into my head, and I ran to get my electronic recorder to record the results. I think I actually first sang it as "Floating down a plastic river, floating in a chocolate sea," but then later got this confused in my head and starting singing about "floating down a plastic sea." It stayed this way for quite a while.

Just before my recording session with Jesse Dunivent in September, I tried to build up the song as it only had the verse. I knew there had to be some sort of build up or extension to the verse, so after much toil I came up with the awesome-ness that is the pre-chorus. And finally to tie things up, I wrote a simple chorus which acted as sort of a positive answer to the rest of the song, coming up with the "You are not alone" piece.

During the sessions, as evidenced here, I woke up on day 3 and began to truly fill out and complete the lyrics of the song. I also came up with a multi-layered vocal piece to end the song. Jesse and I then began to lay down tracks. I layed down the piano (and keyboard violins). He came up with and layed down the infectious bass piece, and I layed down the acoustic guitar piece. Finally Jesse finished it up by laying down some odd electric guitar pieces.

From September until now, I had some wonderfully frustrating times laying down the vocals. I finally decided to pitch-shift my vocals up a half step for the chorus, pre-chorus, and ending to the songs, leaving the chorus and the "Ah-ah-ah"s to be sung in my normal voice. I also changed the multi-layered ending at the last second (a few days back) and wrote new lyrics for it. I mixed it all together, and what came out has been the greatest and catchiest of the songs I've written so far!