First Entry / About "Even After"

Wow, so many thoughts until you're staring at a blank screen, haha! Well, this is my first entry. I wanted to start writing and sharing with you all more. I only tweet occasionally, and I don't post updates on Facebook all the time either. So, sometimes I'll go long stretches without much of an update of any kind. Honestly, I don't know how interesting all the behind-the-music stuff is to everyone, but I figure I'll write it anyway for the ones who do want to know more.

Things like...how one night not too long ago, goofing around on my acoustic guitar, I came up with this riff -- just this funky little ditty -- a loop really. But I was curious, "What would this sound like as a bassline?" So, I headed on over to the studio to record it real quick before I forgot the idea.

Now, one thing about me is that I generally don't like creating new projects in Logic. It's just a little bit of a hassle to go through the process of setting up a brand new project, and all the while my inspiration might be dwindling. So, oftentimes when inspiration hits, what I'll do is open up one of my (many) unfinished existing projects instead; it's just faster and easier. More than a few of my songs were started like this actually. So, that's what I did this time as well.

A few weeks before this, I started doing a remix for another artist, but I got bored with the project and quit working on it. But I knew I still had the drum sequence I came up with. So, I opened up that project, ditched everything but the drums, and I started playing this new riff, but on the bass. Voila, a new track was born! It's called "Even After."

Now, a lot of times that's where inspiration ends. Generally, I'll only come up with one or two parts of a track at a time; then I'll hit a little bit of a wall until the next day. So, I after I laid down the bassline, I was tempted to just shut everything down for the evening. However, my curiosity got the best of me: "I wonder what chords are being implied by this bassline?" So, I started fiddling around with different chords and keyboard sounds, and I ended up finding the ones that really completed "Even After." Amazed at how quickly this was all coming together, I kept with it.

I did something different this time too that I've never done before: I ran the keyboard I was playing through a guitar amp. And when I did that, wow! That's actually what created the magic of "Even After." I had stumbled upon this very haunting sound that at some points distorted so much it sounds like freight train coming right at you. I immediately knew, "This is it; this is the track!"

I really can't wait to share this one with everyone. It's been done for months, but that night, immediately after creating the heart and soul of the song, I knew two things: 1) this is going to be the last track on the album; 2) I'm not releasing it as a single before the album comes out.