I started working on the third track for 「風の歌を聴け」 when I realized I didn’t know what this song sounds like.
When I start fleshing out a song, I try to have some sense of a few elements — the kind of drum beat and tempo, what kind of guitar to use (if any), a sense for whether it’s busy or sparse.
This new song is kind of tricky — it uses only two chords, D and E major, with a rising bass line, D-E-F#-G#. And the melody is the kind that slowly rises close to an octave where it starts. In terms of raw materials, there isn’t much there.
Which means the focal point for the song is how it develops. And I haven’t yet visualized (auralized?) what that is. The only thing I know is I want to use Craig Armstrong as a source. I think I’ll have to study The Space Between Us more.
All that to say, I don’t think I should concentrate so heavily on finishing 「風の歌を聴け」.
Nothing derails momentum more than forcing out work that doesn’t want to be mishandled. And after looking at that list, I realize I can keep myself busy while I process this new song in the background of my subsconscious. The section of unrecorded and unfinished songs alone has a nagging quality to it.
So I hammered a quick rebuild of “No Exit” over the last two days. I put a mix of it online, but after hearing it this morning, I realize there are a lot of parts I can’t hear.
However much I like to think of these demos as near-finished products, the truth couldn’t be any further. There’s a lot of work that goes into making a mix sound just right, and I know just about all of the MP3s I’ve put online need lots of tweaks in those devilish details.
(I really hate how weak these mixes sound.)
So there’s still a lot of work to do. I am, however, impressed with the amount of work done.