OVER THERE // Video + Audio
::DOWNLOAD 'OVER THERE mp3' (free) from upcoming album 'Who Cooks For You'::
Recording
The song idea came from simply wanting to do a Curtis Mayfield style song, with the rim knock and guitar strums. I was listening to "Curtis Live" for about a month straight, being blown away by the abilities and vibe created with very few elements. Working full time at a motion-design studio on mundane car animations day after day, with no way to live out my own musical aspirations — i'd get coffee'd up and work while experiencing a perfectly captured concert from 1970. A period in american history dripping with civil rights issues of empowerment and justice. Listening to themes of coming together and pushing back against the status quo. Listening to the room ambience, the tightness between the players, and the energy and subtleties of mastery that Curtis (and band) possessed. Knowing there couldnt have been too many microphones, what was being captured is one of the most impactful recordings i've ever heard. The interplay between band members and Curtis and the audience. The response of the audience to an amazing musical moment, even when quiet and funky. Playing without a pick, doing extremely melodic strums.
Upon doing a little research, he tuned his guitar to an open strum chord. And wasnt the most gifted player, in a technical sense. But he had an incredibly distinct and effective sound, a beautiful voice, and an all-time-great gift of expression. I would listen at dangerous headphone levels, and drum with my feet on the wood floor and hands on the desk as if I were his drummer at the Village Vanguard. Listening to the magic Curtis and his band created gave me a spark to use my abilities and work within the limitations I have.
One afternoon, Robbie and I were messing with the laptop demo of what would come to be Over There, which at that time was only a rhodes over a rim knock, and I'm like "what about this?"... and I played a booming low synth horn via Apple Logic that sounds like a hip-hop intro. And doubled that with a hi-octave west-coast squiggly synth. We figured out the funk guitar line with a tiny little 24 key M-Audio controller and our demo version sounded like Weather Channel Muzak Hip Hop. Robbie demo'd out some real guitar strums. We didnt keep much of that, but it was a jumping off point. Also, we were messing with the drum part, throwing random snare hits with the controller and open room drum samples built in Logic.
Alot of that experimentation caused us to get excited and have fun with the idea of a Synth Hip Hop horn section over a seventies style rhodes groove chord progression. Thinking it sounded like a Prince song and being perfectly fine going down that road. Taking turns playing things back and forth. Later on, as the song took shape, with verses and lyrics and chorus... Panic replayed my fake-synth guitar part with two different guitars — one super clean and one with more dirt and body. The clean sound was a little too smooth-jazz, but when combined with the Les Paul thru a dirty VOX practice amp created the right combo. He came up with some excellent melodic finger picking stuff over the instrumental bridge between the verse and the chorus. I did the super fuzzy guitars during the chorus, in 3 layers. With my limited guitar skills, i've become a connoisseur of the one-string solo. A clean Les Paul through a DI, straight into Logic with a stock distortion plugin cranked all the way up. Greg McIntosh came over and jammed out on the song... and we kept some of his verse strums, because of the texture his guitar amp created. Which sounded fantastic through his broken down Fender Twin. The tubes created a hiss, which provided some really great acoustical ambience. And then he played the funky guitar break at the end. Didnt do much with this song up north, besides the bass line with Keith. It started to sound a bit more polished with an even bass line. Originally I had recorded an Aria hollow body bass, which sounded really cool, but was totally inconsistent, out of time, and noisy. It had an MGMT bass sound with the hollow body, but just didnt work when all was done. It was pretty finished before we got up north. Lyrical ideas were based off a dragging out of the last word of every line... with a vibrato, slightly psych-ish. The song just kept getting parts and sections added to it. It was a vehicle for sonic experiments, and the best experiments stayed in the song. A ton of ideas didnt work. Essentially the styles we came up with in this song... plucky tones and fuzzy tones, vocals, collaborating in my basement— informed alot of the rest of the recordings on the album.
-Chad
STILLS
