Half-handed Cloud Learning About Your Scale Week WEDNESDAY: “Scale” LP – Day #3 – Writing/Recording “Let’s Build A Planet” and “Rewire My Desire,” with their vaguely science fiction themes, were among the very earliest Half-handed Cloud songs. They were originally written for Wookieback, which was probably my main band project before Half-handed Cloud. “Cant Even Breathe on My Own Two Feet” was first written by my friend Matthew Vollmer as a Wookieback demo about the world’s worst super villain. I changed it a bit, added some lyrics and new arrangements. Its working title on the tape reel was “I’m So Bad” (see fig. 4, Half-h Reel Box #1). Chad from local band Blanket played that awesome French horn part on it (see fig. 5, Chad & French Horn). Matthew also helped me supply the voice of burned stew during the “Sooty Insides” song cycle. On the “Sooty Insides” 5-part song, two female voices exclaim, “Oh Heavens!” right before Matthew’s stew vocal comes in. According to the second Half-handed Cloud tape reel (see fig. 6, Half-h Reel Box #2), I recorded these same two female friends giving some sort of public service announcement about the benefits of breast feeding. Also on that second reel: most of Half-handed Cloud’s “I’m So Sheepy” EP, recorded in the spring of 2000. Listen for the apple in “Eating Bad-Bad Fruit.” The middle part of “Make Me All Petered-Out” features a brief tuba solo by an acquaintance of mine named Eric Smith (see fig. 7, Eric & Tuba). The original plan was to have his girlfriend tap dance in the bathtub during the same section, but I never ended up getting to have her over to do the part. The low bass-drum sound in “We Must Be Ploughed-Up” was achieved by striking a large rubber garbage bin, rolled into the kitchen off the street. The song “Secret Christ Costume” was inspired by a section in C.S. Lewis’ “Mere Christianity.” Here’s a cartoon from my composition notebook (see fig. 8, Notebook Cartoon) that illustrates it. When listening to the beginning of “So Busted Before Your Righteous Throne” you may think that it’s comprised of multiple kazoos. It’s just distorted humming—surprise! Brandon Buckner and I tracked the basic parts for “The Body Binds Us” live at his house. He runs a saw blade, recorded on the porch, found at 0:28. I used to wear a pair of blue KangaROOS tennis shoes when I was in the 4th Grade in North Carolina, and kept a house key to the duplex we lived in one of the shoes’ side pockets, and a quarter in the other, in case I needed to make an emergency pay phone call to my mom. The song “Holy Pouch Shoe Guidance” reimagines these shoe pockets as places from which the heart of God can grow and guide. Brandon’s brother Eric Buckner does a mean beatbox on the song (and supplies brush/rod drumming elsewhere on the album). During the last section of “Three to Guide Us Where Weve Never Been,” you can hear a scratchy/swipey sound—I was rubbing the guitar against my microphone. I still have this mic, and it doesn’t have paint on the place where I rubbed the guitar against it that day. Battle wound. The basic track for “Serpent Head Crushed” was recorded live at my house with Brandon drumming in the kitchen (see fig. 9, Kitchen Recording) as I was playing some kind of banjo that was tuned like a guitar that I borrowed from a former dean of mine. Part of the drums were recorded simultaneously through a toy radio microphone, taped to the overhead mic stand, and fed into the 8-track via boombox (you can hear the radio microphone drums between 0:43 and 1:01, in the right ear). The lyrics for this song date from early 1995, when I was teaching 3rd Grade at a mission school on the Micronesian island of Pohnpei. The beginning of “Worlds in Speech, Now in Reach” has a rhythm made with sponges. The final song on the album, “To Love Like the Father and Son Love Each Other,” features the most guest spots from other musicians. The piano was recorded in my friend David Achata’s basement on a hot day (you can hear the air-conditioning on the right ear piano), and Brandon drums again (overdubbed later). Then there’s cello by another friend, Mindy (who played more on the second Half-h album, “Loved”), and Jim Tate (see Fig. 10, Jim) on upright bass, one third of the band Title One (along with Brandon and Eric Buckner). At the end, I’d invited a group of friends over to the house for a chips and salsa party in order to stomp and clap and sing call-and-response vocals in the kitchen. The “Willis what’chu talking’ ‘bout” lyric was inspired by my involvement in another Chattanooga band, The Regal Beagles, with Eric & Brandon Buckner. We sang about ‘70s and ‘80s TV shows. Check out the 8-track recorder track plot for “To Love Like the Father and Son Love Each Other.” (Fig. 11). Not sure if I can answer them, but does anybody have some “Learning About Your Scale” song questions? half-handedcloud.bandcamp/album/learning-about-your-scale
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 14:00:01 +0000