I don't expect anyone to listen to it in its 3/4 hour entirety as intended, but please check some of it out anyway... it may be a little outdated compared to where I'm at now (with my "dark/grunge" style) but it's still a very significant part of my life personally. I've actually waited almost a year and a half to put this album "out there" (in this case online) for anyone to hear other than myself (well, and two music college friends whom I gave demo CDs to)... I sort of think of it (musically) as what the album Comfort in Sound is to Feeder: one of my earliest inspired bands. It's probably a bit too ahead of my time for how young I was to be creating such "mature" music, but that's just the way my life's been... I wasn't exactly raised on "teenage" music, and discovering Feeder for myself was a revelation to me! I am quite proud of the fact this is all made and performed (exactly as you hear it) on keyboard - the instrument I began with before getting into real guitar territory.
Even though I originally planned to form a band to develop the songs and release it as a finished (debut) album, time seems to have lapsed itself and I think it'll most likely remain as it is now - a demo album (but who knows, I might come back to it)... songs like 'A New Day', 'Intervention', and 'Tinsel Town', however will not be forgotten about if I can help it. I think those are my highlights from this personal era and I hope to get them developed, performed and recorded properly in a band sometime... eventually... whenever that happens. Though I wouldn't count on it, with my forever changing mind. And to think 'Tinsel Town' was done on a keyboard, eh? Almost sounds like a real acoustic guitar song, doesn't it! That would be due to my careful "guitar" instrument patching right there; dual two different MIDI guitar sounds together, tweak 'em, save it as a preset, and bob's your uncle!
Go on then, 'Believe' explained track by track...
Bring Myself Together - a song about when things aren't going as planned and maybe you should just move on and try something else. I wrote this song back in Q4 2005, when I was only 15. To be honest, I didn't even really think too much about what I was saying, I had the music layed down on my keyboard and the lyrics came after so seamlessly as if the song just wrote itself... now, I'm rather amazed how three and a half years later, the lyrics genuinely did mean something to me! - Before having dreams to be in a successful band, I actually studied at college to be an electrical engineer and failed my interview on two separate occasions to get an apprenticeship at Plymouth's dockyard. Then I tried joining the RAF and, too, failed the interview so I - after another year at college, this time studying a public services course - just thought fuck this, I want to follow my passion and go into music instead! It's like this ol' song was telling me: "music is the path you need to take!"
Intervention - a sort of "wake-up" in contrast to the album opener with intro verse, "come on pull yourself together, it's like an uphill battle - gotta stay on top, no chance for stormy weather, although it's coming down like a lightning bolt, seeing is believing - and that is why you should not blink or fall, in case you miss the action - the very pinnacle of the call". This version I recorded has no lyrics unfortunately, since I actually wrote them after being thrown out the house, thus being without my keyboard to re-record. I know, burn. But when I playback this recording, I sing the lyrics in my head and all sounds good. A potential single?So Refined - the "guitar" melody is the main part of this song as the lyrics are very unfinished/experimental. Not sure where to go with this one as it is to be honest... though I did think it could represent the more darker times of growing up in the city of Plymouth... chavs, et al. This song could represent my upbringing/youth?
A New Day - this is the song I had eventually wanted to become known for. It's something that I started almost four years ago, when I was 15. Only I wrote a chorus, worked on the structure, and recorded it using my MP3 player about two years later; oh and also recorded that "finger-drumming" section you hear in the 2nd chorus. I've also wrote an opening verse since recording this version which pretty much sets up the whole song with, "a new day has dawned and I'm feelin', feelin' the vibe, escape on a ride, to someplace somewhere you can (free/be) yourself". I aim for this song to represent freedom and be uplifting. Personally, I've always had a "summer/surf" theme in my head for this song, but, as with all songs, it's up to you how you interpret it.World Goes by - the chorus lyrics are temporarily borrowed from the Feeder b-side, 'Slowburn'. Not much else to say on this one... I guess it's about looking out your window and seeing life "pass by".
Staring at the Sky - personally, I thought this was the best demo I ever did when I first came up with it. The melody of the chorus just wrote itself, as when I was first creating the verses, my hands literally just jumped to these keys on my keyboard almost automatically - and I actually made the chorus on first play as you hear it. I loved having those "nice surprise" moments! Guess they came from the heart, heh... I wrote the lyrics after the music, and it's intended to be relaxing and poetic. Looking back now, I think this is actually one of my weakest tracks from Believe. I tried making the lyrics too perfect I think and they don't do a great job of being very original to me. Still, it's all a valuable learning process!
Tinsel Town - one of the more important songs I started writing. It represents my home life and me to a tee. Shame about the beginning "cut-off" in the recording; that would be due to my 'Sansa Clip' MP3 player having a sporadic moment; wasn't always reliable that old thing...
Crossing Oceans - sometimes I thought this was my best, other times I just didn't think it represented me and shouldn't be included on Believe. Looking back on it now, this could've actually become quite huge with a bit of work I think; like a stadium ballad rocker... "get your lighters out" style. Ahead of my time, and another proud moment for my then 17yr old self. I shouldn't be capable of this... on a keyboard... coming from my non-musical family. Yet I did! Another potential single?Time is Up - dark song but with a shred of hope - what I like to call "uplifting-melancholy". The bridge is something I'm particularly proud of. I actually had to push the fx button live on my keyboard (and is actually audible in this recording) to get that flanger sound in the bridge. Nothing pre-recorded here!
Believe - and finally finishing on the song of the same album name. *"The chances you take, the choices you make - believe in yourself", it's the answer to the song before it 'Time is Up', with some mighty inspiring feel intended. It's like saying in contrast, "no, your time is not up, you just gotta believe in yourself...!" This was actually the second "proper" song I created after 'Bring Myself Together', and was wrote during the summer holidays after my stressful (and rather pointless I think) school GCSE exams, before I were to then enrol on a college course in which I studied the drab "manufacture engineering" for a year...
This college course was with persuasion from my mother by the way, not my original suggestion. I'd quite liked to have went down the music education route sooner, but no - being in a band "only happens to the lucky ones" according to my mother. Right, and I'm not "lucky"? What's that supposed to mean?! Granted she never even knew of this demo album I'd been humbly working on in my room, and still doesn't even know of it to this day I don't think, being two years later... I think most mothers would've been proud of their son to have achieved something like this - especially having since recently been leaving my "father-influenced" dance/trance music days behind me at the time. Ya know, I did this ALL out of MY own will; no enticement or encouragement; all the while my eldest sibling: my sister (less than a year younger than I), would be in her room blaring out her typical Rihanna and what-not. There was some head-scratchingly, God-awful taste in music going on there as far as I was concerned, and, compared to Rihanna, some of those "tunes" blaring out of that room were so bad, they actually made her seem extra-talented! I had to use my recently discovered 'Feeder' to set some sort of balance, to give me some sanity! You wouldn't think I was from the family that I am, I tell ya... think I was secretly adopted or something!
(*I actually got 'take' and 'make' mixed up in this recording, just ignore that. It's a pretty rough demo anyway.)
Closing thoughts...
This, what it was - a "potential" album - genuinely has helped me in a personal way. Two years for nothing was the result of me studying at college to be an electrical engineer in the dockyard and then doing a public services course to join the RAF. After failing the job interviews which would've seen me as "just another spanner-wielding bloke" for a possible career, this collection of recordings that I did made me realise who I WAS - and that music all along is the path I NEED to take. Wish me well, good people who took your time to read this... I hope you give my demo album a listen, or if you already are then I hope you're enjoying it for what it is.
Also, bare in mind my VERY limited musical influences at the time of pretty much just Feeder and their 'The Singles' release and still being very new to the "old-skool" Feeder stuff, and Yellowcard's 'Ocean Avenue', being as far as my alternative rock music experience went. You could say I was like a cave-man when it came to guitar music - which is rather unfortunate really! Why hadn't I discovered real music earlier, dammit! Oh yeah: my upbringing... still, I'm just fortunate enough to have gotten myself into the bands I now surround myself in. These bands now mostly being Smashing Pumpkins, and Soundgarden. I'm now realising just who I am and what I have to do...
posted 01/07/10 (edited 28/11/10)
