52 Week Song Cycle #40
Mary (c) 2010 Mattroi Berger
***Listen to this song in stereo, please. Get your headphones out!***
This week I was inspired by a long talk with my pal - and Teen Girl Scientist Monthly bassist - Matt Gliva. He told me he’s creating a number of audio pieces each day by live recording the same melody line or riff over a number of takes, then stacking them atop one another. Being live takes, the ambient noise gets stacked as well (sirens, coughs, room tone), and he leaves in any “happy accidents” - or, as we call them in my neck of the woods, “fuck ups.” I haven’t heard the result yet, but the idea of the project got me thinking.
Stacking guitars has long been something I’ve wanted to try - to emulate the wall of sound on My Bloody Valentine’s Loveless, or cop the energy from the Sex Pistols’ Never Mind the Bullocks… - but I haven’t gotten around to it. I still plan on doing something in that vein soon, though this week I employed the technique a little closer to Gliva’s method.
I’ve been meaning to write something a bit spacier lately - there’s been a lot of riffage and noise on the cycle these last few weeks - so I took a little piece I’ve been working on and started “spacing” it out. I recorded the same guitar part five times and spread the takes across a full pan. Thinking of Gliva’s stacked ambient noise, I recorded with my window open and added in a compositional point where the music stops and I move my ancient, broken wooden chair to cause it to creak.
The thing that I kind of kick myself for is this - I wanted the track to sound “spacey,” but I really didn’t do my research. Usually, if I’m looking for a specific “sound,” I’ll listen to that sort of music throughout the week. For this piece, I just blindly tried to create a genre I hadn’t studied. It was sort of like putting together an Ikea dresser without reading the instructions. I’m glad it ended up its own thing, but I could have made my job easier.
After I finished my parts, Melissa came over and laid out some incredible harmonies. She’s such an amazing compositional instrument - I’d tell her, “let’s do some Bitte Orca shit here,” and she’d know immediately what sort of Dirty Projectors-esque sound I was looking for, then add it. I would just sit there and record her ideas, offering a note every once and again. I really think her additions make the song.
Mary is most definitely meant to be heard in stereo. I hard panned a lot of multi-layered effects to create a feeling of depth, and to try and conjure up a separate audio world for the listener. Also, simply listening to Melissa’s parts in mono doesn’t do them justice. I hope you’ll take my word for it and grab your cans. (That sounded dirty.)
Music and lyrics by Mattroi
Harmonies composed and recorded by Melissa Lusk
***
Mary, I came into a view of what I came to know as you.
Mary, I came to see a view of me: a sea so deep and new.
Barley a thing to do but wait the day to wake to wait with you
Faintly, I knew a shadow far across the sea was coming true.
I knew the shape of what I felt.
But I cannot remember well.
Mary, I can’t undo the things I said - my head was soft as glue.
At sea, I waited through the days to cool my head. I never knew.
