devilthearchitect

The Beatles are always a present influence. I remember hearing for the first time the second part of Abbey Road and being mind blown. That, together with A day in the life, really defined the sound that I've been trying to get and also what I have been looking for in other bands. Not exclusively of course, I have tons of artists that inspire me, but if I had to pick one, it would be The Beatles.

Why specifically 3:38? To me the question about size of the song depends a lot on the details. I find some small songs (Lorde's cover of Everybody wants to rule the world with 2:37 mins or The Beatles Words of Love (also a cover) with 2 mins) very enjoyable. Especially small instrumental songs, if they are very melodic, I think they can easily get away with being small (For the damaged coda by Blonde Redhead, 2:40 minutes or Bron-Yr-Aur by Led Zeppelin, 2 mins). However, me, for example, when I was starting to compose, I would often have a very nice intro or chorus, or chord progression of some kind, that sounded really nice, but that I wouldn't be able to expand. Then I would try to convince myself that it sounded more "artistic" being small and what not, but they ended up sounding better when I put the effort to expand them. I also experienced the opposite, wanting to have a longer songs just for the sake of it and just repeating parts and in the end settling with smaller versions. You can always ask your friends and family, being careful to chose people who actually enjoy the style you are trying to use. I have found that the time of the song is something that people will almost invariably point out, whether because they think it is too short or too long, and then you can decide what do you prefer. Edit: An example of a song people told us not to make bigger:

For me the hardest part is to re-record something until it is perfect. Because of time constraints I tend to record each instrument only a couple of times. Also, although I tend to jam with my band mate, I miss being able to have a whole band, because of that back and forth. The more you record alone the more the complex the task becomes, and the time you are able to spend with each part of the song (like a particularly hard bass or piano) becomes smaller.

It wasn't intentional since I haven't heard a lot of Elliot Smith, however I can understand what you're saying. I like Phil Elverum's work in the Microphones, he tends to be intentionally out of tune with light guitar, melodic but at the same time anti-melodic. I some times try to emulate that, but I always end up being a bit more melodic. Elliot Smith reminds me a bit of Phil, but less low-fi, hence it is natural I sound like him. That is my explanation at least. I take it as a compliment. The lack of drums itself had more to do with the fact that when I recorded the song I didn't have access to (or money for) drums/drummers, and I also think that the song doesn't absolutely need them. For other songs of the time I tried doing the drums with music programs, but the learning curve was too steep I so eventually gave up. Can you tell me which of the instrumental passages you find too long? Thank you for taking the time to hear my song.

Your song is very good. I like it, from the lyrics to the melody to each individual instrument. I would only try to desibilize it a bit. Thank you for sharing this. From my unfinished concept album I was also able to "save" some of the story into a multipart song (hell, I'll share it also: I would say that long "concept" songs might be a good middle ground between a concept album and a "normal" album, since I find that, like in my case, if you are not careful you tend to sacrifice musical quality. Of course when you can pull it off then it is awesome.

A while back I started working on a concept album about a boy who was abducted, then he was freed by a girlfriend of one of the kidnappers. A chase then happens, she is killed and then he comes back to kill the boss of the abductors in a Mexican standoff. Yeah, at the time I had just finished watching the dollars trilogy and once upon a time in the west. Anyway, eventually I got tired of the project because I found myself reducing the quality of the music in favor of the story, and the story wasn't really that good anyway. I took what I considered the best songs and just started to work on another album.