Blog: SONG SUITE

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It was a very a) busy b) lovely weekend full of seeing pals, drinking the beer, and generally getting stuff ready for CHRISTMAS and BEYOND. Part of the latter has seen me listening through to the album penultimixes in order to complete The Spreadsheet Of FINALITY. This is the list of final jobs to be done for mixing, mastering and, MOST importantly, THE GAPS.

This is SUCH an important part of Making A Record that I'm continually astonished by the lack of attention it gets. SO many albums, especially in these days of iTunes And All That, seem to just stick the bog standard 2 seconds between each track, which in my view is both LAZY and IGNORANT. The length of time between tracks MATTERS - sometimes you want the next song to come STORMING IN straight away, sometimes you need a lengthy gap to let the previous song fade out of your MIND before starting again. I tell you, it's VITAL!

Listening through to the songs with this in mind also led me to a SHUDDERING REVELATION. We've pretty much got the running order sorted out, and I couldn't help noticing that the first half has a lot more "bits" in it than the second - "bits" being the OFFICIAL TECHNICAL TERM for samples, overdubs, weird noises and, well, BITS that we've put onto the basic songs to make it all THAT LITTLE BIT more exciting. While thinking about this I had the aforesaid SHUDDERING REVELATION, as follows:

I've already asked for a SEGUE from My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once into It Only Works Because You're Here, using a lot MORE of the telephone you can here on the single version. The idea is that we go from me working in an office directly into a song ABOUT something that happens in that same office, ending with the main site IT Guy running off "in a flood of tears". When I play this song live people often look SAD at this bit, and I've often considered writing a song to explain to them what happens to him next, and so on Sunday i WROTE it. It's just a TINY little bit which i thought we could stick onto the end, and as i considerd this the SHUDDERING REVELATION of which we have spoken occurred.

The next song is One Of The Walls Of My House Fell in which is about - OH MY WORD - someone being really depressed because they've been CHUCKED! HOLY MOLEY! IT'S A SONG SUITE!! I will thus requesting from Producer Pattison a PROPER FULL ON SEGUE between THESE two songs as well, then possibly having "IT Guy: Addendum" at the end of One Of The Walls Of My House Fell in, just to finish OFF the story! It's like JEFF WAYNE'S WAR OF THE WORLDS! SORT OF!

As you can probably tell I am quite pleased with this idea because, as well as being SIMPLY GRATE, it also makes "Side Two" into a THING all of its own, thus negating the need for more "bits". Some people might say it's makes the album the equivalent of "Abbey Road" ONLY BETTER but I, of course, could not be drawn to make such comments. Not without the addition of PINTS, anyway.

posted 22/12/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Just come clean and admit you're doing a concept album!
posted 22/12/2008 by Pete Green

It is - and the concept is ROCK!
posted 23/12/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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