This week is really testing my limits.
I woke up and had class for 2 hours, then I met a friend visiting from overseas. Then two more classes, then I went to a concert with another friend from overseas and left early to practice for a show tomorrow.
Every day this week has been that jam packed.
I wish we had some more time to practice but my body is spent so I’m only using my mind a few more minutes before sinking off into sleep.
Yesterday I started featuring songs from my live album in order to give it one last push before we start releasing songs from the studio album we’ve been working on.
Yesterday I talked a lot about jamming and the song The Dig. Today is about a song that has had many incarnations.
Speaking Leaves
This song started out as a gentle and slow paced acoustic song, a tad bit mysterious and gentle. Then somehow it became this prog rock version I recorded live. I think it has retained it’s mystery to the current day but this version is a bit more rock than how it ended up on the album.
As a kid I went though a phase where I listened to a lot of Mars Volta and Yes and Porcupine Tree King Crimson and A Perfect Circle.
If you don’t know what prog rock is, think of a rock opus, telling a story like a movie, arranged almost like orchestral music, with ups and downs and different acts. One of my favorite prog rock songs and a good entry point, “Close to the Edge” by Yes is something like a 26 minute song. If you want a more modern take on prog I recommend the album “Frances the Mute” by Mars Volta.
If you heard TOOL before, they are sometimes called prog-metal and their songs are a bit more monotone version of what most prog sounds like. Queen and Led Zepplin also lie at the borders of this genre, so imagine everything between TOOL and Queen.
Anyway I had no idea just how influenced I had been by prog rock until I picked up an electric guitar and added some distortion. Turns out I was VERY influenced by the bands I listed above and the influence is completely subconscious. I only recognized it was there when I listened back to the recordings of this live version of Speaking Leaves a few times.
But prog rock introduced me to many concepts. Albums that listen like books or movies, not just a collection of isolated songs. Concept albums. It made interludes and long songs with many acts normal to me. It made blending of genres without any adherence to genre or instrument normal to me.
I may have never learned to like experimental music, art pop, indie rock or folk as much if I hadn’t been exposed to prog rock. I think I would have gone on listening to punk and alternative rock forever.
This specific version of Speaking Leaves is probably the most Prog Rock thing I’ve done to date although the whole live album is pretty prog rocky, at least as rock as a solo guitarist/singer can be. Progressive folk might be a better term, though I usually call it “psychedelic folk” because I love delay and delay screams psychedelia.
The album version of this song will be a bit gentler, but not quite as gentle as the original acoustic version (which there may be a studio version of in the future, why not have multiple versions of the song?).
The studio version has 8 layers of vocals, 3 guitars and a strong bass line. It probably fits that “psychedelic folk” label more than the “prog rock” vibe of the live album versio. I honestly can’t think of anyone it sounds like but when I had to write which artists it’s similar to when I submitted it, I wrote Radiohead, Cosmo Sheldrake and OOIOO because I think it sits somewhere between the three very different artists.
It’s more pop and positive than Radiohead, More melodic than OOIOO and more lo-fi than Cosmo but it has a blend of experimental, rock, pop and folk that aren’t too far off.
The song is meant as a clean slate, leave your thoughts at the door and step into the world of emotion.
The studio album is set to release in the next 2 weeks. I’ll announce it when it comes out but if you want a reminder, let me know.
Also, I’ve mentioned that I will buy $5 of Hive for every person who scrobbles my songs or writes a “quick take” about it on scrobble.life. So go sign in and leave a comment over at scrobble and you’ll get a big fat upvote from me as well if you leave a real comment:
https://scrobble.life/music?v=0JEIElgvt98
Hive I’m supposed to buy : $55 (may have bought more than that already…)
And if you want to listen to this album on streaming you can find it anywhere by typing the album name “Resonance Experiments 1-2”. Links to Spotify Apple and YouTube here:
