Tales From The City: How The Album Was Made 3

Welcome back! I'd like to thank everyone who wrote a comment or sent me an email. I'm glad everyone enjoys the blogs and the tastes of the new songs.

Today we'll go through the writing and recording process of the second song on the album: Mother.

The first time I started to work on "Mother" was while we were touring the United States in July 2007. I remember being in the van on the way to Columbus and listening to my iPod when suddenly I felt like listening to Bruce Springsteen. I went through "Born to Run" and a greatest hits collection. I'm not a big fan of Best Of collections but sometimes artists will put amazing songs that doesn't appear on their records such as "Streets of Philadelphia". It is a slow, mournful song about AIDS with great synthesizers and a drum machine. I listened to the song, again and again and then I had a bit of inspiration.

I connected my computer to my Pro Tools system (sound card to record music), took my keyboard and a drum machine to the back of the van and started working on a chord progression on top of a drum part similar to the one in "Streets of Philadelphia". The result was great, but very similar to Springsteen's song. I left the song like that for a few weeks, letting my subconscious work by itself. I named the demo "Fire In The Sky".

Back from the US tour I decided to spend some time at my place working on previous demos. With "Fire In The Sky" my first step was making some minor changes - such as moving the kick drum's hits elsewhere and instead of a single time hi-hat I made it double time. Just these two changes made a big difference and added a bit of groove to the song. I now had the keyboard chords (D-G) and a great drum beat, so I took the bass guitar and started playing with a different style. From Motown to simple eight notes. The whole vibe was very ambient so I decided to bring the bass into this big atmosphere direction. I added some chorus and echo/delay on the bass which is something you rarely do. I started playing with the echo... and the main bass riff was written in five minutes. It's a great bass line, perhaps our best yet. It has this great slow melody where it brings you into your thoughts and where you could listen to it for several minutes.

On the other hand, something was missing. As any record label would say... where's the chorus?

Choruses... freaking choruses. I shouldn't say that because I'm a big fan of choruses. Everybody is waiting for this moment. Nonetheless, I firmly believe that a verse or a bridge/middle eight should be as good as a chorus. In other words, everything in a song has to be interesting. No point in putting in sections that are just OK, right?

The chorus for this song was written on that exact same day... the only thing is that it didn't take me five minutes. I remember jamming with the bass guitar again and working on a chord progression. I had two effective classic chords that sounded great (Bm-G), but a third one was missing. I wrote down all the possible chords on paper and went through all of them when something weird but great appeared: the (C) chord. It reminded me something but I didn't know what at the time. It is unusual to use a (C) in that context, don't ask me why, I don't know anything about musical theory. But according to Frank, who studied music at Montreal University, you would usually use a (C#).

After several listens, I tried some vocal ideas when I found out what it reminded me of. A classic from Pink Floyd: Us & Them. Because I wanted to keep these great chords I tried the same strategy as for "Streets Of Philadelphia". Therefore, I modified the original drums for something a bit acrobatic and heavy. Poor Pierre, when he first heard it he was very pleased with what I did but when he started to play it for real he couldn't keep the timing and was very upset with himself. But Pierre is a hard headed person too and a great drummer. Technically there are crazy good drummers, but this guy has this feel and he hits hard, trust me. After many rehearsals Pierre got something great.

Watch a clip of Pierre and Dom performing the track in our studio.

As for the guitars, I used a simple approach since the bass and drums were the hooks. Instead of working on guitar hooks, I mainly focused on sounds. During the year I bought tons of gear from old classic fuzz boxes, old delays, new processors, filters and many more. Therefore, it was good time for me to push some buttons. Great sounds came out of this writing process. For instance, I was always a big fan of the song "Heroes" by David Bowie. During the whole song there's this guitar treatment, created by Brian Eno, where the guitar player only uses one note without any picking. It was created with a tape loop and slide guitar. Today you can recreate this effect with a small device called an Ebow sustainer. The combination of my playing with Frank's shimmer effect was simply great.

Listen to Frank and I performing on top of a beat box and the Springsteen keyboard I was referring to.

"Mother" was first recorded in New York City but we weren't pleased with the final result. Fortunately, great things happened there but we decided to rework the song in Montreal. I am more than happy with the final result. I personally think it's unique and it is a territory we've never explored before. Finally, Mat really achieved something great on this track. You see, it's easy to sing a song, if you have some talent, but it's an art to sing with passion and emotion and the singer sure did it during the whole recording but two thumbs up for this one.

Next blog, "Hit The Floor #7".

Regards,
Criq

---
Listen to a sample of "Mother"

---
If you are interested to listen to what influenced me for this song, download:
- Bruce Springsteen: Streets Of Philadelphia from Greatest Hits
- Daniel Lanois: I Love You from Shine
- Pink Floyd: Us & Them from Dark Side Of The Moon
- David Bowie: Heroes from Heroes

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