Processes

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Processes

Existing Processes

prior to pylon, I almost exclusively wrote on acoustic guitar and do not involve much more than nature and life occurences for lyrical inspiration. I always write and record in my bedroom and often the songs I end up with are the result of experimenting within a tuning rather than going forward with a clear idea of song structure or melody; the songs often just make themselves, and not in a way that is reminiscient of the flow studies discussed elsewhere on the blog. I find that this method is only as fulfilling as the sporadic quality of the end song, often these sessions result in half baked and unfinished progressions that will be forgotten about or unused later on. As it stands, I do not sit down and decide to spend an afternoon writing a song, rather I wait until inspiration strikes, which is about as reliable as it sounds. 

Another example of an existing process is writing and practicing in complete solitude. Music has never been something I routinely share with others and has always been a craft that I hone on my own, which is benefitial in the sense that I by now understand exactly what I want out of my music, however it also means that my skillset is quite limited and my musical imagination is equally as stunted; I can only create as much as I can imagine without relying on others to inspire or suggest ideas.

Diversifying Equipment

for pylon, I focused on writing with electric equipment in mind - writing on acoustic is the standard for how I compose and figure melodies and harmonies out but a lot of the sound I wanted to achieve with pylon focuses very intently on the interactions between the equipment i.e feedback and pick scraping. These aspects of sound require typically loud and distorted guitars, so if I were writing on acoustic I would struggle to compose with the electric sounds in mind without hearing them while playing. So the first new process I adopted for this project was to write on electric equipment and understand the dynamics while I was writing and compose to let these aspects of the sound shine through.

Changing the Order of Events

the second process I engaged with was writing instrumental parts first and have the lyrics be written around the structured instrumental track. This process came to mind because bands like Pavement are more intent on having experimentation spliced with catchy vocal rhythms and melodies, which is a dynamic that is much easier to accomplish when I can write with the syllables and chord tones laid out in front of me. This affected my writing with every song quite heavily, namely Penny Is a Bad Pick; I would've never really considered having a mostly instrumental chorus with vocals closer to ad-libs than a melodic hook. As it turns out, the chorus of Penny is a favourite among the people who are involved with the project, so the process impacted the output in a positive way.

Overdubs and Layering

The third new creative process I added to my routine was the process of overdubbing and accomodating for the ability to have layered instrumental parts. Since I'm so used to writing on acoustic guitar without keeping accompaniment in mind, it was most definitely a learning curve to get used to writing instrumental parts that felt significantly less dense than what i would usually write. Each track makes use of a "rhythm" and a "lead" guitar, a completely foreign concept with regards to my writing style: If I were to continue writing my guitar parts how i usually would, the songs would all be overly complicated and totally melodically illegible. This panned out into meaning most of the songs contain one guitar part which keeps a consistent harmonic idea moving forward throughout and the other guitar more closely resembles a "lead" part, however there are a couple instances (Away, Out) where the guitars play similar rhythmic parts but the overdubbed tracks have effects layered on and improvised lines between the chord changes, creating movement whilst keeping complexity as low as possible so the song can keep it's calm and straightforward structure. overall, I think the process of multi-track recording helped improve my writing by supplying me with a deeper understanding of dynamics and how selective sparsity can help bolster a composition.

Literature and Conscious Reading

For lyrical considerations, I took to taking inspiration from literature a lot more for this EP than past projects. My writing has always taken heavily from the personally involved style of emo and post-hardcore lyrical content, which I've become disenfranchised with as the years have passed. After reading an interview with Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus from 2014 where he highlights how he prefers to create narratives more dependent on visual imagery with his lyrics as opposed to writing a song that reads like a confession or completely revelling in vulnerability (Malkmus, S. 2014), I decided that for this EP i was going to take inspiration from this approach and focus my lyrical efforts on narratives that are more colourful and striking rather than crafting a lyrical scene which I could easily insert my own experiences into To make an effort to combat this and remove direct references to myself in the songs, I spent my spare time consuming other art forms and adapting to the storytelling ideas contained within these mediums; I found that watching film and reading books in a much more involved way than I previously have done allowed my ability to create independent stories to prosper - Seer Sated depicts a tale of a governor eloping with a woman from Las Vegas, Branca is an homage to the No-Wave scene of 1970s New York with references to musicians and filmmakers of that era, Penny Is a Bad Pick details the inherent embarrassment involved with intimate relationships and Away, Out deals with different examples of vices and the ways in which their comfort controls oneself. These songs are all subtly injected with my own anecdotes and experiences as is customary of any lyricist, however they centre themselves around very distinct themes and stories which I do not inhabit. The particular books and films I drew inspiration from are listed in the Influences page of the portfolio.

Group Work and Band Dynamics

The final and most glaring new process involved with pylon would be the involvement of a full band dynamic, primarily percussion. involving the skillsets of other members and the personal techniques they bring to the table altered my writing quite heavily as I was no longer accommodating for just my abilities on any given instrument; Sid approached the drumming for each song very distinctly to how I would have, which initially worried me that it wouldn't come out sounding like I had hoped but in the end Sid's contributions bolstered the dynamics of each track in a way I would never have been able to think of on my own, thus making the process incredibly valuable to the quality of each track and the playability of the EP as a whole. As for the bass, while I did end up playing for all of the recordings due to scheduling issues, Red helped me during the writing process as I have a bad habit of approaching bass writing the same way I'd a approach the guitar, which as mentioned in the third process section, winds up sounding incredibly maximalist and would not have suited the genre that pylon operates under. Overall, I'd say the band aspect impacted my songwriting the most out of all of the process and I really look forward to continuing working with the band as I find working with other musicians a very unique joy and the end product, in this case, extremely personally rewarding.