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Every song, given its words and melody style, has a tempo at which it works best. You can feel if it’s too fast for its integrity, or too slow and it drags. And there’s always the exact right key for any performer’s voice. It can be a matter of a half-step higher or lower for the song to come alive for any particular singer. Beginning guitar players often get stuck singing in a key they are comfortable playing the guitar in, instead of a key that’s exactly right for their particular vocal cords. Finding this key for a song, and an appropriate tempo, could take five minutes--or it could take a month.
I think we usually need a short length of time to get prepared to listen to a song. The introduction of a song provides that time, sets the mood, and therefore can be a crucial element to the success of any arrangement. In the old days, when hit singles ruled the music business, they used to say that the first ten seconds of a song were the most crucial--that in the context of all else in a person’s life, if you didn’t catch their imagination within that time, you’d have lost them. And although most of the songs done on albums these days are not for a hit-single market, the principle of saying “hello” to the human consciousness still holds. (There are exceptions,of course, in which a song is most effective when begun with the surprise of no introduction.)
Any song is an adventure. The intro begins it, just as a story begins with “Once upon a time....” If the intro is too short, the song starts before the listener is ready; if it's too long, or overwritten, a listener’s mind wanders and loses interest before the song begins. As a performer gets to know a song and sings it over and over, a sense of how to begin it can evolve. The style of the intro will depend on the song, and at best, it will draw you in, catch your attention in a compelling way.
Note: Please use your "Back" button to return to this page after listening to each music file.
“Jay Gould’s Daughter” intro: 132 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Child, Child” intro: 170 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Banana Boat Song” intro: 238 KB QuickTime 4 file
As the song moves along, there comes a point where enough has been said and a musical idea is needed that deepens the adventure and sets the song up for completion, or payoff. And again, the style of the song and its story or quest can imply what sort of rest, expansion, or perk the break should deliver.
“Jay Gould’s Daughter” instrumental break: 351 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Child, Child” instrumental break: 266 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Banana Boat Song” instrumental break: 226 KB QuickTime 4 file
The ending of a song has a different function from that of the intro, needless to say, but it’s not just an ending. The ending allows the feelings and totality of what went before to be integrated, finalized, let go, and allows closure to be experienced. The best endings, in my mind, are dictated by the nature of the song’s entire humanity. Some songs can be left up in the air for the completion to happen in the soul of the listener, or can be left incomplete in order to stress irony or a sense of the unanswered. “Jay Gould’s Daughter,” a railroad song with a lot of narrative images, needed five solid strums at the end. I don’t think I've ever before strummed five times at the end of a song! But that’s what the song needed, as I heard it. Whereas, for "Child, Child," the theme of the intro, also used for the instrumental break, seemed like the appropriate ending, but with a long, slow, ascending solo line, leading to one last single note with no strummed chord. And "The Banana Boat Song” suggested a book-end approach, coming back to where it began, with “Hill-and-gully rider, hill-and-gully.”
“Jay Gould’s Daughter” ending: 272 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Child, Child” ending: 401 KB QuickTime 4 file
“Banana Boat Song” ending: 273 KB QuickTime 4 file
Throughout the history of the recording industry, it seems, engineers have always tried to make recordings that sounded as much like live performances as possible. One of the fundamental problems with this is that the extraordinary synergy that takes place between audience and performer is always missing in a studio. As well, when you can’t see the performer and understand their intentions through body language and facial expression, a lot of what the performer may have in body and soul won’t be there. The words we speak amount to only 10% of communication, they say -- the rest is body language and the style of presence we discern in a person. To make up for the distance that the recording process imposes, and to bring to it what can’t be told visually, one has the option of singing additional parts, overdubbing the melody again, as well as adding harmonies, or doubling the guitar parts, all of which I did in the process of recording the “Child, Child” CD. The technique of overdubbing can stress the importance of a line that a tiny facial expression or movement of the eyes would impart in a live performance. As I listened to playbacks of solo voice tracks, I would “hear” implications and presuppositions that certain phrases suggested, and the process of figuring out what added parts would fulfill those feelings was one of the most exciting parts of the process. On two songs I added banjo because I thought that sound represented an echo of where those songs were born.
The canvas, so to speak -- the context of the recording studio -- comes into play for its own sake, as well, and one’s mind is opened to a level of composition that can’t be achieved in any other way. I can’t sing with myself in a live performance, obviously, but to be able to do that reaches places in the heart that could not be reached otherwise.
But, the intro, the instrumental, and the ending of a song can hold it up to the light, like the setting for a precious stone. These elements can amount to the manner and way in which you love the song.
"Banana Boat Song" Intro/Instrumental/Chorus/Ending: 841 KB QuickTime 4 file
Copyright © 2006, Erik Darling. All rights reserved.