7s7d: D3
“A Devil Unknown”
Prompt: the devil you know
Submission of Member: Charlie D
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OMG this took so long. When I got up I was looking down the barrel of a lot of things I was trying to get done today (the two big ones being (1) get this day three song written/recorded and uploaded/posted, (2) get prepped enough to feel confident about disney night sounding good tonight on twitch, and, if possible (3) record and upload/post the Days 1+2 tracks and possibly track the August song for which I still owe you a better recording. In order to accomplish this, the big primary focus was to JUST stick to the schedule and tie up what I could where I was whenever possible.
Like yesterday, the original intent for today (from my last-week's weekly review looking forward to how the hell I was going to do all this this week) was to get up super early to write and track today's song, but I woke up a little late and felt a little sluggish getting going today. I almost had one of those "whatever, I'll just do stuff when I feel like it" days but I'm SO glad I opened my planner first-thing and actually thought the day through because I would have been even more frustrated than I already am.
Looking at the hard landscape of the day was enough to really kick me in gear, and I got off to a good start... I was about a half an hour behind the second draft of my schedule when I started writing the song (a little before noon), and the song took a little longer to write than I was hoping, but that just happens and is part of the process, but it dug into the time I had allotted to chart it out. Ok, no big deal. By the time I got to the point where I could chart the song I was a little more behind, maybe by an hour, but THEN... ugh... THE CHART TOOK ALMOST THREE HOURS to make! To be fair, I was juggling swapping laundry loads, taking care of the dogs, and some other administrative stuff like quick text and email exchanges (because: THREE HOURS), but nothing significant.
Pivoting back to the song itself for a moment: I had Halloween in my heart and on my mind today and was hoping that a prompt would inspire me to put together a Halloween song for this year (try to get at least one annually). I was struggling to come up with a concept for a while, but liked the idea of: what we know about to actually exist in our reality/realm-of-possibility-within-our-own-daily-lives is so much scarier than anything "paranormal." I mused philosophically to myself for a bit about how what's unknown to us is what's actually scariest, and that is perhaps why culturally we sorta love things these things that are ideologically frightening even if we haven't personally experienced or perceived them (like ghosts, say). From St. Elmo's Fire to the "magic" of witches persecuted during the Salem Witch Trials, there are almost always some scientific explanations (or hypotheses at least) for things that either stoked fear or inspiration, forging the folklore and beliefs of our ancestors, yet the questions and terror regarding what's unknown to us persists.
Since the Frankenstein audio book that I recorded for you and released here back in 2018, with this accompanying song, The Daemon's Lament, I've also been fond of the ambition of writing a song that aligns with that year's Halloween audio book offering. My second gift should have been "Sleepy Hollow" last year, but I just couldn't manage it in time. So although there's already a Sleepy Hollow song from last year (Don't Turn Around), in my struggling to grasp onto a plot thread I could use around the prompt's and then this concept's supports, I thought about possibly why the Sleepy Hollow story is so fascinating and has persisted as a halloween staple throughout our American culture all these years... Personally my favorite "horror" or thriller films/stories are those that blur the lines between what might be reality and what might be supernatural, or fantasy, and Sleepy Hollow accomplishes just that. Is Ichabod actually pursued by a ghostly headless horseman ghost simply seeking any head to replace his lost one? Or is it a prank put upon him by his rival? Whatever the truth, he was allegedly never seen or heard from again...
Back to the chartmaking: If you happened to read my note yesterday you can probably guess why this was so long and cumbersome. Just adjusting this and that, figuring out what changes and intros/outros, etc and fine-tuning some lyrics. I originally wrote the song in Bb minor so I also needed to transpose it - I wish I had moved it down just a touch lower to give it a spookier vibe, BUT Alone at Midnight is pretty similar and the chart says I play that in G, so perhaps it's for the best. It's getting more difficult for me now as the years go on to try to craft something not too like the former Halloween songs and I'm beginning to exhaust my options. I decided to make this swingy - but it couldn't be too fast, or it would be too similar to Shadowside Soiree. It might have been nice to make it a little slower, and strum the chords, but then it would be in danger of being too-like the other Sleepy Hollow song, Don't Turn Around. Certain intros and outros were now not available, since I used the fancier ones that would have been appropriate for Alone at Midnight already. I think likely the next attempt will have to be a slower ballad in the likeness of The House is Haunted (by the echo of your last goodbye) and Tell Me More and More and Then Some, or even the Nina Simone version of I Put a Spell on You.
I really ought to have put off recording this until after the stream tonight, because I really needed to spend some time working on sound for tonight's Twitch stream (Disney Night), but the thought of having to do that at 10 o'clock at night when I would be so exhausted was too depressing so I figured I'd just try my best to do both.
So here we are. I struggled to get the recording sound dialed in today for some reason, despite having pretty good success with the last thing I worked on a couple weeks ago. Unfortunately there was a lot of click bleed, but I just didn't have the time to retrack the guitar, so this’ll have to do for now!
Hope you enjoy, and hope to see some of you tonight for Disney Day at Twitch (9PM ET)
Thank you so much for your support!
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