All I Ever Hear

This is a song I wrote about eight years ago, and have been playing around with ever since, never quite figuring out how it should sound. I recorded an earlier incarnation of the song - much, much longer and with quite different lyrics - in a friend's home studio (this was before GB) shortly after I wrote it. It had multiple tracks, soaring harmonies and I think there were even some bells. Anyway, it wasn't what I wanted it to be. I attempted another version a couple of years ago filled with distorted guitars and thumping drums, and a few synth sounds thrown in for good measure. That didn't work either.

So I pick up the guitar and play it every now and then, trying to imagine how it would sound as a kind of salsa thing, or wondering if perhaps it should be a reggae song. I pick it out on the acoustic, sing it, and wonder how I can lengthen it, since it's only about 2 minutes long following some rather drastic cutting I did in the lyrical department after the bombast of the first recording attempt. And sometimes I wonder whether I should just scrap it, and chalk it up to experience.

Now, at the moment I'm working on another song with a lot of tracks, and a lot of different parts. It's a simple song - one of those "straight ahead vibes", as an old friend of mine would say - but, for me at least, sometimes it's hard to make something simple sound, well, simple! I think at the moment I have about 28 or 29 tracks, and I'm spending a lot of time I don't really have trying to make it come out right. The song is in there somewhere, and I'm not giving up until I dig it out. But of course this gets tiring, and sometimes dispiriting. Songwriting and recording for me is a very erratic, unpredictable process. Sometimes they fall into your lap; sometimes you have to hack them out of the mountainside. And when I'm working on a song like this, I often end up shutting the program down, putting the guitar back on the stand and slinking away, disheartened, thinking maybe I should stop kidding myself and go read a book or something.

And sometimes I pick up the guitar and just play a different song.

Today I started noodling around with All I Ever Hear, and as I played it, I started wondering again, as I usually do when I play this song, if perhaps I should try to write another verse, and maybe a middle eight, and try to massage it into a standard song shape. I was thinking of the other song I'm working on, which has a fairly standard shape. And then I thought - why? Compared to the complex, multi-layered track I've been working on, All I Ever Hear suddenly seemed refreshing in its bare bones simplicity.

So I recorded it, for the umpteenth time.

But this time I left out the bells, the distorted guitars, and the harmonies. There are no thumping drums, no maracas, and I even left out the bass. There is no third verse, no middle eight, and instead of 28 or 29 tracks, it has 4 - two guitar tracks, and one vocal track doubled, culled from 3 vocal tracks I recorded and 4 guitar tracks. It clocks in at about 2:16. Basically, I recorded it the way I play it.

It's short, it's bittersweet, and it kind of stops before it gets going. But I guess I kind of like it that way, and maybe there's nothing else there to be "found". Lyrically, at least, it says all it needs to say (I won't bore you with the details, but hands up anyone who's jumped into a rebound relationship and then realized you have absolutely nothing in common with the other person, beyond an interest in horizontal folk-dancing...nobody? Really? Just me then, I guess. Ahem...) and musically, this is the core of the song; everything else is just window-dressing. If it sounds crap like this, then it'll sound crap with 25 tracks laid on top of it - it'll just be louder, longer, and possibly more annoying.

So that's the story. Hope the bare naked vocal and repetitive guitar doesn't grate. And if you think I'm wrong, and that this would benefit from some more instrumentation, or even rearrangement or lengthening, please let me know, or if you feel so inclined, feel free to have a go yourself.

Peace.

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All I Ever Hear

I don’t know how you’re broken-hearted
I don’t know why you’d want to wish upon a star
This ship was sunk before we started
Hey I’m amazed that we have even got this far

I don’t know how you say you’re lonely with all those voices on the phone

You’re going to drive me to distraction
You’re going to break my heart when I walk out that door
You’ve got your chemical reaction
But while you’re flying high I’m sinking through the floor

I’m sick of all this silence
I wish you’d make some noise
I really don’t know what you want
Just give me a choice
I’m sick of all this silence
I wish you’d make some noise
I’m sick ‘cos all I ever hear is
The sound of my own voice

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Uploaded: Apr 13, 2008 - 12:22:40 AM
Last Updated: Apr 13, 2008 - 12:22:40 AM Last Played: Nov 03, 2009 - 05:45:16 PM

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