Slightly Panoramic

I wrote the main piano parts to this while improvising in a high school rehearsal room. My friend Nobie was there at the time. That was in May 2006. Over the following weekend, I recorded this at home, plugging the synth directly into my hard drive recorder. After improvising for a while, I decided to add that eerie middle section, which still sounds just as scary as it did when I first recorded it. The guitar in this song really stands out in that section.

The way out of the middle section is with that post-rock start / stop buildup. I like to call this part 'the ladder', for obvious reasons. I'd always wanted to insert a section like this into a song. I love how heavy this part gets. It reminds me of the louder, more aggressive guitar music I heard throughout the 90s. I'm talking about bands like Filter, Stone Temple Pilots, and (the heavy songs of) The Smashing Pumpkins.

Some people think the guitar part in this song is dull, and I only half agree. It's not supposed to be soloing wildly. It's merely adding texture by droning above the piano. The main point here is what the left hand is playing on the piano, which is those alternating chords. Listen closely, because the mood changes significantly from the first 'verse' to the second 'verse' when the left hand chords move up an octave. The drums are all produced by synthesizer / MIDI controller, which I played live by hand for the whole song, keying out each beat in real time. I love the timing of the 'chorus', and the way the drums hit real hard during those parts when the piano is rolling on those neighboring notes.

I'm taking a huge risk posting this song here, because the ending is part gag, part real. It's just residual improv that I played after the song 'ended'. I decided to keep it in the final mix, though, because I thought it was humorous. Over time, I actually started to like it, even though the drums are not tight for the first half. So, enjoy the song, but if you dislike the ending, then you can disregard it.