elemental inspiration
I have to admit, getting all down with my iPod has forced me to cruise through my music collection, and its been fun. I recently came across my collection of Tears for Fears albums…the first of which, (Songs From the Big Chair) encapsulated that first summer of teenage magic I experienced, which dates me, I’m sure, and the 3rd (I think), Elemental.
It’s Elemental I want to talk about a bit today. This album also represents a crucial time in my life….my second year at recording engineering school, my first apartment of my own, and memories of my one and only furnishing of this apartment, a chair, positioned in the sweet spot between the speakers of my system, where I spent many a ruthlessly hot summer night, eyes closed, sweating like crazy, just listening to the masterful layering and composition at play on this album.
At that time, midi was still growing up, home recording wasn’t remotely affordable unless you used a cassette 4 track, and there wasn’t any DAW’s as we know them today. But by this time in school, I’d had a chance to work with exceptional equipment,
including the cutting edge Kurzweil K2000, and so I had an inkling of how synthesizers could massively influence my writing and the potential for arrangements.
Elemental, however, was perfectly timed. I had one year of engineering in a pro studio under my belt, my eyes (and ears), were busy deconstructing albums to understand what was going on, what were the elements, (heh), and how were they assembled to make the final product, and Roland Orzabal (Tears For Fears at this point), was a genius both musically and lyrically. His sense of arrangement, particularly on this album, really got my attention. And I think it sparked a fierce interest in working with technology, to incorporate it into my writing and production palette. I recall reading an article in an audio recording trade journal at the time which described his use of all kinds of animal sounds throughout the record, but modified and twisted up to become other textures woven into the music. I just loved the thought of that. I clearly remember being extremely motivated to start writing, to create my own masterpiece.
Years later, and I’m still not anywhere near the level of Tears For Fears, and I’m still working on that masterpiece…but its amazing to stumble on those inspirational moments and be able to recognize for what they were…in this case, an awareness of the larger world of arrangement and how technology might help with it.
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