For the first proper entry of the newsletter, I thought it would be fun to elaborate on some arranging and songwriting decisions that I used in some tunes of mine. There’s plenty of info that most folks might not know regarding how these ideas were conceived of in the first place. For me, all this stuff is always clanging around in my head and seems so obvious because… well… I’m the one that wrote it. Duh! But no one would know the background to some of these ideas unless I shared them, and this particular song has one such section. So let’s dive into how the sausage is made, so to speak. We’ll start with a song called The Messengers, taken from my latest release in 2023, Hourglass of Exile.

So, a preface and some background, I’m incredibly slow to write songs. I feel like I’ve gotten much better with this over time, but my songwriting process is still something I’m developing as I go. A tB Project song takes a lot of time to reach completion, as far as writing is concerned, since I’m writing basically everything you hear on the record. I’ve let the session musicians take some liberties here or there, but everything is at least composed before I even send the music to someone for whatever instrument we’re working on at the time. Despite Hourglass of Exile having been released in 2023, some of the earliest material from this album was written all the way back in 2012 (!) and The Messengers is one such song.

2012 was a weird time. I mean, most of my early 20s were weird. But I feel like that’s how it is for most people when you have hindsight to help you see where you were at that age. Anyways, this story might be kinda corny, but it’s the truth of how The Messengers came out the way it did. At the time, I was interested in a girl, and what does any sap musician do when trying to court a girl but write a song about said girl? So that’s what The Messengers was supposed to be at first, a love song. Except instead of doing some kind of ballad-y type thing, I wanted to make a prog rock/metal song, because that’s what I’m about, being a prog snob. The song didn’t end up getting finished in this way, obviously, and things didn’t end up working out between her and I, but at least I got a decent song out of it, yeah?

My idea to woo her was to take the numbers of her birthday and use them to make time signature changes to follow it. To protect the innocent, she shall rename nameless, of course, but her birthday was December 5 1991. Where I’m from, that’s the format we use too, mm-dd-yyyy, so I wanted to do something that goes from 12, to 5, and then 19 and 91. I accomplished this (somewhat), and it gets a little messy with the way it’s written, but hear me out and I’ll explain.

The Messengers, “Birthday section”, ex 1, timestamp 5:20-:53, lead guitar

As you can see, I, matter of factly, wrote out these exact numbers as time signatures and basically spelled out each of the numbers of the birth date using 8^th notes. December is covered in the first 12/8 measure, 5^th is covered in the 5/8 measure, 19 is split between bars 249-50, a measure of 11/8 and 8/8, and then the 91 remaining beats are accounted for in the next 10 bars of 4/4 (80 8^th notes) and the final bar of 11/8, adding up to 91 8^th note beats altogether. Pretty cool right? Or is it too nerdy? I’ll let you decide.

Now, what I didn’t really consider back in 2012 is that these time signatures make no sense to count this way. Haha! The phrasing doesn’t quite work when you actually try to feel it out, and this wasn’t made apparent to me until I hired Matt Graff to track the drums for this album in 2021 or so. I remember during the sessions, he stopped at this section and asked, “So, how are you feeling this part? Because it’s a little odd the way it’s written.” Then I had to explain to him the reasoning behind the dumb decision to write it this way, haha. If you listen on the final version on the album, it can be simplified quite a bit, and I think this is how Matt ultimately ended up feeling it when performing it for the album. It basically boils down to four bars of 3/4, one bar of 2/4, then a bar of 4/4, adding up to 36 8^th notes total. So, within all that still lies the numbers of the birth date idea, but it’s not really felt in a way to outline those numbers very clearly. The rhythm guitar is also following a simple 5 against 4 pattern throughout the whole section, so just another layer of prog nonsense to glue it all together.

But this right here is a perfect example of how I feel I’ve grown as a musician and a writer. When I first wrote this idea, I kinda just confined myself to the premise of the birth date versus writing something that felt right and made sense. I’ve found that writing scores properly and conveying the musical information clearly on paper is a good habit to make, as well. Not only to make it easier for myself to relearn if I have to, but also in this case, for session musicians to understand what I’m going for. Even the above screenshot has some things I would change notation-wise, but eh, what’s done is done.

Closing thoughts, not to sound like a self critiquing artist, but this song is actually my least favorite song from the album, as weird as it is to say. Not because it’s associated with a failed relationship, but simply because I feel like I constructed it in isolation from the rest of the album, in a way. Some parts from it get reprised later in the album, but I dunno. I just feel like everything that comes after this song on the album is better. The song is still cool, though, and I’m happy with how it came out. What do you think?

Anyways, there it is. The first proper tB newsletter, in the books. Thank you for reading and I hope you found something interesting within this long winded post. Stay tuned for more, and take it from me. If you’re gonna write a love song, make it prog. \m/

-tB