A Few More Coffee Photos

I went by my friend David's coffee roasting shop, The Coffee Registry, again a few weeks ago and took a few more pictures. This time I opted to arm myself with some faster film, and decided to take a few color shots as well. Turns out, its easier to take sharper pictures when you can up your shutter speed to 1/60. Go figure.

Anyways, I'm putting just a couple below for your enjoyment. And as I said last time, I highly recommend that you hop on over to his site, and sign yourself up for a subscription. You won't regret it, I promise you that.

Dear Alberton

Last summer my friend and I set out in a songwriting challenge. Each of us wrote one song a week based off of a mutually agreed upon topic. We got our topic by spinning the wheel of Wikipedia randomness. For this particular song, the topic that the wheel stopped on was "Alberton-Roseville".

The result is this song, "Dear Alberton".

The reason I'm posting this song is because it's not finished, and I wanted to give you a peek into the songwriting process. Right now I'm arranging songs for my next record, but I've yet to find anything that I am happy with for this particular song. So below is a video of me playing the song as I originally wrote it. Below that I will post several SoundCloud files that are different versions of the song I have demo'd as I try and find a direction I want to go with the song. (I've also posted the lyrics and chord progression at the bottom of the blog.)

The demos are not complete demos. There are holes in the arrangement without drums, or bass, etc. I use demos like these to help me get ideas out as I work at putting a song together.




Here are a few of my thoughts about the song:

Lyrically I'm pretty happy with it. It's a bit more pop sounding than a lot of what I write, but that's probably OK. I've been writing a lot of slow songs lately, so I could stand to have a few fast ones, and several friends have had good responses to this song.

When I started arranging it, I realized that it's at an odd speed (I played it a bit slower on the video than I originally played it). It's really too fast for a standard back beat (traditional drum groove with snare on 2 and 4), and honestly, that would make it come off a bit too mainstream for my taste anyway. But it's also a bit slow for a cut time feel. I also realized early on that my acoustic guitar part was probably a bit too busy for a big arrangement, which meant that at some point I would need to consider simplifying it.

I originally tried to see how it might work out if I kept the tempo the same with a back beat in the verses and a more driving feel in the chorus. Add some electric guitars and tadaaaaa... I have a song that sounds like the love child of a pop song and a Switchfoot song. Here it is:





While that was fun to mess around with, it's not really what I'm going for.

So I decided to slow the song down by a few bpm (beats per minute) and went for a groove that's a bit more broken up and staggered in the verse that would then go to more of a standard backbeat in the chorus. This would help keep things interesting. I also went for a more open sound on the electric guitars. I wanted to give the chorus some room to breathe. Below is the second demo:



Tempo-wise this felt a little better to me except that it was starting to sound a bit heavy and melancholy for a song that's about venturing out, taking chances and living life. This isn't helped by the fact that the first chord of the chorus is an E minor (WARNING: MUSICAL JARGON COMING UP). It's much less obvious in what my acoustic guitar is playing because of the fact that the fifth (B) is in the bass and the third (G) is buried in the middle of the chord. This keeps the focus off of the chord sounding dark. But on the bass guitar I was playing an E, so it brought the minor sound a bit back into focus, adding to the heavyness feeling. So this is something I have to keep in mind as I'm arranging.

I'm convinced that capturing the right feeling in this song begins with the drums, so I opted to focus more on the groove of the song, changing up the pattern that the drums were playing in the chorus. I also think that with the standard back beat that the song feels a bit too "adult contemporary", so my goal with the drums in the chorus was to get rid of the standard snare on two and four feel but still maintain the feel of a groove. I changed nothing else in this demo other than the drums. Here is the third version:




This drum groove did not help the song any. In my opinion, it actually got heavier feeling. There may be some things that might help this particular pattern feel less heavy, maybe some brushes instead of drumsticks? Overall though, the song still feels heavy and not light and carefree.

So needless to say, I'm not happy with any of this and I'll keep working on it. But I wanted you to be able to see some of the process. At this point I will finally give in and start considering changing the acoustic guitar part. I've really been clinging to it because I like playing it, but I think overall, it might not be serving the song that well, at least for the musical direction I want to go. My wife has suggested more piano and bigger strumming sounds, but then I feel like I'm moving into Caedmon's Call territory, which I want to avoid.

I've also stuck primarily to traditional rock instrumentation and now I will start branching out into other areas. I'll keep you posted on how the song is coming along, as well as doing more videos of music along the way.

If you have any questions or comments about the song or any of the demos, feel free to leave them. Let me know what you think.

Dear Alberton - Lyrics and music by Chris Freeman

Capo 2 (chords are with capo)
verse: C Cmaj7 am am7 F Fsus2 G G7
Prechorus: B em am7 D7/A
Chorus: dm/A am7 F Fsus2 G G7
Bridge: F am7 dm/A C C/B

Dear Alberton I wish that I could stay
But there's a siren that is calling me away
This city feels so comfortable and safe
But what is life without rough roads and risks to take?
You've settled for autumn
Even when the spring is just beyond your fears

Alberton I hope that things go well in Roseville when I'm gone
You should know that life is better when you're facing the unknown

Dear Alberton it's time that I must go
But think of me as I embrace life's ebb and flow
Wisdom comes from knowing that you know nothing at all
And leaning forward without fear that you might fall
Don't settle for autumn
When the sounds of spring are just beyond your ears

Dave Grohl, Songwriting and the Craft Thereof

I don't know how familiar you are with The Foo Fighters or not. Hopefully you are. You should be at least since they have been one of the biggest names in rock and alternative music since the mid 90's. Dave Grohl, the lead singer and rhythm guitar player for the band, has proven time and time again that a drummer's talent isn't limited to just smashing drum heads.

This past year, they set out to do something really great with their new record. They recorded it in Dave's garage and they did it all analog. This means that, contrary to modern recording methods, nothing was ever recorded onto a computer or processed by a computer. The entire record was recorded onto analog tape and processed with traditional analog outboard gear and analog mixing consoles. The significance of this is that no digital trickery was ever used to make the band sound better. No quantizing (digitally forcing parts to align exactly with the tempo of the song so that everything syncs perfectly), no auto tuning of vocals, just pure, raw rock music. All of the inconsistencies and imperfections that humans bring into music is present on the record.

When so much technology is available to make bands and singers so tight and so good, why would they do this? To bring back the human element into making music. It's a celebration of the craft of writing songs and making music, and it won them their tenth Grammy award recently for Best Rock Album. Here is an excerpt from Dave Grohl's acceptance speech at this year's Grammy awards.

“To me this award means a lot because it shows that the human element of music is what’s important. Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument and learning to do your craft, that’s the most important thing for people to do… It’s not about being perfect, it’s not about sounding absolutely correct, it’s not about what goes on in a computer. It’s about what goes on in here [your heart] and what goes on in here [your head].” 

Dave Grohl acceptance speech at 2012 Grammy Awards.

Interesting thing to say. He definitely stepped on a few peoples toes with what he said. And it begs the question - Have we lost an appreciation for craft? Not just in songwriting, but in general.

To me, there is something really cool about a product that was made by someone who had to spend years of their life honing their skill and talents. Something that is truly great in quality but also contains a very human element. Imperfections from product to product, something that is completely unique and not exactly like any other. With many craft products, you are actually investing in something that gets better over time.

I do worry that many have lost the appreciation and vision of songwriting being a craft. Just like a wood worker spends years learning how to make a great rocking chair, as songwriters we should view what we do in a similar manner. We are crafting a piece of art from nothing. We are learning how to tell a story or communicate an emotion in a way that speaks universally to people and causes them to respond. That is a very human thing to do.

I also think there is a very spiritual side to craft. I daily rest in knowing that I did not come off an assembly line that God set up - that I was made completely unique. He created the world around me and every aspect of creation is unique and perfect. There are no two trees exactly alike. No two mountain peaks that look identical, no two rivers that run the same course. Knowing that there was attention to detail as God made creation, as he put me together, and ordered my life...that knowledge gives me purpose.

For artists, photographers, writers, musicians and songwriters, we should embrace the work that comes in making something great. Pour yourself into the process. Continually push yourself do to better and be better at your craft. There is something truly wonderful about it, and our job is to share our craft with other people.

I'm curious what you think. Do you think that as a culture we have lost an appreciation for craft? For honing a skill, developing a talent. Is there still a place for this in our lives? As a creative individual, are you practicing this? Are you investing in your craft? Or should we embrace the technology and advancements?

Some Photography

So I spent some time last week with my friend, David, at his shop. He's a local craft coffee roaster here in Fort Collins, as well as being the senior pastor at our church. We have been talking about putting together a little side project here in town that focuses on the craft culture here in Fort Collins. And as part of the preparation, I went and took some pictures of his shop.

It was very last minute, and unfortunately the only speed of film I had with me was really too slow to be used inside his shop, such is the downfall of shooting film. I was shooting between 1/15 and 1/8 shutter speed with no tripod, so there were many pictures that didn't turn out well. Although there was really too much shake on most of the pictures, I managed to salvage a few and I thought I would share them with you.

If you have the time, you should really check out David's business, The Coffee Registry. Head on over to www.thecoffeeregistry.com and start a subscription of some of the best coffee you'll ever drink. You can also find a few more pictures from the shoot on his site, as well.

For those who are interested, these pictures were shot with a Mamiya M645 1000s with a 80mm F/2.8 lens on Kodak TMax 100 film. 

I did a very light bit of editing in Photoshop.