A Limited Opening
Like Bloom before it, Fade evolved dramatically from the initial idea to the final piece. First I scored a quick sketch in a classical vein and brought over my friend Nando, a talented guitarist and songwriter in his own right, to lay down the first cello part. An interesting accident happened then, as Nando played a take half as fast as before. I slapped it on top of the other, faster one, and all of a sudden we had Cut 1, an unintentional cello jam over a throwaway drum track:
A Radical Departure
We never got around to recording the rest of the classical piece. It took a few cuts to figure out, but the song was pulling me in an altogether unexpected direction. I know enough by now to listen when it talks to me, and I ended up with a spacey groove that, to my ear, still described the inevitable descent I was aiming for. Cut 10:
The Structure Develops
I started thinking about the journey of the death, and came to understand that my song also must be a journey. And journeys have many phases, so my song must have several parts. This is Cut 30, and you can recognize the final cut to come:
Collaboration and Conclusion
It’s often hard to understand when a song is done, particularly when you’re laboring over it for a long time. But when my friend Meghann opened up her beautiful voice and laid down the vocal track, I knew there was nothing left to record. The polishing up happened with the help of my old friend Jesse (Happy Birthday, man!), who came up with about a dozen amazing ideas to make things better. It was Jesse who restrained my omnipresent guitar noodling, Jesse who brought the cello in and out throughout the piece, and Jesse who extended the very last note till its proper length.
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