Where Earth Meets Light


This week’s theme for “Song A Week” was “Digital”. I’m not much into digital instruments and the ones that I use tend to be trying to imitate something in the analog realm. Of course everything I record is digital but I did my best to add in a couple of more pronounced digital flairs. Drum machine for one and speeding up the song in post production.

Not a fan of the drum machine overall but it did it’s work. I’ve been wanting to play around with hard panning the percussion to one side or the other because it usually is in the middle. I took some inspiration from Bruce Springsteen’s ‘I’m On Fire’ for the production and arrangement.

As for speeding up the song…

I got that inspiration from The Beatles. I’d heard that they would record slower then have the tape sped up to give it more energy and polish. They did all sorts of crazy things later like two different key takes being combined on ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’.

I did the digital version which can speed up the track without changing the pitch. This is usually used in small amounts to adjust a note that was played out of time. If you expand or compress the time too much you get some weird sound artifacts. So I did that to the whole track after it had been mixed. It gave it that more polished sound in some ways but also introduced some weird overtones in the track. I have the other version that is not sped up but I wanted to experiment a little and share what I found. Enjoy it!

Lightning quick mind
Eyes infrared
Perceptive not misled
Once you were a liar
Living in Reno
Living in a deep hole

Those tables flew you away
Like Jet Planes ripping through the sky
Not the cheats, bright lights, or bad beats
Just knowing you can cross that line
Where Earth Meets Light

Dropped keys in the snow
Struggle to pick them up
Hard now to have bad luck
Back hurts all the time
No one has a fix
Just warn you of side effects

Enough pills to take you away
Like blackholes ripping through the sky
No peace or fear of the streets
Just knowing you can cross that line
Where Earth Meets Light

Old Mustang sits in the driveway
She roars like thunder in the night
Not police or fear of being released
Just knowing you can cross that line
Where Earth Meets Light