#listening to bloodwater ballad..

[phocids]

I am thinking about Eric Delano :(

[equalseleventhirds]

ron @gerrydelano what have you DONE to me i’m FEELINGS and also fanfiction. this is inspired by his new song which murdered me dead and brought me back to write this bcos how can i resist ocean imagery?

---

Eric dreams.

He knows he is dreaming, because dark as it is (and it is dark, moonlight barely filtering through shuttered blinds), he can still see. The pale mass of the wall in front of him. The deeper darkness of an open door. The shifting of light in the waves that lap at his feet.

The ocean in his house might have been another clue.

He smiles, reaching out to touch the wood of the door frame. Past it he can just make out the shape of Gerry’s crib, can just hear his son’s soft breaths. Safe. Even in dreams, always safe.

“Why don’t you go in?” a voice behind him asks. “Or at least open the blinds. Let the light in. See him properly.”

He turns, of course he turns. A figure outlined in moonlight smiles at him, and he can see her far too clearly. “Emma.”

“Mm.”

“Why you? Why not, I don’t know, Gertrude? Wright? Mary would make the most sense, she’s my wife.”

“I don’t know. I’m not the one dreaming.” She shrugs, trailing a toe along the surface of the water. “Maybe you don’t want to see them. Maybe you don’t trust them, in the dark, in the sea, with your son.”

He can’t pretend to argue, but. “And I trust you, do I?”

“I’m your oldest, friendliest colleague; why wouldn’t you trust me?” Emma kicks at the water, splashing at his legs. “Well, maybe you just don’t remember what they look like.”

“I’m not sure I remember what you look like.”

“Yes, but it doesn’t matter so much with me.”

Eric shakes his head. “Maybe I just know you never stop asking questions.”

“Could be! I was always good at that. And is that what you need right now? Why don’t you look at him?”

His jaw clenches, but he knows he’s going to answer. That was how it went: Emma asked questions, and Emma found her answers. Always.

“I’m afraid,” he says, and the words taste like salt and copper. “I’m scared that even in dreams, I don’t know what he looks like.”

Emma is quiet for long moments, her silver-lined frame swaying gently with the tide. And then not so gently; the waves are growing, speeding up, choppy, loud. It looks like a storm. It sounds like someone sharpening a knife.

“I think,” she says finally, sea foam splashing at her waist, “and I might be wrong--do tell me if I’m wrong, Eric, tell me everything--but I think this might be your last chance.”

He wants to ask what she means, even if he doesn’t think she can tell him, even if he might already know, but a wave arcs over her and she reaches out, out, her hand leading the water until both hit his chest.

Eric Delano opens his eyes, and he sees nothing. But he hears Mary breathing, slow and steady and focused.

[capripian-arts]

[ID: a stylized red and white comic of a human man and a half-orc baby. The first panel shows the man, in dark red and white, leaning back and gasping, upset. He is crying bright red, and the same color is on his shirt. He has a dark red line over his eyes, obscuring them. The background of this panel is bright red. The second panel shows the half-orc baby. She is lying down asleep, her hands held up to her mouth. One of her tusks pokes out from behind her hands. She is also drawn in dark red and white, and the background of her panel is bright red as well. Next to the first panel are the words “That even with blood in our teeth”, where “blood” is colored bright red. Next to the second panel are the words “My son stayed asleep”, where “son” is colored bright red and crossed out.]

Sometimes I think about @existentialcrisiscentral‘s Merori (the baby here) and feel Many A Feeling. The song lyrics used are from @gerrydelano‘s Bloodwater Ballad, which can be found here.

[the-ipre]

forgive me, forgive me, i did try to swim with my hands and feet bound to my heart weighted and anchored with love for my son who by birthright deserves more than scars

i’ve been listening to @gerrydelano‘s bloodwater ballad on repeat and it’s Incredible

[gerrydelano]

im listening to tma for the first time and i just got to the bit where jon finds out gertrude messed with gerrys body after he died and oh i am so angry for him. i read a lot of your stuff so i Know how messed up that is and i listen to bloodwater ballad constantly so the "dont you dare be the reason he drowns" to gertrude juxtaposed with!! this im so!! aaaaaa!!!!! friendship ended with gertrude i trust literally none of the people in gerrys life anymore this is such a tragedy im so sorry

for like throwing this at u i just dont know anyone else whod understand 😭

oh NOOOO you’ve looked at/listened to my crap before even getting to that part? i am SO sorry ACK i’m spoiler city over here! but g-d yeah it sure is Very painful indeed, i have a lot of feelings on That & i'm actually really pleased to hear that you Reacted to finding out in canon like that and the lyric Snapped into place that’s like super cool to me jhvbn thanks for telling me this! 

no need to be sorry omg, i’m very 😔 for you rn is all. you can soldier through it, friend. you can make it.... for gerry.

[dragon-zena]

Upset about Gerry and Eric again im reviving mary just to burn her to fucking dust

[catgirljudeperry]

If TMA Was A Musical Masterpost

So many TMA fansongs on soundcloud/tumblr that aren’t on youtube and vice versa. I thought to compile them here so I can listen to them all in one go more easily. 

if you know of any more send me the links and i’ll add them to the post

The Piper’s Call

Round and Round

Song Of The Hive

Dead Sailors Sing

Nobody Needs To Be Alone

Arrival Of The NotThem 

Statement Of Helen Richardson

Eating My Computer

Immolate

Statement Ends

(blank space for the mike crew song that the creator of firesorrow girl says he’s gonna write someday) 

The Voyeur’s Hymn

Nikola’s Song 

Through My Door

Blood Song (yeah ok this one was originally about daisy but she’s got more songs later on and there’s already 2 in that domain, plus i wanted more stuff before we jump back into the stranger songs, so i’m assigning this to the duo)

A Circus Most Peculiar

Under The Big Top

Behind My Eyes

Carnivore’s Waltz

The Dirt That Once Was Me

Mr. Pitch

A Messiah’s Invocation

FireSorrow Girl

Within Her Web

The Echoes Of Infinity

Bloodwater Ballad

I See You

Nothing

Threadbare Web

My Dear Archivist

Coronation (aka Jonah’s Big Villain Song) 

You Do Not Know 

Patience (aka Why I Don’t Like The End) 

The Primal Command Of Creation

Partner Mine

Well, Well, Well

Knock-A-Door Fun

Arcane Knots

I Drown (just had to end it with an angsty jon song) 

[notesofarichlycolorednight]

it’s taken me a while but here we are!! listened to bloodwater ballad [TUMBLR | SOUNDCLOUD] by @gerrydelano so I’m gonna dive (ha, dive, get it?) into some analysis even tho I haven’t taken a proper English class since AP English Lit in high school and the god complex it gave me has never left (RIP to everyone else, but I’m different). But I do have a degree in Psychology and am a Researcher, so I know how to dissect things (this is probably why the god complex never left lmao)

disclaimer: I have only listened to TMA through one (1), read it ONE time, so if you read something that seems wrong it probably is because my memory is not The Best (the seasons are 40 eps long and 30 mins each, Jonny why) and I’m probably straight-up not remembering or misremembering some aspect or detail about either a character and/or their relationship

(and before you say it, i absolutely CANNOT just go relisten to an ep out of order. my nd brain Will Not Let Me until i have listened thru all 4 seasons, In Order, several times)

ALSO: i speak very definitively here, but it doesn’t mean i’m right abt my analysis

bold and italics are lyrics, regular font is analysis. if there’s a more accessible way to format this, lmk!

analysis under cut

honesty that's what she gave to me mary didn’t hide who she was; eric knew exactly what he was getting himself into

into the water i bleed into the sea sea motif/metaphor to describe how eric viewed his relationship with mary

truthfully even when she lied through her teeth it only meant she trusted me to lay at her feet rationalization from eric: he knows she’s lying, and she probably knows he knows. but she also knows that he won’t do anything about it

oh, heave-ho it's over the edge i sink more of the sea metaphor in pieces in ribbons in tatters i'm thrown into the dark of the drink ribbons and tatters: reminiscent/hint of mary needing a piece of his skint to keep his ghost in the leitner

oh, heave-ho it's over the edge i go blow the man down, he's a jewel for your crown (blow me down) and no one will ever know ”jewel for your crown”: suggestive of how mary used eric like an object. jewel and crown suggests that he was useful to her in an important way, tho, still an object ”no one will ever know”: suggestive that no one else, looking in on their relationship, would even see it for what it truly was, nor would they ever expect mary to throw him away so casually like she did

war, you see is somewhere you go just to bleed the end of a book you can’t read (books you cannot read) a legacy’s greed “book you can’t read”: suggestive of mary’s relationship with leitners ”a legacy’s greed”: commentary of leitner; bc this is eric telling his story tho, this could also be about how mary pulled eric into her plots regarding leitners, and then gerry

distantly, familiar hope came to me that even with blood in our teeth my son stayed asleep ”even with blood in our teeth”: eric knows what role he had to play in all this and is not absolving himself of blame ”my son stayed asleep”: often sleeping can be used as a metaphor for ignorance. in this case, eric is hoping that, despite what gerry’s mother is and what eric has been complicit in, will not affect his son i think it’s interesting to note here that the backup voices cut out for “my son stayed asleep” (put a pin in it)

oh, heave-ho the ship is my body, i gave to my wife as the captain, the whip, and the brine, the shark lurking under the waves more of the sea metaphor; also a metaphor for how complicit eric was to mary’s will i think it’s super interesting that she’s the captain, whip, brine, and shark in this metaphor. all things that can hurt eric, as the ship. suggests that mary is in complete control of eric (as the captain). also adds to the notion that eric knew exactly who mary was and still loved her anyway (”i gave”).

oh, heave-ho the ship is my body, she cracks the mast of my spine, spills my blood as her wine (lightning strikes and) i really like this line bc it makes me think of the marriage lines in corpse bride: “your cup will never empty, for i will be your wine.” and i love that it’s turned on its head here. cuts a flag from the skin off my back (takes all the skin off my back) a direct callback to the fact that mary has to take strips of eric’s skin to keep his ghost in the leitner book, while also staying with the metaphor that eric is a ship out at sea

way, ay, i wanted to say though blinded i still saw the light at the end of the hall, in a crib with his eyes almost grayer than mine in the night direct callback to eric blinding himself, twice! also represents how much he loves his son: “light of my life” is a common saying and gerry was that for eric

i gave up the sight of his face for his life and i would have lost more for the same i'd cut out my heart to save his from her bite and i almost don't know who to blame again, direct callback to him blinding himself so he could escape the institute a demonstration of how much love he holds for his son, willing to give up more and more of himself if it meant keeping his son safe heart motif! both for eric and gerry i really like the last line here bc he’s saying he doesn’t know who to blame for his blindness (aka cutting out his heart): himself or mary. bc, as i’ve stated before, eric knows who mary is. and he still loves her. still had a child with her. i also think it’s foreshadowing. and the reason i say this is bc, in the end, eric was unable to save gerry from mary. this song is representative of his statement to gertrude, so at this point, he’s a ghost. tho he may not know exactly what mary has done, he knows who she is enough to know that after he died, mary would raise gerry in her likeness, with her ideals

is it a murder if i made my bed by her side when i knew what she was? and here we have eric, most nearly explicitly, stating that he knew mary’s true colors. and loved her anyway. perhaps i'm complicit; i fell asleep first in the bloodcutting comfort of jaws this also solidifies his stance that he should shoulder some of the blame for allowing himself to love her when he knew what a truly terrible and deadly (literally) person she was ”bloodcutting comfort of jaws” is also really nice alliteration

forgive me, forgive me, i did try to swim with my hands and feet bound to my heart heart motif! okay so this one has so many layers for me: so, for all intents and purposes here, eric has effectively cut out his heart, which his hands and feet are bound to, and is now in the jaws of a shark (mary), who is dragging him down to kill him. he tried to save his son by getting away from the institute by blinding himself but it didn’t work weighted and anchored with love for my son who by birthright deserves more than scars legit, this confused me for a bit bc i always saw “with my hands and feet bound to my heart” as the anchor that pulled him down, as you’d weigh someone down with big rocks if you wanted them to drown. however, in the context of tma, i realized anchor could also mean the way martin is jon’s anchor. eric’s love for gerry was his reason--the person who he kept fighting for as best he could

additional note: these 4 verses are all sung without backup voices. i think it’s interesting that the lyrics/verses that revolve around wanting to save his son, and that are about his son, are sung with his singular voice. i wish i could articulate more what that means, but despite my best efforts, i’m not musically inclined even tho i’ll kinda be talking abt music composition for firesorrow girl lmao. link at the end

my eulogy the carpet red under my feet like standing on top of the sea (standing on the sea) the frenzy beneath don’t ask me why but i really like how this last part of the song starts with “my eulogy” bc you can tell the song is coming to a close now by that lyric. what’s really nice is i can “picture” eric closing his statement with gertrude with the request that she finds his son more sea and shark metaphors

infamy how do you remember me? that fool just so desperate to leave that he couldn't see? i also really loved these lines bc eric most likely knows how gertrude thought of him, and can probably sense how she feels of him now, after his story then i love how “couldn’t see” has a double-meaning here: 1) of course, he blinded himself but, 2) that he was also metaphorically blind to what kind of consequences his actions had, both on him and his son

oh, heave-ho a dead man has only one tale listen,,, i know i keep saying this, but i love how ron turns turn-of-phrases on their heads. bc “dead men tell no tales” right? eric has one tale, tho: his statement bc he’s a ghost who’s been bound this book and kept, for all intents and purpose, alive i knew she had hunger for blood in the water and that means it was no betrayal again, confirmation that eric knows that he has to shoulder some of the blame for the consequences of knowing who mary was (this bloodthirsty shark) and still loving her anyway

oh, heave-ho though, i have one request of you now if my son can be found and his own hands unbound (find my son) cut the rope - don't you dare let him drown (don’t you dare be the reason he drowns) so a throwback to “hands and feet bound to my heart” tho perhaps gerry’s heart isn’t what’s dragging him down, necessarily bc he was raised by mary, he didn’t have a choice. the moment he was born, he was tied to her. and the moment mary killed eric, there was no chance he could get away and then, of course, the gut-puncher: “don’t you dare let him drown”/“don’t your dare be the reason he drowns” are especially poignant, given gertrude uses gerry much in the same way mary did. gerry becomes bound to a different entity and is used for gertrude’s gain. so he drowns anyway.

--

alkjdlf i hope this is semi-coherent. i tried to do it more “professionally”--i even thought abt breaking it up and putting it back together, out of order, to address all the themes and motifs all in one spot--but then decided what would be best for my brain, was to listen to the song and just add my thoughts in as they came, stream of consciousness style *finger guns*

firesorrow girl analysis | meme i made for these analyses bc it’s funny and i wanted to share

[avatarofthebeholding]

The song “The Moon Will Sing” by The Crane Wives fits Eric Delano SO WELL so I’m just going to list a bunch of lyric/transcript comparisons here bc AHHH:

Pt I: W/regards to the Institute and Gertrude

Pt II: W/regards to Mary starting their relationship with a command

Pt. III: W/regards to Eric being driven to leave the Institute and how much he cared about taking care of Gerry (both this & the next part have lyrics from “Bloodwater Ballad” interspersed too bc it’s amazing!)

Pt. IV: W/regards to Eric’s devotion to Gerry after leaving the Institute

Pt. V: W/regards to Mary never listening to Eric

Pt. VI: W/regards to Eric knowing Mary was a terrible person, & to Mary treating Eric’s page as nothing more than a possession

Pt. VII: Ummm...how do I neatly summarize this? Idk. Fire.

Here’s the song btw:

[orpheusilver]

I Am Listening To Bloodwater Ballad Again

[gerrydelano]

literally bloodwater ballad carries such a specific and potent vibe... the first time I heard it I was on a nighttime walk and it was cold as hell and I played it on repeat until I got home bc it just fit the feeling of cold night air so well... SORRY THAT THIS IS OUT OF THE BLUE your lyrics post just reminded me of how hard it Hits

I REMEMBER YOU TELLING ME THIS!!!! i lost my mind the first time and i’m losing my mind now!!!! thank you i’m [jenny slate screaming reaction image]

[gerrydelano]

hey so feel free to delete this ask / not answer it but !!!! so yesterday i finally had a spot of free time and thought. hm. mayhaps i should listen to ron gerrydelano's song bloodwater ballad and guess what! five minutes later! i was emotionally ruined! and i have put firesorrow girl on loop for 90 minutes while doing math i just kdfjdlskj you are so talented i literally love your voice so much i am crying emoji just. gently holds agnes and eric and gerry aaaaaaaa

aaaaaaaah? thank you, i’m amazed to hear that you liked them that much! whatever helps you get the math done, amiright ladies?

(🧡🧡🧡🧡!)

[gerrydelano]

got a few more asks about bloodwater ballad, so i’m gonna consolidate them here! i’m gonna start doing it this way from now on instead of the screencap method to make it more accessible in general, too. accidentally did a small analysis on eric’s view of mary whoop!

anon: Oh I absolutely Adore bwb, I especially love the lines “perhaps I’m complicit, I fell asleep first / in the bloodcutting comfort of jaws” like the Imagery! This man loved his wretched wife so much! He trusted her enough to become sleep-vulnerable beside her and she betrayed this trust like a shark is bound to do (´༎ຶ ͜ʖ ༎ຶ `)💔

aaaaaaaah thank you! that was a fun line to come up with, yeah, ahhhh! here’s the thing, though - he says himself, he doesn’t even really consider it a betrayal. the thing about sharks is that their reputation is overblown and they’re made out to be more violent and ravenous than they Actually Are. they’re scavengers more often than not, just going and going and going because if they stop, then they’ll die.

and of course, they’re still dangerous - obviously - because like anything, they’re doing whatever they can to survive. and they happen to have very sharp teeth.

eric’s view of his wife is so... deeply toxic and skewed and unbalanced, while at the same time rooted in how completely plainly he saw her. she never lied, really. when she said that man she killed was her uncle asleep in the chair, she knew he knew it wasn’t true. she was telling the truth in her refusal to. (a concept i repeat in gerry’s narration in my fics, actually, applied to other characters. a concept he grew up with.) it was niceties to smooth a situation, saying it to say it, not because she expected him to believe it but because she knew he wouldn’t do anything about it.

and so eric doesn’t see this as a betrayal because he feels like this is just... How She Is. sharks aren’t betraying you by biting you, they’re just trying to see whether you’re what they need to survive and most of the time you’re gonna taste awful so they’ll give up. sometimes they’re desperate. sometimes they’re starving. most of the time, it’s just a force of nature and you don’t get a say in what happens. 

he doesn’t view her as innocent, no. he knows this was not out of character for her at all, and just considers it to be in her nature. the PROBLEM is that he didn’t feel betrayed, because he just Knew she was like this and stayed with her anyway. that’s the moral dilemma there

she didn’t betray his trust as much as she met his expectations, even if perhaps it didn’t happen quite the way he imagined it would. 

anon: since we're talkin' abt bloodwater ballad can i just say that i fucking love it and every day is a "listen to bloodwater ballad on repeat" day bc it's so beautifully constructed. and the lyrics are amazing and i keep finding cool little things abt them that link up with eric's story. "i fell asleep first in the bloodcutting comfort of jaws" is lakjlkdfj. "hands and feet bound to my heart" the SYMBOLISM. re-reading ur lyrics, i could dissect every line for the SYMBOLISM. it's just so amazing ;;;;

WAILS LOUDLY? i really honest to g-d cannot fathom the idea that anyone likes it enough to listen to it more than once like jfhbdnm i genuinely forget that i even wrote it and then someone will say something and it Smacks me and i just!!!! my heart is so big

PLEASE FEEL FREE TO DISSECT THE LINES AS YOU PLEASE that’s what i wrote them for that’s the purpose! i’m that pepe silvia board writer who packs everything i can into specific word choices, i love solving puzzles so i like building them for other people to solve, too. if you ever wanted to write it out or something you could make a lil draft and link me i’d love to see an interpretation that’s not my own it’d be super cool! no pressure if it was just an expression jhvbknm i’m just. the english major in me Ascends when i get to talk about this stuff 

i’m really just glad you like it!!!! thank you ;-; !

anon: im listening to bloodwater ballad for the first time because of the people talking about it and... I'm crying thank you this is agonising

THANK YOU aaaahhhh, glad to have been of service >:’-) join me in hell i never stop crying about the delanos

EDIT: (note, also: i’m one of ron’s alters, hi. don’t mind my syntax.)

@v0idsign: so long as we’re talking abt bloodwater ballad i gotta toss in that i Regularly get it stuck in my head, i sing it in the shower and its one of a couple tunes that my brain defaults to when brain says its Humming Time. firesorrow good Also extremely good and on the listen on repeat/sing in shower list!!

tossing this in here for posterity, especially since it was a submission. this is real sweet of you, ron’s super happy to hear that. they do have good echolalia beats. tunes for autism by a guy who really likes to hum repetitive things, honestly.

EDIT 2: (hi i’m back hGJBKN)

anon: If we're complimenting bloodwater ballad, then I have to say your voice is beautiful. I'm not smart enough to really overanalyze the lyrics but I really like it. You wouldn't imagine how excited I was when I found out about firesorrow girl. I have been understanding of your fic which I forgot the name of, and I quite enjoy that too.

aaaaaaaa thank you so much ;; you’re so sweet! sometimes i get nervous about my voice because it’s really rusty lately since i don’t really take good care of it but it’s nice to be reassuredjhbkn and !!!! just cries on the floore

[gerrydelano]

1) been playing firesorrow girl+bloodwater ballad on loop and it’s. *chefs kiss* i love both of them n have links saved so i can find them whenever i want to listen (which is Often) 2) more calming music rec this time - sleeping at last’s atlas: space album, and “shark” and “my friends” by oh wonder - i haven’t listened to the latter artist as much, but all i’ve heard is 👌 3) take care of yourself n i hope that life becomes kinder to you n yours 🧡🧡 stay safe man -🎧

01. wails? pleading emoji? but bolded? that’s so sweet of you thank you ;_; i’m glad you like them even after all this time

02. g-d sleeping at last yessssssss also oh my g-d. thank you for shark especially; you have NO idea how apt this is for me and seraf’s gerrymike bullshit jhbkn we actively have a repeated motif that just goes “sharks. inertia.” as kind of a representation of how they both are the type of people who just. have to keep moving, for various reasons, in order to survive. and if you’re this familiar with bloodwater ballad maybe you can guess why gerry associates with the word :’-) ouch! but also the rest of the lyrics actually literally just match so much and i’m! in pain, in the best way. thank you!

03. and one more thank you, i appreciate this<3 you’re very sweet to me, thank you for being patient even though it takes me a long time to reply sometimes nowadays. i hope the new year greets you with the kindness you deserve, too  🧡

[gerrydelano]

okay, since people have asked, i’m gonna start fresh and take it from the top explaining my creative process for music! very long post under the cut.

gonna try to structure this by:

basic mechanics (some of which already outlined here but restated)

how i did firesorrow girl

how i’m doing bloodwater ballad (minimal spoilers)

things they have in common/what my apparent signature is based on now two songs that follow similar patterns

so here we go! 2.5k words of infodumping! what else is new lol. OKAY! SO:

BASIC MECHANICS

the key word here is improvisation. i am vocally trained but it’s been a very long time since i’ve studied or even done a single actual vocal warmup or anything. i’m actually pretty foolhardy with my voice! i also don’t play any instruments, could never read sheet music (thanks dyscalculia), and have very limited knowledge of audacity (the only program available to me). 

so, everything i do is completely by ear. i don’t know what notes are what! i go into this blind every single time and just... make it up as i go. which is not something i can advise other people to do because i don’t even know how i do it! just happens. sometimes i surprise myself ngl!

so okay, disclaimers out the way. here’s my process in pieces.

WRITING

get randomly inspired with a single lyric

for firesorrow girl it happened in the car on the way home from work

for bloodwater ballad i woke up at 1am out of a dead sleep, got this ask, immediately spent the next 4 hours writing lyrics

PICK A REALLY IMAGE HEAVY THEME. RUN WITH IT. RUN SO FAR.

write a verse out of it and start humming to see if something sticks

if it works out, make the verse into two parts and then go for the chorus

repeat that convention one more time

bridge has to deviate/usually has More Words

add another two part verse and chorus

honestly, it’s like writing poetry! once you pick the language convention and symbolism you want to use, you just have to worry about syllabic measurements and whether things can line up more or less symmetrically. rhyming is relative, but i tend to try and have fun with it.

sometimes i come up with phrases and images i REALLY want to use, jot them down in the bottom of the note, and try to find ways to rephrase them that will fit in with the melody in my head once i’m actually tweaking the whole song. sometimes they can’t be used, but sometimes you come up with something even MORE intense just because you had to swap some words around and do math.

i really just Hyperfocus. for each song, i sat and wrote the lyrics in 2-4 hours and was finished, only ended up tweaking them a little bit after testing out a full recording and realizing certain pieces fell flat or didn’t feel right in my mouth.

RECORDING

this is where you throw things at me!

i’ve recorded in places such as my bed, my recliner, my table, and my bookstore when it’s so empty no one can yell at me for singing.

i start, obviously, with the base vocal!

i try to do this in one shot. usually, if i ever try again because i think i can do it better, it just sounds worse. so, if there are any spaces that are individually not good, i redo just those bits and workshop them together during mixing.

then it’s time for harmonies!

i put my headphones in to listen to the track on my laptop as reference

record clips on my ipad under the cover of the day 

which have been a blanket, a tablecloth, a robe, etc.

it’s suffering. but it muffles outside noise so i do recommend trying to do something like that if you record things. that’s how RQ did TMA at first so we are OUT HERE. BOOTLEGGING.

i save the clip to my google drive

i try to give them names that’ll tell me what the fuck they are but it does get very messy. i am here to just. suffer.

convert them from ,mp4 to .wav with the google converter

save it to my folder

which are also extremely messy. i try to organize them by song now. i sure had a lot of cleaning to do.

drop it into audacity, fuck around, go wild

MIXING

and THIS is where you full on murder me with your bare hands.

i have no idea what the fuck i’m doing. none. no idea at all. nothing.

every single thing i do is just. pure improv. pure chance. it’s awful.

one of the tricks i use liberally is reverb. makes things smoother, a little more eerie, which for the last two songs i’ve done is actually useful.

sometimes i have to use bass and treble to increase and decrease the volume of a specific piece, because using that little left right thing on the side of each track does NOT WORK! just bass and treble it!

i choose something to keep in the background, usually a sample of something because i still do not know how to play instruments.

but usually, i just rely on my own voice and just, overlap a bunch of harmonies accordingly. it’s hard work to not be overwhelming, sometimes i drown myself out and have to stop complicating things so much!

in terms of playing around with the clips of harmony and small melody deviations, i time everything by hand

i don’t know how to make it measured evenly and line up exactly with the stuff above it like automatically. i have to literally wiggle the tracks by hand and make them work.

but at least when i edit the bits, i solo them alongside an empty track that is the length of the whole song so that they’re in the right placement if i ever have to put them back in it so i don’t have to WIGGLE THEM EVER AGAIN

the mixing goes differently depending on the songs so i’ll elaborate on this when i get to each one.

OKAY. g-d. fuck. neck hurty. okay here we go.

FIRESORROW GIRL

as we know, i wrote, recorded, and mixed this song in a total of four days. i'd never actually fully written and produced a song before, in this context, so it was a complete shot in the dark and a whim and WHEW.

i definitely learned my lesson about recording music through the mistakes i made with that, though. which were:

i labeled my files miserably. like. i don’t know what’s what in the folder a lot of the time and i’m scared to look at it ever again

it had about 16 tracks, MANY of which are scattered and unorganized little snatches of miscellaneous harmonies that i lined up by hand and would be terrified to mix down into one track or anything. COMPLETE travesty.

i used a 15 second “chinese guitar” sample i got from a free website. literally just one little loopy boy. most good songs do NOT just use the same sample looped like 25 times! it was very basic and i wish i had the ability to give it some variation, but i tried to compensate with the vocals.

i used plenty of reverb for the extra church feeling, because that was part of the lyrical motif i chose and so i wanted the actual music to match.

it actually sounds very cool a capella! but since i didn’t hum the ENTIRE way through the silences are awkward, so i wouldn’t post it.

her basic structure is this:

5 minutes, ballad (a wholeass musical narrative)

one loop of the guitar as the intro

first (four line) verse in only the base vocal

but introduce a soft hum 3/4 of the way through

second verse continues to use the singular hum throughout

but on the second line, introduce a higher harmony to the hum

take it away again

chorus was very simple for this; just two lines

next two verses have BOTH sets of hums consistently throughout

until, of course, i removed the LOW harmony in some places to emphasize certain words so that you could hear them better with less obscurity and weight! a fun trick. it’s another thing i did on the second line of a verse, because reintroducing the low hum on the third was HOO.

also introduced the first counter lyric - “love made sure it hurt” which extended into the chorus as a longer note, for Flavour 

chorus again, but now the phrasing is different

lean directly into the bridge

introducing a bunch of miscellaneous random harmonies on certain phrases i wanted to emphasize

but ANOTHER trick i did there was REMOVE the hums on “a simple human friend”

...before letting it ALL pile back on for “she can’t burn” - the third chorus with different phrasing

fifth and sixth verses introduce the famous counter lyrics

it’s an entirely new voice doing entirely different things; it’s agnes speaking over the chorus that was telling her story for her, disagreeing with it, telling it to stop

“i am not your prayer.”

this counter lyric makes it into a dialogue, not just a hymn.

let EVERYTHING come down on the very final chorus, added even MORE harmony bits (there’s a very high one right at the very end that i wonder sometimes if anyone noticed)

taper off at the end by shedding layers one by one

faded the guitar loop slowly

reduced it to the two hums that have been consistent throughout

after they both hum one full round together over no guitar, i removed the high one so that there is just one half a round left with ONLY the low hum

which was intended to evoke the image of just... the last person standing in the echoing cathedral after the choir has filed out, still humming the song by themselves.

and there you have THAT. holy mother of G-D i have so many words okay i am so sorry. so now, without further ado:

BLOODWATER BALLAD

i really did just wake up in the middle of the night and go eric? eric???? eric???? time to write an ocean ballad.

you wouldn’t necessarily tie eric to the ocean, but all i needed was one word from him and i was off my shits. absolutely just out of my mind cuckoo bananas.

and i couldn’t rightly call it a shanty because it’s not a work song! it’s not encouraging or loud and shouting. it’s basically a reverse murder ballad. a murdered ballad. it’s very haunting, and my use of pirate phrases is intended to cause some significant amount of pain!

[pauses to look at two ships passing and all the nautical themes in there.] [looks in the other direction towards my 3 novel series about the ocean] [looks at the island i live on] no i don’t have a very specific bias. who are you

anyway, i’m not going to spoil the lyrics and all, but i can still explain the tone and my process because i’m pretty sure that you’re all going to die regardless of what you think you’re expecting. the actual words and the harmonies are Raw.

to start, though, it’s only 9 tracks so far!!!! we just have:

the background ambiance

the tempo SFX

base vocal

base vocal 2 (NOT a copy paste of the first one, but a whole second recording with just enough differences in some inflections that you can Tell it’s different)

low chorus harmonies

very short burst of high chorus harmonies on just the first lines

verse harmonies

verse hum,

some ghostly ohs. for maximum haunting flavour

it’s VERY compact and neat, i’m cleaning up my files as i go, i’m doing my best to NOT give myself angina. i don’t actually plan on adding more to it than that other than some bridge harmonies, and HOPEFULLY a bit of percussion if i can find a way to make it work! i am pretty pleased with what i’ve managed to do in the last two days, i actually really hope i can finish it tomorrow.

so, his basic structure is this:

10 second introduction of background ambiance and the tempo SFX

which i really do think you’re going to lose your minds over because it’s a very specific, evocative sound that makes my heart hurt

first verse is isolated for the first word only

i introduce the hum here straight after that, but it’s very gentle

second verse is the same

until i end the very last words with the introduction of the second base vocal track, to emphasize. Something.

two-part chorus, each part four lines

every chorus in the song begins with the same first line, but all the rest following are different every single time. MUCH more complicated than firesorrow girl’s two lines with drawn out notes

low harmony for ALL choruses

but the line that repeats gets an extra special high harmony on JUST that

third and fourth verse:

have the hum througout

introduce another high harmony with a slight lyrical deviation

i isolate the vocals and cut the harmonies on a Single Line that i want to absolutely SLAUGHTER you in one shot so ha :’)

second chorus, completely different words (probably my favorite one, ngl)

the ghostly “ohs” are spaced in between the chorus sporadically

they alternate between a clear oh and a radio static oh.

first chorus: clear, ghost, ghost

second chorus: ghost, clear, ghost

third chorus: ghost, clear, omitted

no i won’t tell you the significance there. it’s just the pattern that happened :-)

i am still working on the bridge! but it’s a four part (four lines per part) bridge, too, with a deviated melody

i’m going to add a low hum or SOMETHING to it, but that’s a problem for tomorrow ron

what i DO have is the two layered base vocal tracks. which hoho.

i leave the vocals layered when he’s singing about a specific person. then i cut bits from the second track (the more intense one) and leave the soft original base track to sing solo when he sings about someone else.

no i won’t tell you who! or what it means!!!! it’s just gonna hurt you as much 

fifth and sixth verse have the same high harmonies as the third and fourth

final chorus, even Crazier words, introducing another character

the omitted Oh in this one is to create an empty space before his final words

the low harmony’s counter lyric is FUCK WILD

and i leave the layering on for Reasons :)

ends by total vocal cutoff, leaving only the ambiance and the tempo SFX

So Yeah! I Can’t Wait To See What You Guys Think!

this, however, has forced me to confront some things about myself.

SUMMARY

this bitch can only write long ballads! what!!!!

the basic composition of both of these songs is very similar both because i have limited options seeing as i can’t play instruments/don’t know how to use programs, and they’re the best way for me to communicate stories.

so, my signature is apparently “5 minute ballad about a tragic side character that tells their story/communicates to someone directly at the end in a determined way that we the listener knows does not amount to success.”

who the fuck knew my style would be so specific once i got around to actually making music haha. like really there are definitely noticeable differences between them and they do not even REMOTELY sound the same, but we follow this structure:

two four-line verses

chorus (the major structural difference lies here in two vs four lines)

two four-line verses

chorus

four four-line parts for the bridge

two four-line verses

chorus

tapered off ending

layered hum harmonies. harmohums. love it.

so we have the religious cathedral song vibe of firesorrow girl, and the Ghosts On A Ship In The Rain vibe of bloodwater ballad. i find it kind of fun that while i follow these similar guidelines, they’re literally. fire and water. completely opposite in theme despite the similarities in how their stories end. which is to say, in death and with the people who controlled their lives speaking over them. 

there are major differences in those endings, though. you’ll see what i mean when you hear it.

okay i need to stop i am so amazed if you read this far wow thanks LOL i just. it helps to write this stuff out and make sense of myself tbh!!!!

[gerrydelano]

Hi! I just wanna say that Bloodwater Ballad is so amazing, I've been listening to it on repeat for about 2 days straight? It's really good, I especially love the line 'Dead men have only one tale', because that's such an Eric thing! The only surviving piece of him is his statement. Also, I was wondering if it was supposed to be sung to Gertrude? Since he told her to find Gerry, and in the song you wrote "I have one request of you now... find my son". Great song! The vocals are haunting.

ahhh WOW maybe you’re the reason it’s got so many plays so fast! thank you so much, i’m glad you like it enough to play it more than once in the first place!

also, yes, it’s DEFINITELY directed at gertrude! it’s more or less a retelling of his statement, and the final chorus is more or less the discussion that follows afterward. the only line that isn’t directed Right to her was “forgive me, forgive me” during the section where he’s lamenting about gerry, it breaks the flow to talk to him for just a second.

but once it says, “infamy / how do you remember me?” that’s when it’s supposed to get more clearly like oh shit he’s talking to gertrude! and the end is him not just Requesting she find gerry, but demanding that she do something to help him, do something better than mary. 

“don’t you dare let him drown (don’t you dare be the reason he drowns)”

he didn’t trust gertrude! and was delighting in having just a modicum of power over her by withholding information, etc. that last request was supposed to carry the tone of a threat more than anything, despite how... really, what could he have done to ensure she’d do what he asked? whole song was laced with him saying what he Wanted for his son, and we as the listeners know that absolutely none of it ends up happening. we know gertrude completely betrays that request and ends up repeating the cycle with full knowledge of what all of her actions meant.

shit hurted! perhaps i have feelings about eric and gerry. sorry for the infodump AHHH thank you for listening, and asking!