SKELETON KISS
"Skeleton Kiss", like most of the songs off this album, came to me late at night, during a relatively sad point in life. It incorporated a lot of techniques I had never used in original music, and it's the first song I wrote since graduating from Musicians Institute - almost five years prior. I tracked the rhythm guitar directly into GarageBand, then started messing around with the drum engine, until the chorus melody started to form. Once that all settled, I wrote a quick harmonizing guitar solo, knocked out some lyrics (which ended up being about a completely different sadness), then left the track alone for a good number of months. It was September 2020.
In December 2020, I bought a new Mac Mini with Logic and thought it was about time to get off my ass and put my music degree to good use.
By the time I wrote the lead parts, bass line, melody, and re-tracked everything, I should've gotten right to work on tracking vocals, but I am a coward and not a trained singer, so I talked myself out of it. I chose, instead, to work on "Candlelight" (a track I hope to release... soon).
Late September 2021, I reached out to a former teacher of mine who had started his own recording studio - he was absolutely slaying the game, and I was a decent enough student that he agreed to work with me. Bless up, Kats.
Recording vocals is very hard work - but working with someone like Kats was immensely helpful. The guy knows his craft, but he also knows how to make it fun and extremely low pressure. That last part is super important, because I beat myself up consistently. The second or third session we had was for writing/recording the vocal harmonies. Not easy. Not my best work. Took a very long time to hit those, but he was so patient.
And, obviously, I wasn't going to settle for software drums, so Kats referred me to his buddy, George. George has played on both tracks so far, and he is an absolute monster on drums.
So, right under this post is the very first instrumental copy of "Skeleton Kiss". There's no lead guitar over the verse, because that rhythm part is the first part I wrote for the song, and I really didn't want to cover it up. The original effect I used was a Tape Delay on my Line 6 stompbox from, like, 2009. The decay on the echo was really chilling and lonely sounding, which reminded me of that isolation you feel when you play Metroid. (A lot of my musical influence comes from video games.) What I found really strange was how the song ended up being 3/4 time signature, with a 175 bpm. Not easy stuff for a maiden voyage.