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it was supposed to be better than this

by baby giraffe

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1.
you wanted something to talk about? the tide it took you when it went out. there was a crowd and "bright atmosphere" and they talked about you for weeks they talked about you for weeks they talked about it, talking all tough, i tried to call their bluff. you asked for someone to swim for you an ocean painted the deepest hue "you know there's no one like that round here, don't cha?" and they talked about it for weeks they talked about it for weeks they talked about it, talking all tough i tried to call their bluff you asked for someone to pray for you go on and make the arrangements too you get worked like a dog 'round here and they talked about it for weeks they talked about it for weeeeeks they talked about it, talking all tough i tried to call their bluff you want to know what happens next? you drown in rum and you disconnect "you've made quite a fool of us tonight" and they'll talk about us for weeks they'll talk about us for weeks they'll talk about us talking all tough, i'm going to fuck them all up
2.
sure 03:57
you caught me fading away jumpshot-fell-back and astray and on your mobile phone do you still hear the delay, decay tell me can you hear my delay, decay hear it as i'm fading away, per se so where does all the echo go sure enough we'll never know it's getting hard to portray a signal path to convey and in your lonely home do you still hear my delay, decay? hear me as i'm fading away, per se so where does all the echo go? sure enough we'll never know maybe we'll never ever ever know we'll probably never ever ever know i'm sure we'll never ever ever know but every time i slip away i'm sure.
3.
lemonade 03:48
we've been waiting waiting so long waiting for you to arrive and tell us how we've all been wrong you're an actor, in a bad role. it's some miscast , mistaken, misled, misspent misdirected shit but it's happening happening for you it's a feel good, smash hit dirty dirty dirty fucking shame you're that lemonade lemonade you're that lemonade lemonade and colgate toothpaste taste bitter lemonade lemonade you're that lemonade lemonade and colgate toothpaste taste i've been hoping also moping moping walking sopping wet trying to flag down a streetcar named regret i've been acting in a bad way it's the storm cloud, drink up, get down finders fee i don't want to pay don't want to pay for your lemonade lemonade lemonade and colgate toothpaste taste bitter lemonade lemonade for your lemonade lemonade and colgate toothpaste taste
4.
sit back and wait for it it's happening you haven't quite found your fit round here. sit back and have a drink or two or three or four or five or more sit back and wait for it it's happening your whole world has gone to shit oh yeah sit back and have a drink or two or three or four or five or more so who do you know round here? its who that you know round here so tell me who do you know round here? it's who that you know, round here.

about

The last person I was regularly writing music with (late Sunday afternoons under Pauls Boutique (not that one)) passed a few years ago now, and partnered with the global pandemic and moving away to a new city without personal connections or community, I've spent a lot of time processing what my own output feels like, past, present and future.

It's made me shift my "writing process" to one that feels more fulfilling as a "songwriter".

I've always been able to add sprinkles of whatever here and there to a band or "build" an album but never been comfortable doing the song "thing".

Maybe 90% of the Baby Giraffe material that exists was built layer by layer in a DAW (a daw is a wonderful computer program that would let me stack a million takes of myself noodling on top of myself building on top of myself stacking upon the mercy of RAM and processing power) without any consideration for replicating it "live".

This is fun. It can be like throwing a bunch of colours on a canvas, it's nearly unlimited and lets you pull from any source and match any inspiration you have in your head and make it a real thing you can listen back to and show people and if you're good enough at, make a living doing so.

It's a sort of magic. Or mostly technology. But entire popular albums are made like a collage, piecing together parts of existing art and it's often beautiful.

Through wondering if I'll ever regularly make music with another human again (I would have gone to "jam" one or two nights a week since most of my teens and through my twenties) I've increasingly felt like my "back catalog" is unplayable. Or "unreal". This might be ridiculous but its my *thing* now.

This bothered me and I went into the last two years writing "songs" as songs-first.
This is super common for a lot of musicians but it wasn't for me.
It's progressive change in small increments but this is the type of progress I'm drawn to.

These songs were written within the limitation of a drum machine and a "groovebox" / sequencer synth. The sequencer has 8 tracks and enough variation in presets that I've been comfortable building a "backing band" from it.

I took a lot of encouragement from knowing that the best jesus and mary chain album was rounded out by sequenced drums and bass.

The bass parts are all programmed from a keyboard. I used a fingerstyle bass preset even though I'm kinda better with a pick IRL.

The strings and pads and saxophone and organs were all also initially played by me into a sequencer.

I was bothered by listening back to work I’d done when I was younger and realising I really don't know what the drum sample I used was from, or that it exists only as a MIDI scroll somewhere on an unopenable garageband project. Does a painter care what brand of paint they used twenty years ago? Is it a bad thing if they do?

I suppose the answer to this, and I often see it bragged, is to not listen back to your old work, but I feel it's important to see the growth.

I toyed with the idea of "finishing" these songs and again questioned what that would entail.

They would certainly sound "better" and maybe be more "enjoyable".
But I would again, eventually just lose them to time and forget how they were played or what VST makes "that noise" and feel unattached to them, the feeling of ownership fades.
It's hard to feel that incremental progress from something I don't completely understand.

So I approached these like I was in a "jam room" (I know this is a regional term but I cant call what we used to do "rehearsal"). I built out what I could on the groovebox and the drum machine and I frustratingly sequenced these so I can hit START on the sequencer and write along to it. Like I'm jamming with people again. Selfishly, without external input but nonetheless it felt fulfilling and once those parts were sorted I could focus on writing a song, with chord changes and lyrics that mean(t) something to me and make sense.

Again, there's no claim of reinventing the wheel here. Imagine how much of an asshole you'd have to be to have that opinion on your own work. To me, this feels more like I'm finally watching that wheel spin. What else do you want it to do? I'm good with this.

This "EP" is the recording of a jam. Everything is "live" thru cables in a room in our apartment into my mixer, into a consumer grade YAMAHA (KX-W282) cassette deck. To a tape. Then into my computer into a wav file.

To be a bit more technical there is one mono output from my little Roland cube amp for my guitar, one mono in from a sm57 with some mixer verb, one stereo in from a mc707 groovebox, one stereo in from the tr8s drum machine. Headphone out to the cassette deck. Ride the red levels at peak. Half digital half dumb raw.

I wanted these songs to sound like they do when I'm making them. I'd never ever "finish" them if I tried to take them “further”. The words are there and I tried to make them more audible than previous BG albums and the music, well that's how it sounds and as good as I can honestly play it while singing at the same time. You book me to play somewhere, it's going to sound like this but with people talking over it.

The album art and title inspo is a piece my wife made when she was younger in school, it hangs on our bedroom wall. I love it.

this is probably A LOT, but thanks for reading, imagine if this was the *press release" for this album? I used to read a bunch of press releases back when I worked in Community radio and that shit is never not corny.
I wrote this sitting under a beautiful moon in Lyon Park on York road, October 6th, 2022.
We're experiencing a "second summer" right now and I couldn't ask for anything more. Have a good night.

credits

released October 7, 2022

michael k newton - all.

written over 2022, recorded on October 5th, 2022 at home.

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baby giraffe Guelph, Ontario

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