A Christmas Timeline Rock Opera 2011
A Christmas Timeline rock opera with a Live Studio Audience minus the opera.
Art chasing sound.
The band is me. I have been a musician since age 7 (i'm 44 now), and that's pretty much all I did. By age 32 I was working in an average of 6 bands at a time and still practicing 36 hours a week. That's when I got nerve damage in both my arms and couldn't use them for 5 years...not for eating, lifting, playing...anything. 2 surgeries and 3 more years recoup, and I am back in short bursts. I write and track everything in 1 take as I can't play for long.
Guitar is my main instrument (studied it the most), but have been playing drums and bass since age 10, and have actually worked the most as a drummer. I can't really use my left arm much so i drum with my fingers. It gives it a unique sound. (Don't worry, it's not wimpy... I can still break sticks!)
Story behind the song
Merry Christmas to you, and yes, it's that time again. Time for what you ask?... Time for the annual Reiss family Christmas song, that's what!
Here is the spiel; life is humming along at a pretty busy pace now, and Kandy is in school getting her degree (yay Kandy!). I hadn't been able to put that much thought into the Annual Christmas Song, and the thought had even occurred to me to re-release the very first Christmas tune, which had a very small family audience. Weak Sauce. That would be lame (and lazy).
I ended up going with an homage to that first Christmas song in that it was in 6/4, was driven mostly by a string ensemble, and had an odd rhythmic hiccup. The original Christmas song had my thoughts at the time on Christmas, the meaning and value of life etc. edited, pitch shifted, bit rate tweaked to the point that they are immortalized in my and Kandy's vocabulary. “People like when you do things fast.” Kandy is laughing right now…
So, the song had not yet been started when Nate Jones e-mailed me a link to an audio illusion.
http://youtu.be/ugriWSmRxcM
That inspired me to create a few audio illusions of my own that I thought I could become immune to. I could not.
With that audio illusion idea in my head, and a 6/4 time signature mandated by the homage committee, I set out to work in utilizing many of the factors your brain uses to reset its clock. These include simple series of notes offset by a large jump in pitch followed by a very similar pattern of notes, and altered repetitions of sequence phrases. The idea is that you would have something like an Escher painting in which it keeps dropping a beat, but never runs out of beats to drop. I did this in MIDI and figured that by the time I was done composing I would have the phrase memorized and it would be easy to play to the track. Not true.
As a Christmas gift bonus, I decided to do my first drum solo ever in my life and include it in this year's ditty. Even as a 14-year-old kid in the garage, I never did a drum solo. I was always playing beats or grooves and wanted to play songs. No big deal, how hard could it be? Right? I figured I could just do a drum solo free-form to the metronome after the song had ended and copy and paste it into the drum solo section. Not true. It had to follow that fecockta rhythm pattern. I even had to play the groove that came in after the drum solo in sections because, well, it's impossible. At least for me it is.
The frustration with the difficulty that the drum part presented, which, with my full knowledge, I had heaped upon myself, led to a sanity restoration project. This was nothing more than an unaccompanied, unrestrained bash through of the part two section of the song. I just wanted to play something straight fast and simple on the drums. 185 BPM seemed to be a cathartic tempo choice. I tried for a second take but my arms were vanquished, and I was no longer frustrated. So, take one it is. The bass track followed and next was the organ. Marc Jefferson engineered while I recorded the guitar tracks, and Landon Ellis lent his voice and wit. Kandy handled the passing of time brilliantly with awesome haunting vocals.
Since this is a very present-day version of the original Reiss Christmas song, I figured the "Passage of Time" theme would be appropriate. The beginning of the song would contain the Christmas story as told by Luke, and the end of the song would contain the plastic Walmart wonders that are so ubiquitous this time of year.
And what about the words in between? Well, they are in between…
Enjoy and have a very Merry Christmas this year!
Love, The Reisses
Lyrics
Luke 2:1 – 7
the passage of time
seems to unwind
arms intertwined
falling over
time passes slowly now
yet time passes fast somehow
did it fade slowly then
we always wonder when
when did it change
from free to exchange
what did we gain
falling forward
time passes slowly now
yet time passes fast somehow
did it fade slowly then
we always wonder when
enter an age
watch progress on stage
getting in line and feeding your face
Black Friday is coming, camp out so your friends hold your place, oh boy!
O come, O come rejoice and sing
for unto us a gift is given freely
O come, O come, let's sing along
rejoicing with bells on a chip in a snow globe,
a chip in a snow globe, a chip in a snow globe
shoppers come unite with us and sing this Christmas year
