“Now and then”

Up until this point I had written music from a place of rage or pain. I wrote this when I felt like I’d been purified of all my negative self doubt and saw how all the bad things lead to something good.

The song serves as a recap ending as well as an introduction for the cycle to continue on. I continually listen to Steel Souls as a self reflective tool to give me an idea of where I am in my self reflection in my journey. When I listen to “Then and now” I get a a sense of gratitude. It’s good I didn’t have had 50 guitar students when trying to make this album because I wouldn’t have played the guitar or had the time to write this. It’s good that I’m spending a lot of time volunteering even if it’s frustrating or costly. Maybe my silence and distance are actually ways of being empathetic to those that are sick and or hurtful to me.

To sonically show this point I used my first nylon string guitar I got for my birthday and my new Ibanez Euphoria Steel String guitar for the music parts and tuned them down 5 semi tones. I wanted to show how what seemed like a bad guitar when I first got it turned out awesome. I didn’t want the acoustic nylon because I wanted to play metal and now I realize that metal can be played with any instrument. The introduction and operatic sections have the same guitar part only in the beginning it is played half time and the second time in chorus it is played double time. The bridge section guitar part is based on Ozzy Osbourne’s “Life Won’t Wait” and has a latin push for the drumset symbolizing to keep pushing forward to higher ideals and self-actualization.

The introduction vocals are actually me sort of impersonating a mad scientist, that I did sporadically in my Iphone voice memos. It’s an homage to Alice Cooper’s “Feed My Frankestein” and “Welcome to My Nightmare”. The vocals for this song fluctuate in the beginning. I only screamed the positive words in the introduction part. So I would say “My Loss” and then scream “My Gain”. I kept that up until I got to “When I think about it all the Same” at the end of the chorus. This symbolized the dissolution stage of the process where we separate our thoughts and identities to then refine them in calcination stage of alchemy. In the refrains, I sing “Do you see the duality?” and I scream over the top to show the paradox of how I wanted to learn how to scream and ultimately learned how to sing. In the operatic section, I thought about in Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie, how Freddie says the band has to think bigger how they should do something different, a song the labels thought was too long or too weird, and now it’s a massive success. So an homage to Freddie as well as my friend Matt Sylvia who always said “Tell me something good” and has B + (be positive) tattoo’d on his hand, I put that line in. I think both of them and their free and determined spirits were a big impact on me going for it and judging myself later.

I’d say the most memorable part of the song for me was doing all the operatic sections parts. I think it was interesting to realize that I had the range and the ear to do harmonies with myself, but not with other people. I think that it was a cool realization that I realized in order to be harmonious with others I have to be harmonious with myself.

The was a resentment I had towards overly complicated metal music because I felt like that music isn’t metal, its like prog jazz with the technology of metal guitars and amps so I stripped out all the technology and made a heavy and simple breakdown with an acoustic guitar. The ending transition of that breakdown sounds like the breakdown in “One” by Metallica which I thought would be an homage to becoming one with myself as I then sing about “Seeing the duality”. Just trying to mix opposites together like the alchemists turning lead into gold.

Overall once the album was down with this last track. I decided I would post about it on my Facebook and give it away to anyone that left a heart emoji. This was one of the songs that my friend sent me 5$ for as a token of appreciation saying. The production and composition of this song is amazing. That ironically was the last song I thought people would like, but I think it goes to show as an artist the monetary value is up to the fans, so I should just keep making the music that rewards me spiritually.