Ascent: Hiding From Reality
We're starting the new year off with a new version an old song.... "Hiding From Reality" is the the sixth song from the upcoming Ascent CD (our new year's resolution is to have the CD completed by June). It's a song I wrote way back in 1995, and it's a very personal song for me. We decided to include it on our CD because of the strong response this sad, sad song continues to get whenever we play it live - and we've been playing it live, off and on, for the past dozen years or so.
For a limited time, you can click here to download "Hiding From Reality." After that, you can hear it by going to AscentMusicOnline.com. And then, of course, we hope you'll buy our CD in June!
This is probably the most effective song I ever wrote about what it felt like to grow up with my family. Songwriting can work like therapy for me, and this is a prime example. Keep in mind that the truth is subjective, and the world described in the song is seen through the eyes of a confused kid. The meaning of it is perhaps slightly less cloaked in metaphor than usual for me, and that's why people get it. But you're never really going to get a plain narrative from me, so you'll have to figure it out on your own!
Musically, the song is very simple, yet I'm still not sure what key it's really in! It somehow manages to establish a tonal center, despite some jarring chord choices that don't belong. I don't know why it even works. I suppose it's because the unresolved nature of the music fits perfectly with the unresolved lyrics.
Christina did a wonderful job of making this song her own. I hear both vulnerability and strength in her performance. I've never really written melodies from the perspective of a singer, so props to her for making it soulful and "singerly." The effects on the vocals were subtly manipulated throughout the song using Cakewalk's "Vocal Strip" and "Perfect Space" VSTs. The reverse echo was created manually by reversing the track, adding reverb, and reversing again.
It's fitting that the guitar I played on the recording is the same one I wrote the song on, all those years ago. My trusty Ovation Elite is now over eighteen years old, and still play it almost every day.
You'll notice that this song is mixed and mastered to sound much brighter than many of our earlier recordings. We're very interested in your thoughts on how it sounds. My own personal new year's resolution is "better mastering." I'm in the process of remastering the songs recorded for the CD so far. By comparing the dominant frequencies in our recordings against other professional recordings that we admire, we realized that we could get a lot brighter and warmer. The remaster of "What the Crows Know" (which you'll hear sometime soon) sounds like a brand new song! Your feedback would help us know whether we're moving in the right direction.
For a limited time, you can click here to download "Hiding From Reality." After that, you can hear it by going to AscentMusicOnline.com. And then, of course, we hope you'll buy our CD in June!
This is probably the most effective song I ever wrote about what it felt like to grow up with my family. Songwriting can work like therapy for me, and this is a prime example. Keep in mind that the truth is subjective, and the world described in the song is seen through the eyes of a confused kid. The meaning of it is perhaps slightly less cloaked in metaphor than usual for me, and that's why people get it. But you're never really going to get a plain narrative from me, so you'll have to figure it out on your own!
Musically, the song is very simple, yet I'm still not sure what key it's really in! It somehow manages to establish a tonal center, despite some jarring chord choices that don't belong. I don't know why it even works. I suppose it's because the unresolved nature of the music fits perfectly with the unresolved lyrics.
Christina did a wonderful job of making this song her own. I hear both vulnerability and strength in her performance. I've never really written melodies from the perspective of a singer, so props to her for making it soulful and "singerly." The effects on the vocals were subtly manipulated throughout the song using Cakewalk's "Vocal Strip" and "Perfect Space" VSTs. The reverse echo was created manually by reversing the track, adding reverb, and reversing again.
It's fitting that the guitar I played on the recording is the same one I wrote the song on, all those years ago. My trusty Ovation Elite is now over eighteen years old, and still play it almost every day.
You'll notice that this song is mixed and mastered to sound much brighter than many of our earlier recordings. We're very interested in your thoughts on how it sounds. My own personal new year's resolution is "better mastering." I'm in the process of remastering the songs recorded for the CD so far. By comparing the dominant frequencies in our recordings against other professional recordings that we admire, we realized that we could get a lot brighter and warmer. The remaster of "What the Crows Know" (which you'll hear sometime soon) sounds like a brand new song! Your feedback would help us know whether we're moving in the right direction.
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