no heaven

Tuesday, I released a new song, “No Heaven.” It’s a bluesy, rock-pop song about a man falling in love with his enchantress. As I promised (although, it’s an easily breakable promise), I’m going to discuss the lyrics and music in a blog post.

Lyrics

The melody of the chorus was the first thing that came to me with this song, as is usually the case. Very close second was the lyric, “No I don’t believe in heaven…” (followed by “somethin’…somethin’…”). I wrote the chorus very quickly after that. It opens the song and then repeats four times:

So from the beginning it was a love song, but I wanted it to have a little bit different flavor than where that chorus was initially heading. A bit more playful. So I brought in some of that classic, “she put a spell on me” magic to the song. I thought of the verse as narrating the man falling under the witch’s spell, while the chorus was the singing while entranced. “I don’t believe in heaven but if I did it would be you” sounds like something a man might say if wholly under the spell. Then the verses came along (and I am from the south so I claim authenticity with my dialect choices here):

Combine that with a little piano bridge as the man loses his last bit of whatever resistance he had to the spell:

Music

I decided to go with a blues rock vibe for the meat of the song, even though the lyrics and the vocal delivery, especially of the chorus, is much more pop. The last chorus is about as bluesy as my voice can go, otherwise it would just start to sound like me doing a bad impression.

The song is in E minor with a pretty slow tempo (75 bpm). The chorus progression, which starts the song, is Am7-D7-Am7-Em-Am7-D7-Am7-D7-Bm7-Em (the last three being the “an- gels do” bit). The verse progression is Em-G-Am7-D7-Bm7-Em. The bridge is Em7-D repeated until ending with D5-E5.

The rhythm guitar is my trusty Tele’s bridge pickup with the tone a bit down, through an compressor, overdrive pedal, and a tube amp (a Fender Bassmaster). It’s doubled up with one panned each direction. It’s the same setting for the lead that plays during the verse and, more noticeably, the chorus. I love that chorus riff. That’s my favorite part of the song. The lead guitar that does the last solo is the same but with the overdrive cranked up higher, the tone down further, and a pedal reverb added. The solo is just some messing around with a Em blues scale with a few elements like the quick double stop (cycling through Am-D-Bm-Em). I have the tele in the middle position and cleaner for some other verse elements. The bass guitar is my ’71 Fender musicmaster that I frankensteined together from eBay parts through an Orange bass amp.

I have two piano elements as well. It’s a grand piano plugin for the bridge piano. There’s also organ, which I love because it does what good organ does on so many great rock songs which is fill in all the gaps with velvet. I do not have an organ but I do have this Yamaha electric piano and I like the organ setting on it. Literally just mic’d up one of its speakers with an SM57. It plays single note melodies through both the verses and choruses. I thought the single note served the background better and chord progressions would have moved too hard into The Doors territory.

The drums are me doing my best on a Ableton stock midi drums. A lot of trial and error until I got what I wanted, though the one thing I knew from the beginning that I wanted was that thump thump thump kick and ride at the end of the sections.