Outside

On Friday, I released “Outside,” an alternative rock track with a bit of a late night vibe. It portrays a narrator watching a city come to life as he enthusiastically describes the atmosphere, albeit with a note of detachment, as if viewing it through a window. I was inspired to write this song after a New Year’s Eve party. Never one for particularly late nights or clubs (more of a quiet bar and drinks guy, myself), I was amazed at my friends who would be going directly from the New Year’s Eve party to a rave. Thinking about it more inspired me to do what art is often good at, imagining what experiences must be like from someone else’s point of view. In this case, what it must be like for someone at a club or rave at 4 am.

Lyrics

The first verse begins with a description of the night coming alive and (hopefully) builds the excitement. In the second verse the narrator is imagining what it must feel like to be filled with and surrounded by music and “honey bees” (not just imagined, but also inspired by personal experience. I’m not completely a wet blanket). I’m particularly proud of “rhythmic mana sates the need” for whatever reason.

The chorus is where we get a thorough injection of the melancholy and where it’s clear how much of an outsider the narrator feels. It also nods to the escapism he assumes the honey bees feel as they are

Music

The song is written in B minor and centers around a slowed down disco beat (literally an Ableton stock disco beat that I rearranged a bit, slowed down, and played through drums that sound more acoustic). The idea was to create a feeling of a dance song that had been warped into an alt rock one. The rhythm guitars with overdrive and the tone rolled way down also use some drone open strings to create that constant noisy feeling. The lead guitar incorporates some disco-inspired melodies as solos between the verses and after the bridge, with a bit more overdrive added and a Valhalla Supermassive delay slapped on it.

The verse is a Bm-F#m-Em-F#m progression and the chorus is a Bm-F#m-Bm // Bm-A-F#m. I thought having the two rhythm guitars approach the verse progression in different ways produced an interesting sound. One is higher in pitch and descends before reascending. The other one actually does an accompanying descending Bm-Am-Em-F#m.

Probably my favorite part of the song is the bass line underlying the intro and verses (also seems to be the favorite of a few others who have provided feedback). As a guitarist, primarily, I tend to think in melody more than rhythm, so my tendency is to start with a melodic bass line and consciously try to inject a bit more of the rhythm into it.

As a safe space to share my failings, I can’t begin to count how long I spent trying to inject some sort of synth into the song, particularly as a lead. I tried plugin presets, I tried a bunch of things with my Moog Grandmother and I just couldn’t get anything that felt like it belonged. And thus, you get a song with four or five different guitar parts featured in it. Sometimes you can’t escape the fact that you think best through your primary instrument.