Wednesday, May 20, 2009
back in the prc (story behind the song)
back in the prc (story behind the song)
I wrote this song because in some ways it needed to be ‘written’ and equally was an angle on my life and what had become a reality over the past decade. The life of the process had seen off three relationships, coupled with a few concubines along the way and in essence had been a thorn in my side for this period. The song was simple, barely more than a cover, and indeed my final production perhaps was my ‘thinnest’ performance over the last decade, though it (the song) both perplexes and beguiles me. It has become my crossroad.
When I first came here (china) in late ’99 it was a cultural backwash, not including shanghai and maybe Guangzhou. Remote control set to the present and we see that it still is in some ways a cultural backwash but that changes have occurred plentifully in the larger cities, now even including Beijing. Much of the nations 1.7billion still live in antiquity amidst traditional rural environments but that overall the country has made significant strides, equally that it has made significant impressions upon me.
(I deliberately write 1.7 which is accurate to protest apologist western journalists and government journalists in this country who continue to perpetuate the heinous lie of china’s real population)
The song, which was both intentionally flippant and flimsy and first written by john lennon and paul mccartney exposed curiosity towards the former soviet union, which I have intended to replicate with exposure of ‘the Chinese syndrome’. It’s not cutting edge and is only really intended as a comical expose on ‘what’s goin’ down’ here in china.
It is the second piece that I have produced about my life here, and follows ‘intimate relations’ based on newspaper accounts of the sexual revolution in shanghai. In ‘back in the prc’ I highlight in the chorus the new vibrant sexual market for western over 40 males as they do the ‘love tour’ (phillipines in the 60’ Thailand post that and now the middle kingdom) from as far north as harebin, (which I just couldn’t fit into the song, and which has very tall and pretty girls) to the very south in hong kong, with all stops in between….thus I write of southern girls, (hong kong, Shenzhen just being pipped for pronunciation similarities with shanghai, although I much prefer the feminine form of Shenzhen to hongkong), central coast girls (shanghai, though for reasons I will never geographically understand shanghai is considered ‘in the south’), and finally northern girls (Beijing, which if I’d chosen to omit may have led to my expulsion from the republic along with permanent revocation of an entry visa)
The original lyric was always cute, and I’m sure the beatles had a real blast writing this song, though I have to say I probably got an equi-cool blast from having been able to change the lyric to suit my purposes. You might ask why I didn’t just write a new song, well music in the pop form, and equally in classical and jazz is highly derivative. Who can really claim to have an original idea when everything is borrowed and or written from impressions of other artists, either from within the same genre or from cross genres. Besides, I feel comfortable with my own original content and pursuit, and the idea of paying respect to songwriters from another era is I think something that musicians all want to do from time to time, so when I first played those chords and sang the words of the original back in 2004 I was captivated by the musical simplicity of the song, yet it’s powerful modulation of tonality. Simple text book stuff, but just ‘put together the right way. Originally in the key of G my version was altered to the key of D to suit my voice.
I mentioned 2004 since it was in that year that I first wrote ‘flew in from bondi Singapore air, didn’t get to bed last night, on the way the stewardess was on my knee man I had a mighty flight’. It was so easy, it just rolled out of me and I was able to get a smile. I’d never been big on the idea of using music for comedy, but this was one that seemed to work for me. Naively I might have thought, ‘wow, wouldn’t this make a cute piece’ but at that time I barely even knew what china was even though I’d already lived there for almost 5 years. I didn’t develop the piece any more at that stage and by 2006 the original lyric I had written on the sheet music was both ‘forgotten and lost” somewhere on one of my Australian trips.
I used bondi and I used Singapore air, because they just seemed right for me at that time. I was regularly traveling to and from china at that time due my mother’s terminal illness and given that I was accumulating frequent flying points all my flights from that time were on that ‘hanging nation’s carrier’ (I’m still in dispute with the government, and make a point to wear a t-shirt in memory of Johnny Nguyen every time I fly. Nguyen was executed by the Singaporean government in what I would consider to be one of the more recent blatant examples of racism that I have experienced). Bondi just fitted and so it was included.
A whole 4 years transpired before I finally got back to the piece and by mid 2008 I had both remembered my original words, and also had downloaded some sheet music of the song. Thus began my second working on the project. I was intent now on rewriting all the verses to suit a ‘Chinese characteristics’ and began on the second by changing the original ‘honey disconnect the phone to ‘qin ai de gua ji the phone’. The rest of the original lyric was perfectly placed in this verse and by using qin ai de (honey or dear) with gua ji (turn off the phone) and also using ‘phone’ in English to clarify this insertion of Chinese lyric. I’d long wanted to use Chinese in my songs, certainly that I would sing, rather than using other local voices, and this was now my first chance. Understandably I was ‘into’ this ‘thang’.
The biggest thrill for me in this song was getting the chorus right. In fact the chorus of this song is one of those magical music moments as the tonic chord G, or D in my case is ‘colored’ by becoming the dominant 7th, technically putting it in another key, but in this case not doing so, simply just adding depth and texture to the piece. It’s a common pop strategy, but again the Beatles were very good at this type of writing. I was happy enough just to be able to play and sing it, but I guess took my kicks from writing some half decent lyrics based on the original, but adapted for a Chinese market…I guess I could be so pretentious to say that.
“well the hong kong girls
really konk me out,
they leave the west behind,
and the shanghai girls
make me sing and shout
that beijing’ always on
my mi-mi-mi-mi- mind”
Only at the very last moment as I indicated earlier did Hong Kong make the cut. I remember the singer Maggie zee discussing this matter with me on the day of recording. We discussed using xiang gang, which is the mandarin expression for Hong Kong, but in the end I opted for hong kong for a similar reason that I omitted Shenzhen, and that was a pronunciation matter, with both xiang gang and Shenzhen being too close to my mandarin pronunciation of shanghai…in fact I can barely pronounce shanghai in English these days…and have given up attempts at doing so. Just like ‘ok’ ‘shanghai’ in mandarin is international.
With the song being heavily under-produced I decided on Saturday night may 16 to upload it to one of web sites with the intention of letting people, mostly friends hear of what I had been working on. Few people will listen to it over the next month given the privacy of the web page but it served as a pathway for my getting the song out of my mind and into a forum where others would hear. With a trip back home interrupting recording schedules; I thought I’d upload what I’d completed with the view towards writing additional tracks on the road. The opportunity to record real sax as opposed to vst sax, and incidentally if anyone is interested in this area I use sax-lab, which to my way of thinking can be manipulated to ‘pull off’ a sax lick. There maybe better programs out there, but I find in conjunction with band in the box that it offers a really simple and cheap way of writing for the saxophone. One can either generate the melody, or solo as it may be by playing on the midi keyboard, but given that my main instrument is guitar I prefer to get band in the box to generate a sol that might match the style, or genre I’m working within and then edit inside my DAW(digital audio workstation) by manipulating midi data within edit mode. It’s actually quite fun, and the more I do the more realistic I am able to make any sax solo I work with. Well at least that’s my belief!
I’d been working with Maggie for about a week on another track; far more complicated, far more original and far more involved, so it was a good break for her to see how I went about recording my vocals. She got a rare treat. I haven’t recorded a vocal in the company of others for over 20 years. I’m not a natural singer, and it’s not a key skill of my work, thus I’m reluctant to allow people both to watch and listen to my live work. I prefer to record in isolation and then work the melody either through my own private rehearsals or utilize some technology, usually in this case melodyne’s wicked little plug-in that does some cute work in tidying up what I sing.
For the version I uploaded and which Maggie zee watched live I used a piano guide track for melodic purposes to help me approximate the original melody, though in the end I was probably stronger in my resolve to make the melody and phrasing an expression of my interpretation of the song, which by this stage had changed definitely into ‘my version’. I was very comfortable with what I produced in that live take, which was probably done about 3 times. The whole time I recorded it I was aware that my singer was there, but not once did I look over at her, preferring to concentrate on my sheet music and the recording console to make sure the levels were right. It’s funny; I’ve not ever been able to relax doing a take on any instrument at all in the last 20 years since I’m always multi-tasking with the actual process of recording. Despite wearing two hats I was very happy with the experience and Maggie I recall was able to develop a much better insight into how I go about my work. Being Chinese she was really enjoying the process and had nothing but praise for my final take. I’ll take that on the chin, and it’s much better than the usual criticism that I get from others. On that point I’ve got many detractors regarding my voice, but as I’ve gotten more experienced I realize that it’s far quicker and ultimately far easier to work within my limitations. None of the recordings I’ve done thus far are any more than simple statements to the broader musical world that I’m also interested in the process of both producing and writing music.
The song finally recorded and finished on Friday the 15th of May still required me to render every track into its own .wav format to allow me to mix on my laptop. I was due to leave Beijing at around 5am on the Saturday morning and given that I wanted to upload the track on the Saturday evening I decided to go with this format. It was both a plus and a minus due to the complexities of getting all the rendering done when I was seriously exhausted from the previous two days recording, but that it would allow me a more relaxed state of mind in which I could finish the project in my hotel in xi’an.
As it transpired it wasn’t as relaxed as I had thought. Mix-downs never are. They’re fraught with second guessing and in some cases just plain old “dumb mistakes”. My final mix down was nothing out of the exception and after about 4 tantrums, which must have frightened the bejesus out of my neighbors I was able to wrap up the session at around 11pm on the Saturday evening.
Final notes:
The song was seriously underdone and all musical information was supported by midi. There were no acoustic instruments excepting of course the two vocalists. The bass sounds and drums were in fact both sampled and then triggered with midi via kontakt 2 which I operated as a vst instrument inside live 7. The sax as I said was triggered from sax lab.
I chose in the end to use two wav files of audio from aircraft to set up the introduction of the song. These took some time to actually get off the web, but as I said it all came together and I was able to put everything in place. I couldn’t find a wav sample from Singapore airlines but got an amalgam from JAL and Qantas which perfectly suited my needs.
Over to you for your comments if you wish.
Previous Blog Entries
it comes down to this
9/24/2008 12:00:00 AM
das u-boot master and commander (a tale)
1/25/2008 12:00:00 AM
morning in the capital
12/1/2007 12:00:00 AM
ringside in beijing
11/8/2007 12:00:00 AM
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