Making a Song: Frequency of You

How "Frequency of You" was written and recorded (with demo tracks)

I’m obsessed with the stories behind how songs were written and recorded. I bet I’ve seen all the documentaries, I binge watch all the YouTube videos and pour over books and articles. It all seems like such beautiful magic and precious time well spent. It’s the perfect alchemy of timing, listening, inspiration and a community of creative people working towards one goal… how to make 3 to 5 minutes of music that moves the listener. Moves them physically, emotionally, spiritually. Helps them lose themselves - even for a moment - in a mixture of harmony, melody, rhythm and words. When I started writing songs, I suspected that I would love the recording process as I sit on a knife-edge between artist and nerd. I need to express myself artistically but I also enjoy exploring the studio gadgetry, tools and software to achieve the “vibe” I see and hear in my head. Turns out my hunch was right, there’s no other thing I’d rather do.

So, here’s a glimpse into how we made the song “Frequency of You“ - Chapter 2 of my Pretty Dopamine Bullets visual album.

Songwriting

For me, it’s all about the words. I don’t listen to music without lyrics. If an artist has nothing to say, I’m not interested. My favorite songs are simple musically but use words beautifully. So, for my music everything starts with words. I’m constantly journaling sayings, turns of phrases, things I hear people say, random word soup and every now and then a song idea emerges and that’s when I grab a guitar and search for a melody. The cliche is true, some songs take an hour some take a year. This one took a year. One year for three and a half minutes.

I wrote “Frequency of You” as just words during the Summer of 2021. You can check out the final lyrics in the description on the music video or on Bandcamp but here’s how the writing process looked. Yes, it was as messy as my handwriting…

A Song Emerges

In December 2021 I found a possible vocal melody and a simple finger-picked guitar part to go along with the lyrics and…a folk song emerged.

Here’s my first iPhone recording of “Frequency of You” (Bozeman, MT - December 2021):

Studio Recording

“Frequency of You” was never meant to be an acoustic folk song. In my head, I was hearing a rich, cinematic, ambient, ghostly vibe with lots of layers and textures. That meant exploring synth, sub-bass, saxophone, guitar, background vocal and (my favorite) cello parts with meditative drums to bring the room together.

With those goals in mind, the studio version of “Frequency of You” was recorded over a 5-month period from June 2022 thru October 2022. Starting with my home studio demo, drums/bass/synths at Peter Labberton’s studio in Los Angeles, final vocals at my home studio and saxophone/synths/guitar/background vocal overdubs at Jake Fleming’s studio in Bozeman where it would also be mixed and mastered.

Here’s how the song evolved:

STEP 1: Home Studio Demo (Bozeman, MT - June 2022) with scratch vocal and some initial synth, bass, guitar ideas. Also had to sort out the song’s chord structure and odd time signature switching (bounces back and forth from 5/4 to 4/4 throughout the song) in order to get the track on a ProTools grid. I don’t think about time signatures when writing.

STEP 2: Drums, Synth, Bass, Vocal Demo (Los Angeles, CA - July 2022) - initial result of the collaboration with Peter Labberton at his studio in Los Angeles. Development and initial mixing of drum, juno bass, synth part ideas over a scratch vocal.

STEP 3: Saxophone, Cello, Electric Guitar, Vocal Harmonies (Bozeman, MT - August 2022) - the collaboration with my good friend Jake Fleming at The Shed Bozeman continued on this track as we focused on adding texture and layers. Jake built a beautiful custom synth tone based on baritone sax as the main airy/ghostly synth vibe. I recorded what would be the final lead vocal at my home studio, we started adding real vocal harmonies and also cello played by Jesse Ahmann who has been our go to cellist since my Western Carnival album. To give the track more space (less notes) we eventually replaced the harmonic information initially held together by my finger-picked guitar part with chords played using the sax-based synth and the underlying Juno.

Mixing & Mastering

After a couple more months of refining the above parts, Jake Fleming mixed and mastered “Frequency of You” at The Shed Bozeman in September. I enjoy mixing with Jake as we use an iterative process with lots of patience in between mixes to listen and consider ways to make the track better. I’ve worked with mixing engineers that give you one mix and that’s it - very little room for feedback - so, I enjoy this process better and I think it yields a better song. It’s just not as quick. We mixed and refined this track over a 6 week period.

Here’s the finished product on Spotify:

Stream or download everywhere else with this link.

Storytelling

When I write a song, I have pictures in mind. Places, landscapes, people, weather. So, for me, the music and lyrics are only half of the feeling of a song. The other half of the story are the visuals. Mainly, black and white photography and video.

For “Frequency of You” I was envisioning a person wandering, small and exposed in an unforgiving environment. It’s about the pain of missing someone you’ve lost or - sometimes just as bad - wanting someone you can't have. Always out of reach. Just over the next horizon. Impossible to reach. Impossible to let go. Being the hungry ghost…

I live in Montana and I have always gone to the mountains to move and breathe, to feel small and wild, to pause and disconnect. So, I wandered into my favorite Montana mountains with friend, collaborator and cinematographer Nathan Norby to complete the story.

For the full “Frequency of You” Music & Picture show click here.

This song is dedicated to my father-in-law who we lost recently, the Montana Snake, who loved two things…his family and these mountains above his hometown of Red Lodge, MT.

For the love of music & pictures,

jkb