Happy Wednesday!
Moving right along with the daily "story behind the song" posts, today's song is track number 3, "Ethereal".
I've heard it said that, "Inside every guitar, there is a song waiting to get out". I have certainly found this to be true, and it's not limited to the guitar. Back in the late 90s/early 00s, I had read that one of my favorite electronic musicians, William Orbit, considered the Roland Juno-106 to be his favorite synthesizer. As luck would have it, I managed to find a used one at a musicians' swap meet, in near perfect condition.
The cool thing about this instrument is that all of the sound synthesis parameters are accessible on the instrument's front panel in the form of knobs, switches, and sliders. This makes the process of making and tweaking sounds very interactive and fun. So for "Ethereal" the synthesizer parts in the intro of the song were the result of my playing around on the Juno 106. My fiddling around eventually worked its way into a song.
The name "Ethereal" is perhaps a strange choice for this song, seeing as it has a rather sharp juxtaposition of ethereal sounding synthesizer parts (hint: that's where the name came from) and biting harsh heavy guitars, bass, and drums. However, being that it was the synthesizer parts that really pulled the song out of the ether, the name stuck, as a tribute to that awesome Juno 106 synthesizer.
For the new version of "Ethereal", one of the biggest differences between the old and new versions was the addition of bass guitar. The original only had squishy synthesizer bass lines (which are still there), but the bass guitar doubling what the synth bass is doing added an aggressive but sharper focus and tightness to the low end of the song. Also, the guitar parts are much more focused, and this is actually a result of turning down the gain on my amplifier quite a bit. It's still got that aggressive metal tone, but the guitars are much tighter and more focused.
The song "Ethereal", along with "Zero" and "The Descent" are the 3 songs from the album with no melodic guitar parts to speak of. I struggled a little with the decision to include these, but ultimately decided in their favor because they represent my lifelong love of both synthesizers and guitars, and the fusion between heavy rock and electronica. The 3 of these songs represent a chapter in my music career when I was very focused on soundtrack work. Excerpts from the old version of "Ethereal" can be heard in the 2006 documentary, "What It Takes: A Documentary About 4 World Class Triathletes' Quest for Greatness".
It's a pretty cool documentary, and they used my music very tastefully.
And that's the story of "Ethereal"! Please post any questions or comments!
I'll see you tomorrow with the next song from the album!
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