Field of Lavender
She Lay in a Field of Lavender...
I was motivated to create Field of Lavender after reading a lamentation about the overuse of the pedal steel in country music and its relative absence elsewhere.
Or something akin to that.
So I pulled the lap steel out of the crypt. I don't have a pedal steel. Quite frankly I think they'd be too much of a maintenance hassle for me to tolerate. They seem like a lot of work and are a bit bulky and unwieldy. For a guy that will leave a set of strings on a guitar until they are a thin, toneless mess, it seems like a bad idea for me to wander into that creek. I love the sound of the pedal steel, though. Especially those licks in them old Hank William’s songs. Ramblin’ Man, for example.
Anyhow, I only have a lap steel, which is more than a-ok. It’s 90% there and I always have a blast with the lap steel. It can be quite satisfying.
We have a simple beat coming out of a Digitakt II. It’s endlessly repetitive> Its job is to provide an anchor of sorts so that we do not drift to far away from shore. There is the lap steel, of course, doing its thing. And then we have some vocals. That’s pretty much all there is to this one.
Vocal audio. I am an advocate of retaining our own voice in our art. Our voice is a signature of sorts. Our own idiosyncratic utterances combined with our own idiosyncratic intonations equals a unique human individual. Behold the human voice; a gentle, insistent, pushback to the machination of human endeavors.
Of course, I am fully supportive of us running that result through a boundless number of post fx. It’s fun. This one used very few, however. I initially attempted to land them through an abuse of reverb and delay. But latency issues muddled it in a manner I found distasteful. In the end, absent some eq-ing, I used a pretty basic reverb. I also have the right side of a Mood II providing a bit of an exhale (inhale?) oscillating effect. I run the end result through a Clean.
The vocals were sampled into the SP404MK2. I commonly do this. I cannot, as they say, “hold a tune”. I love that little machine. The rest is me wrangling whatever verbal utterances I’m mindful to produce at that moment in time. I’m left to satisfy myself with only whatever I can birth from the limitations of my own primitive vocal cords and cranial structure.
Staff of one. I don’t autotune. Whatever we get is what we get. I’ve been imperfect since my birth and grant myself fair leniency to do my simple best. Simple because I prefer to be a simple man. I try to anyways. I don’t fret being out of tune. Though I do try to be in tune as I think my attempts at whatever it is I am trying to do with these pieces require sincere attempts and not goofy clown shows. Well, most of the time. There’s always going to be a bit of Hee Haw buried here and there.
Sometimes I suppose I am just being a dick. Though I try my level headed best to not be. I’m human and fuck up sometimes.
I concern myself with how words or phrases are emphasized. I often obsess about a given intonation on a certain word. I will cease caring about the musicality of the word, and instead fixate on the multiple avenues a given word will direct the phrase. It goes beyond simple word reflection where you see one path travels downwards into pleasant verbal meadows whereas a second path travels upwards into emotional peaks.
As an example, let us say I ponder if I should choose to use the word “gentle” rather than the word “soft”. In making these choices, I would also concern myself as greatly with more granular nuances regarding how we may travel through each of the trails presented to us. Perhaps, even considering coalescing rather that going directly along the trails path. Off trail we can consider the quieter, yet grossly undervalued subtle distinctions.
The words themselves may cause me to go down. Or to go up. Either direction we will take us somewhere interesting as both the meadow and peaks are easily viewed from the fork in the trail. We will pick one. We can always attempt a retreat should we change our minds.
Perhaps we will take the gentle winding path that wanders softly into the valley? We could do this. But maybe, just maybe, more adventure is to be had travelling up that gentle winding path that wanders up into the soft clouds that surrounds those peaks?
Regardless of using the same words in both phrases, I would personally, definitely, prefer to wander down the gentle winding path that takes us softly into the valley. I would hope to find a nice valley fair full of pleasant non combative peoples danced merrily to joyful song. I’ll bet the weather would be perfect down there and perhaps millions of stars will be present late at night.
But if we are talking about me writing or creating audio? Well, in that instance I am most probably going to want to go up that gentle winding path, however nauseating it may be as it wanders its way up into the peaks that are now surrounded by clouds. Is it just me, or do the clouds appear menacing? They seem to be closing in on the peaks; shrouding them under an undefinable tension. Perhaps there is a nice stout wind? Things may get dicey, we think to ourselves, as the ice cold sleet batters our face as we take our first tentative steps up that path. Adventure will be had.
I confess, sometimes I also go full cringe. On purpose. We are so surrounded by it at times that it is sometimes unavoidable. So I confront it directly, picking it up to offer it back out into the world, much like it is a benevolent spider you caPeter inside the your house so that you may release it outside because you want it to survive so that it may tame the other, peskier, critters that do bite you. Other times I ham it up in a semi folksy manner, looking for harmless moments of levity. It’s fun to be performative, so at times I concoct arguments with myself. I may create mini pseudo commercials. I enjoy a good banter about some extraordinarily vague inane topic. Other times I try my level headed best to simply be as musical as possible and this piece is more or less running down that avenue.
Regardless, each attempt is authentic and sincere. I’m a fictional character in a black and white western movie playing a bit part where I save a cat in a tree while the plot revolves superheroes battling alien supervillains as a love song wafts in the background.
We all have limitations. I’m ok with mine.
Anyhow. Field of Lavender.
