Ticking Away

Ticking Away
Written and Recorded 2010

For one of the last days of 2014, I thought it might be appropriate to share a song I wrote about time. This song was a breakthrough for me in terms of my songwriting. While in Baraboo, my creative direction was all over the place. I had songs like "Romantic Piano," but also a lot of random, short instrumental pieces (that will be posted soon.) "Ticking Away" was the first of a project I called Cranston. The idea was to try and keep the instrumentation almost entirely the same, record the layers in full takes (not broken up into pieces) and to explore instrumental pop. "Ticking Away" was later licensed to a company to be used for a hospital's videos. This is by far one of my favorite pieces I've ever written.

• The first notes you hear are from a pre-made MIDI instrument in Logic called "Delayed Stage Piano." I never bothered to mess with the delay as the tempo that it set and the level of decay was exactly what I was looking for.
• Delayed Stage Piano was the first layer down, throughout the entire song. Though not meticulously planned out or improvised, I would call this method "instinctive composition." I was keenly aware of where I was in the song and sort of made it up as I went along based on the beginning chord progression. If it sounded balanced when I completed the take, I moved on to the next instrument for the next layer. If it didn't sound good, I went back and did it all over again.
• Because each instrument was recorded in full takes, I really challenged myself to write something interesting yet playable. I'm not a very technical player, so I tried to throw some nice melodic material into each part and make them worth listening to.
• This is about the point in my writing where form started to have greater weight in my mind. Though this has the length and feel of a pop song, there are only two parts to it. Dynamic contrast is what really brings this song to life. 
• It would have been easy to try and write more for this track in particular because it is instrumental. But any more material and the listener would be more acutely aware of the lack of vocals. As it stands, I think it is easy to just listen and not really care about what kind of music it is.