The Ryno Pen

Title reference¹ in Those Fornicating Footnotes^™

As usual, contains downloadable original mp3 content licensed under Creative Commons.

There are multiple ways of perceiving anything: what might have been just the clunk of expansion joints in the pavement as the car crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, became something else² that’s probably reasonably familiar. It’s likely you never thought of the source at all, but now it’s revealed you wonder how you could ever have missed the similarity.

Here’s how I first saw Somewhere.

Somewhere (4:51)
I write a lot of “imaginary landscape” stuff… a sort of virtual travel for somebody who hardly ever leaves home in real life unless it’s for work or some such reason. There’s just this palm tree silhouetted against a slow smouldering orange sunset, which slowly shimmers in the heat. A cloud of birds have risen from the marshes and they wheel across the huge reddish dome of the sun.

With the vision in my head, I sat down and wrote, doodled, overdubbed, and made all the happy mistakes until Somewhere was recorded. Here’s a noise-reduced but faithful recording of how it came out in 2001: Remastered (Size: 6.23 MB).

***

On listening to the track again, I was quite happy with the mood of the piece, but the words of a recent blog comment were there to haunt me: “I especially enjoyed how it drifted from ear to ear.”³

Given the perspective of another person, I could see an opportunity for improvement. The stereo image of the original piece was static. A bit of panning would be great, but I was working with a two-track master. There was no way I could isolate a single instrument and move it across the mix.

For a vivid example of panning, put on some good headphones and listen to Jimi Hendrix’ version of All Along The Watchtower. The guitar slide that begins the solo just after “…and the wind began to howl…” - you can feel it traversing your brain, I swear.

***

Well, there was a way to get some movement into the instrument parts, but to go into detail would be very tedious.

The end result of my Sooper Sekrit Tweak is here: Reprocessed (Size: 5.62 MB).

I hope you enjoy at least one of the variants.

TFF^™0

⁰ Those Fornicating Footnotes^™.

¹ Here - see under “THE FAT LADY OF LIMBOURG”

² You may sew the Music Trivia Badge on your Geek Scout jacket if you knew that was the origin of the beat for the Bee Gees’ Jive Talkin’.

³ Thanks, Janet.