Beaver Crossing

Continuing with my animal stories thing, although I'm not sure where it's going, I came up this song, Beaver Crossing. (Note that you can now stream the latest song with the player to the left.) It was influenced by two records I've been enjoying lately. One is "Colossal Youth" by the Young Marble Giants which is a very minimalist and subdued, sort of proto-post-punk, recording put out in 1980. It's got great texture and resists all temptation to move into some "big sound." (A temptation I rarely can resist.)

The other influence is a wonderful CD called "Jin Jin/Firefly" by Takashi Hirayasu and Bob Brozman. It's very different from "Colossal Youth" in that it's melodically and harmonically complex, but it shares the minimalist feel in terms of instrumentation. In this case, two guitars and occasional percussion. The sound is surprising mixture of Okinawan and Hawaiian folk and Western pop. Both Hirayasu and Brozman are acoustic guitar virtuosos.

So with Beaver Crossing, I chose an electric bass that's got a bit of a plucked sound (resembling Young Marble Giants' bass), a software kit of African percussion, a ukulele and one of my software instrument favorites, the Chinese muon moon guitar where I make full use of its note-bending capabilities. I settled on using A & B sixths chords and add F# later on. This pretty much puts it in the key of F#. The ukulele strums chords mainly while the Chinese guitar picks the melody. The sound kind of has a bluesy Hawaiian flavor.

In keeping with the minimalist theme, there's only four tracks and no fancy effects. Or almost none. Using tip from the latest issue of EMusician magazine, I set up four bus tracks for reverb panned to the opposite side of their respective instruments. For example, the Chinese guitar is panned to the right but its reverb is panned to the left. The reverse is true for the ukulele. I kept the reverb low-key so the effect is subtle but I think it adds a nice depth to the overall mix.

The effect is pretty much lost when streaming. To hear it, you'll need to download the mp3.