zach curd [blog]

Fred’s been posting demos like a madman, and while straightening up my computer today, I thought maybe a similar “here are some old recordings and I will talk about them” type of a post would be fun. We’ll see.

I kind of just picked at random.

~ “Hearts and Flowers”
I wrote this song in September or October of 2004, after a “falling out” with the girl who would up being my current girlfriend, Erin. The lyrical concept had a few angles. 1) Just some general observations on youth and college and the bubble you’re in when you’re 19. 2) Exaggerating my age a bit to highlight the DISCONNECT I felt at the time from that kind of thing. I should have been been done with college at that point, yet I still had two years to go, and was living at home with the folks. When I was a kid, I had this recurring nightmare, where my grandfather would be laughing hysterically and all of his teeth would fall out. I finally had a reason to work that into a song. Musically, I’ll admit, I kind of copped the direction of “When The Party Ends.” Sorry Fred.

The first demo of it was just a melodic idea. My cell phone at the time had a neat “voice notes” feature on it, so I would often use it for demoing when I didn’t want to fire up n-track. I’m glad I eventually dumped it onto my computer from my phone.

Second demo was electric guitar and voice.

Third demo was done with the a full band setup.

I usually don’t demo songs over and over, but for some reason I did with that one.

~ “Close To Right”

I wrote this song in the winter of 2005. Musically, this is the best snare sound I’ve ever gotten while recording at home. I have no idea how I did it. Every subsequent attempt has been less and less like that sound. I’ve resigned myself to never getting that sound again. I know I put t-shirts over the drums. I know that much.

~ “Diamonds and Gold”

I wrote this song in the spring (March, April, or May) of 2001, and demoed this in the piano practice room of the dorm I lived in at Michigan State. I believe this is about my girlfriend at the time, Laura. Kind of a “why you gotta treat me so bad when I treat you so good?” type thing. Obviously, cartoon-ed up a bit for the genre.

~ “Everything That I Want”

This song was recorded in my bedroom at my parents house during the summer of 2000, on a four track tape recorder. This is before I really dabbled much with digital recording and would attempt to “bounce” as much as possible with the four track. The problem though, was that I had a four track without internal bouncing. My method would be:
a) Record four tracks on the tape
b) Plug the four track into my stereo’s aux input and record that onto another cassette
c) Take that cassette and put it back in the four track recorder, which would give me 3 more tracks to work with.
So, obviously this diminished the quality of the recording substantially. On this song, I remember using one of those DOD multieffects pedals (the ones with like 3000 effects) to record the vocals. I used the auto-harmonizer on it to record the “ooohs” on the chorus, to save tracks. Musically, I was going for a Paul McCartney love song type thing.

~ “I Take Time”

This song came from when I was recovering from mono in May of 2006. Crappy summer. I’m fairly certain I went insane during this time. I really like the harmonies on this one though.

~ “Man, I Don’t Know”

I have no idea when I recorded this. I can ballpark it, sometime during 2003. Adam Kempa and I decided to start a new band (eventually called The Pandering) in order to record a concept album/musical about time travel. No shit. This is just a demo of a melody I was working on. I eventually took the chord structure of the first bit and applied the same thing to the “the biggest halls in all the world…” part of “You’ve Won The Lottery” on the new pop proj album. The concept album/musical never happened. Whomp.

~ “Untitled Acoustic”

This was recorded in the winter of 2001, probably November or so. Not being a guitar player, I do this thing when I find a new voicing where I tend to try and write a whole song based on that. This is one of those songs. I figured out that kind of dissonant guitar thing on the verses and went with it. I was also dealing with my first breakup ever at that point, and recall being super overdramatic all of the time. A demo of this song exists with Dave Lawson on drums and and Sean Clancy playing bass. Recorded on Chris Graves’ ADAT machine in Berkley around the same time. I have no idea if Chris still has that tape or not.

~ “Seven Swans”

A Sufjan Stevens cover recorded during mono insanity in the spring of 2006. I really like the way this turned out. Tried to stay away from covering it in the same style, I went for a Queens of the Stone Age type thing. Also of note is that I did not own a working electric guitar at that time, so the guitar you hear is an acoustic guitar recorded with a mic. I then ran the track through an amp-modeling plug-in I had on n-track. Totally disgusting sounding, but kind of awesome too.

~ “Untitled Instrumental”

This track is a total mystery. I don’t know when I recorded it, and I don’t know if I wrote words or what. I do remember driving to U of M Dearborn and listening to it on my ipod trying to come up with words. That would place it at some point between January of 2004 and December of 2006. There ares a few sweet parts I want to steal for something at somepoint. In particular, the bit starting at ~50 seconds in.

~ “The Exception Is You”

This was written in March (I think) of 2004, about a girl, of course. I really like the guitar solo. I remember it taking roughly 400,000 takes, and eventually having to split up the sections of it, even though it is a really short solo.

~ “Whirling World”

This is a demo by The Pop Project, we recorded in May or June of 2001. This was right after Dave Knepp left the band, so Dave Lawson played drums and guitar. Chris Graves played bass and recorded it in his mom’s house in Berkley. I still really like the verse chord progression on this song.

So, that’s it! Demos! They aren’t very good!