Firestorm in Evening (demo)

It's been a while since I've written about an actual song demo on this site, so here's one I started a few weeks ago:

I was heading to bed when I had a burst of energy and got "Hand-Bored", and picked up my guitar. This little oscillating arpeggiated pattern materialized, and I decided to record it quickly to preserve the idea. The thing that caught in my mind was the bass note progression, flipping from major to minor, to major again. I really like ambiguous harmony and often find myself writing music that sounds major for a bar, but flips to minor unexpectedly and back. There's something about the cheekiness of it that really latches onto my brain. Something I ended up liking a lot about the sound of this particular guitar recording is how the fret-buzz sounds a bit like rattling chains, or dishes in a cupboard during an earthquake.

With the arpeggio double-tracked, I found myself humming a melody, and words began to pop into my head: "every night I bury gold by the lake".

The rest up till 0:54 came quickly. Sometimes when getting swept away by a demo like this, I kind of lose control and the music just happens instinctively. I sent it off to the band and my partner, pretty happy with how it sounded so far. Erin said the magic words "the instrumentation is very Pile-esque"^[1], and I immediately knew how to write the next section of the song. Pile has a lot of really sweet heavy moments in their prettier songs, and I thought the harmonically ambiguous bass line would sound good as a lead riff with lots of dirt.

The rest of the lyrics kind of fell out of me, considering how simple they are. I laid down some Osmose for atmospherics, and bam- it was a demo. The band was excited^[2] (admittedly more than I expected since this was such an off-the-cuff writing session).

From here, I'm not exactly sure where to take it, but I have a feeling that when I next sit down to work on this song, the rest will come naturally.

Lyrics:

Every night I bury gold by the lake
Mounting storms of fire light what's at stake
There's no getting out,
no turning away

It will find you
whether you like it 
some day

There's no getting out,
no turning away
It will find you 
whether you like it
some day

so run
so run

Thanks for tuning in for a demo-related-post! I'm going to try to write about making music a bit more from here on out, since it should be the focus of this blog.