Direction by Patterns in Traffic
Oh, hello. Didn’t see you there.
So it’s been almost a year since Direction was released. Time flies. I haven’t been too focused on music as of late as I recently became a dad (finally my humor will make sense), but I am happy to report that I’m working on new Harsh Lights songs and new PiT songs and they’ll both be coming at you at some point in the future. Harsh Lights probably this year even! But we will have plenty of time to catch up soon enough. For now, pull up a chair and let me regale you with the origin story behind a track on my Direction EP, “Up.”
Like many of my songs, “Up” was born out of a vocal melody idea which became the chorus. The lyrics came to me very quickly, and I liked how the refrain (“turn the lights on”) was expressing the opposite sentiment of “Turn the Lights Out” from my debut album Silhouetting. I came up with this idea a few years ago, prior to coming up with the concept for Direction, and I toyed with using “Turn the Lights On” as the title to further draw the comparisons between the two songs (of course, musically they turned out very different!).
Within a few months of writing the chorus melody and vocals, I came up with the first verse and prechorus, bringing the song more into focus. It seemed like it would be well-tailored to an upbeat, dance-influenced, and possibly electronic feel. When I later decided to pursue direction as the theme of my EP, I quickly realized that this song idea was the perfect fit to represent “Up.” It has a positive and uplifting message, and I had already used the word “up” a couple of times in the original lyrics I wrote! I got to work fleshing out the rest of the song during the demoing process for the EP by writing the second verse and the bridge.
I really enjoyed programming the drums for this track to bring to life the driving beat that I imagined. It makes the listener want to move (at least it does when I’m the listener), which is a unique quality for my music up to this point. As a bassist at heart, I took great pleasure in playing a prominent bass part on this song with some cool fills. It's a bit of "lead bass" you might say, with the guitar taking a backseat for most of this tune. I also had fun throwing in some other elements such as synth bells, which pop up in the intro and at other points throughout the song, and handclaps, which add some rhythmic accents. When I added the handclaps, I was definitely thinking about the claps in the chorus of The Format’s song “The First Single” and how the crowd would clap along at concerts (I will admit to even clapping along to the recording if the mood strikes me). I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the opportunity to perform these songs in a live setting, but it seemed like a fun and interactive ingredient to add to this track.
If you’ve read these “Inside” posts before, you probably know that I have a personal “bucket list” of songwriting and recording tricks that I love hearing in other people’s music and will try to work into my songs at least once if given the opportunity. There were a ton of these on Silhouetting and I just discussed one in a previous post about “Right,” where I employed the “fake ending” trick. Along with the handclaps, one sonic element I’ve always wanted to try to use in a song is the “ooh” or “aah” background vocals. It’s such a classic, throwback technique that is still used brilliantly today by a lot of artists, and it’s something that doesn’t come naturally to me. I am usually drawn to using instruments to create more layers of sound, and using vocals solely for lyricism. I had a blast using my voice on this track to just add some texture to the sound with some three-part harmony “ooh”s.
Several people have singled out “Up” as their favorite song on Direction, which is a really pleasant surprise for me. In fact, a local music critic wrote up a pretty negative review of the EP last year and highlighted “Up” as the standout track. I didn’t feel compelled to share this review anywhere when it was first published, given the writer’s lackluster opinion of the album, but after sitting with it for a while I’m happy to put it out there. Take a look and form your own opinion. Anyway, I honestly was not sure how well I pulled off the idea I had in my head for “Up,” so hearing all the praise for it meant a lot to me! Thank you for reading and listening and please spread the word about Direction! I’m hoping to wrap up these “Inside” posts for the remaining tracks on the Direction EP in the next few weeks, and hopefully I’ll have some news on new music shortly thereafter!
