Nobody on the Subway

track name: Nobody on the Subway
album and band name: by Absofacto

	00:00 / 00:00

Digital Track

Immediate download in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, etc. If you love this music, please consider paying something for it. It all goes directly to me, and allows me to keep making more for you. Thank you!

Buy Now name your price
Share / Embed

about: I've been focusing really hard on the Mason Proper album, but I gave myself a couple days to get an Absofacto song done because I'd be really depressed if I missed a month. Normally I spend about ten to fifteen days on each one, but this time I had to go through the writing, recording, and mixing process in three.

I started recording before I had any idea what it was going to be. I just flipped out and said to myself, "Self, play that one drum beat you like!" and so I quickly set up the one microphone I had and played it. When I listened back I noticed a kind of overtone ringing coming from some undampened drum head somewhere on the kit. Rather than fix it, I just figured out what note it was and decided that would be the key of the song so that whatever else I added wouldn't clash. Then I was sad that my drums sounded so monauralisticish because of my only having/using one mic, so I tried to play them again identically so I could make them sound stereophonical.

Then I plugged my guitar into the direct input on the microphone preamp I was recording the drums through, but the level was all wrong for the guitar because it was set up to record the drums. It was turned up way too loud and was distorting. I said to myself, "Self, you don't have time to be turning all kinds of knobs! I guess that this is going to be your guitar sound."

After working out some guitar parts, it was time for vocals. And I said to myself, "Self, you don't have time to be writing all kinds of words!! Make the vocal melody sparse!!" And so I broke up a sentence into a long amount of time. "There. Goes. Someone. That nobody knows."

I liked that a lot, so then to make a long story slightly less long I worked day and night for three days and finished the track. Most of the third day was spent in frustration just trying to get the final mix printed without any computer glitches.

Sometimes it's really fun to make things under such a crazy deadline, even if it's self-imposed. Otherwise I give into the side of myself that wants to labor over every little decision. You would be surprised at the little decisions I labor over.

As far as the end result... I guess I just have to say that the weather has been sunny and BEAUTIFUL, I'm in good spirits, and I think you can hear all that in the song.
lyrics: There goes someone that nobody knows

Nobody on the subway
Nobody in the winter
Nobody with a flashlight
Nobody on the subway

Nobody at all

Great news catalog tenement
mailbox twisting in the window
halfway home
don't know when to walk away
don't want to know when to walk away

There goes someone that nobody knows

Nobody in a foreign land
Nobody by a window
Nobody who's a ghost now
Nobody on the subway

Nobody at all

Concrete denizens overtone
gardeners leaving by the busload
blue skies won
sounds like something I would say
don't want to know when to walk away
don't want to know when to walk away

I dunno, something in the world could know you,
but all in all nothing that I am aware of knows you now.
credits: released 31 May 2010
Written and recorded by Jonathan Visger. Mastered by Massive Mastering.
tags: tags: alternative experimental pop michigan ypsilanti indie rock Ann Arbor
license: All rights reserved
feed: Feed for this artist