Song Of The Day: “What If”

Here’s another one from the new album. I like this recording a lot. It took a while to figure out because I kept trying to sing it in a higher key and my voice wasn’t having it. Tom and I mucked around with the intro for awhile too, after we figured out the proper key. Neither of us were happy with the original idea of starting with a vocal, so we played around with several arrangements, before eventually overdubbing multiple guitars at a really slow speed, to create that dreamy tempo-blending effect.

It wound up being the penultimate track on the album, though Eric lobbied for it to be the opener for awhile. I thought that was a good idea, but I already had my choice for the lead-off track. Putting it near the end worked better in my mind, because the back half of the album was much more suited for the sound of this tune.

Tom’s contribution to the bridge is probably the coolest part…we were looking for a change in the drum pattern, and he had the strange idea that we might use a sample from an old song of ours, and just drop it into the bridge. Obviously if we sampled ourselves then we wouldn’t have to bother giving credit or asking permission. The beat he chose to sample fit perfectly into the bridge section and gave it exactly the new feel we were looking for, despite being in a different time signature. And the song he sampled it from? An old unreleased Olospo song called, appropriately enough, “Slack”.

Nice one, Teeb.

CH 11/28/09