Picked to Pieces #6 – Say Something

Why this song?

Well originally I wasn’t gonna do this track. I actually had another one in the works for this week but I was putting the arrangement together and it wasn’t sounding the way I wanted to do it. So I went ‘you know what’ and I was really frustrated and I went out for a cup of coffee. My wife turned around to me and just said “look, why don’t you do Say Something? I’d really like to hear you sing it…”

I said you know what, I really like that song, It’s a great song, it’s a very moving song. So I said why not, lets give it a go and see what happens. I jumped in the studio and literally pulled the whole thing together within a couple of hours. It was completely finished including the vocal takes. It was just one of those arrangements and recording sessions that sort of just came together and I went well, I guess that’s the one for this week.

Tell us about the guitar part…

It’s funny because last week I was talking about standard progressions. The progression for last weeks song was a D to A to Bm to G, so it’s a I-V-VI-IV progression. This weeks progression for this song is actually the same idea, but just taken from the minor perspective. So the Bm comes first, so that’s the chord VI, then to the G that is chord IV, the I being the D then the V being the A. So it’s another type of standard chord progression.

I had to change up the approach up a little bit. Obviously the original song is on piano and very, very haunting and I wanted to keep the essence of that track. But while also having such a standard type of chord progression, I had to really play around with it to try and get something different. I took a real building approach to it so started off very simple with just the two guitar parts and a single vocal. Then bringing in the harmony and then I start building the parts up from there.

Lets talk about the intro…

Well the intro starts off with two guitar parts. So it’s the single guitar just playing something very simple with the B minor to the G except that I’m playing a Gsus2, then to the D, to the A.

So it’s very simple, there’s not much going on. For the second guitar part, I was playing a nylon string acoustic. I didn’t want it to have the sharp attack that a steel string acoustic would have. So I played it on a nylon string guitar, but basically what I was doing was playing in 3rd’s using 3rd harmonies.

So that’s basically what I did in the intro.

Can you tell us about the layering?

By the time I got to the end, I actually had six guitar parts running simultaneously. I had four that I was playing on an acoustic and two on an electric guitar. I also had a percussion part that I was playing on an acoustic as well.

I had to be very careful the way I built up the tracks because the track has a real atmosphere and I had to retain that. Things like drums or guitar solos which are things that I’d usually do, didn’t suit this song because it ruined the atmosphere and I didn’t want to do that.

I had to try and build it without ruining what the song was. So what I ended up doing was for the percussion part, or the drum part was actually using the guitar and hitting it to get some really woody round tones that could be used as a drum, but not really at the same time.

I was getting the kick drum sound by cupping my hand, hitting the back if the guitar. Snare I was using my thumb to slap the back of the body, and I was getting filler notes by tapping lightly on the side there.

So that sounded like this all up if I build the track up.

The second part, or the first melody part was just me strumming through the chords. I kept it quite simple. So I took all the embellishments out and just played the straight shapes.

The third part was where I started playing around with individual notes. I created an ostinato outlining the chords at a higher register and I played this on a nylon guitar.

The next part was basically using the mid range. I was playing in 3rds to try and fill out the mid part. Using this part.

And then the final part was then actually having a higher ostinato, another counter melody up the top in octaves.

And that’s how I built it up.

For the last two guitar parts I wanted to really add to the atmosphere so I did it on electric guitar because I wanted to really make the parts haunting. So I had them washed out with reverb and had a lot of long sustaining notes.

For the first part I actually used this Jem. It’s not even mine, it belongs to my guitar tech Remco, so thanks for letting me use that Remco. And the reason I used this one was because of two reasons. One was the sustainaic pick-up and the Floyd Rose. The thing I like about this one in particular is the Floyd rose is up and down but its very controlled on the up. It doesn’t’ t have a lot of pull but gives me enough to make it useable. The Sustaniac, that’s the awesome part of this, it enables me to keep a note sustaining forever.

So basically what I did was I started off by hitting that one note. Then I use the bar to create vibrato from the trem by pulling the bar up and down slightly.

The second part I played on my Cilia Halo. This was custom built for me by Charles Cilia. I think the difference between this and the production line model is basically the Floyd rose and also the pick up configuration. Its slightly different. And also slightly different in the way the neck is shaped and the way it meats the body.

Basically I used this one because what I wanted to do was get a lot of high sustaining notes that had a lot of emotion in it. And this is my go to guitar for that type of stuff. I had the chord progression going from the Bm – G to the D to the A, and basically what I did was start on the tonic there…And getting those long sustaining notes, and tried to get a lot of emotion in the performance.

It would’ve been very easy to do a shred out solo, but it really didn’t call for it. I would’ve loved to have done it done that, but these type of songs don’t allow for that format. So it was all about the atmosphere, adding the electrics, and nothing more. Hopefully it accomplished what I wanted it to do.
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