JOHN HERMAN: "Nights When Georgia Thunder Sounds Like Shells" came together in a special way. Who knew that in the first challenge the musician would tap into such a powerful topic? As the song passed from artist to artist, I felt there was a quaintness to how they dealt with the war. Of course, most didn't know that that was what the song was about. The drummer's reflection brings a smile to my face as does the inclusion of pictures of their surroundings by two of the artists. To me, the song is about a young soldier who hears the explosions of war only to be reminded of the thunderstorms back at home. It is about taking the unreal and making it real in the only was one knows how. Martin touches upon those themes in his reflection. Rather than being a political statement, this a very personal song about the memory of a certain place and time.

CHALLENGE #1: Using the fifth article you get after using the random article function on wikipedia.com, write the chord progressions for a song summing up or inspired by the article.

MATT CARANO: See attachment named 1. Al-Fajr came up, a diambiguation. I picket the link that looked most interesting to me.

Attachment 1 - Click to go to the article

See attachment named 2. Operation Phantom Fury was the link which is the code name for the Second Battle of Fallujah-a joint US/Iraqi offenive against rebel strongholds in the city of Fallujah Nov 7-23, 2003. I used the first letter in each of the words Second Battle Of Fallujah as my starting point.

Attachment 2 - Click to go to the article

See attachment named 3. S B O F, or letters 19, 2, 15, and 6 of the alphabet. I assigned each letter to a chromatic note/chord based on A=1, A#= 2, etc. For letters befond the chromatic scale, just repeated the series so letter 13 was the same as letter 1, etc. S=Eb, B=Bb, O=B, F=D. The chords I used were Eb, Bb, B, D in that order. Next I needed to assign a quality to each chord. On the back Bushism calendar rip-off days I wrote the qualities: Major, minor, Dominant, minor 7, Major 7 and 9. I then flipped them over and picked my favorite 4 Bushisms and organized them best to worst, flipped them over and assigned the qualities on the back in order. Thus Eb became a Maj7, Bb Major, B 9 and D Dominant 7.

Attachment 3

See attachment named 4.

Attachment 4

Attachment named 5 shows my 4 favorite Bushisms. The order was 27, 21, 25, 24. I can't help but write my favorite. "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." The Truth.

Attachment 5

CHALLENGE #2: Record drums to accompany the song attached. Your inspiration is the following statement: "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully."

OLIVER BLETON:
So this week, we get the second challenge. i receive an e-mail from John with an mp3 attached. It's an acoustic guitar track. My directions for this challenge are to record a drum track with my inspiration being the sentence "I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully." Hmmmm... sure.... I think someone along the chain of command smoked a good one...;) So I pay greater attention to the track that was sent to me. As I mentioned, it was a short acoustic guitar track, with a laid-back, folksy-jazzy vibe. The track basically dictated what kind of style I had to play in: jazz time. At first glance, it just seemed like a simple 3/4 kinda groove. But wait! What's this?!? It's not in 3, it's in 5! Dammit! Not only is jazz one of my weaker styles, but in 5?!? Bastards! This challenge really became that: a challenge! This was less a case of having fun than it was of pulling teeth. Let's just say folksy-jazzy stuff (especially in 5) isn't my cup of tea. So I struggled through the recording, which had no count-in or click track, and ended up sending what I thought was the least worst track (man, even an 18 year old kid from Berklee would laugh his ass off at my playing on this one). So I hope you all appreciate how far out of my comfort zone I went for you guys :P. Also hoping the next challenge has something to do with thrash metal or something... Outta here like last year

CHALLENGE 3: You must record two non-vocal tracks to compliment the existing tracks in the attached song. Next write twelve lines of lyrics inspired in some way by the Second Battle of Fallujah from November 7th to November 23rd in the year 2003. Explore connotation -rather than denotation- when composing the lyrics. Do not explicitly discuss the facts of the battle. Rather seek a detail or moment that resonates with you personally.

MARTIN WALKER:
I'm sitting in the guard truck watching South Park
The shake and bake is lighting up the sky
Butters shows up just in time in tap shoes
Those Orange County kids are going to die
Fallujah's kind of pretty all lit up in white
When I blink I think I'm somewhere else ---
Out on the back porch watching fireflies
Nights when Georgia thunder sounds like shells
I love the way they die on South Park
Butters just killed them with his shoe
Today they filmed me taking out a Haji
I wish I could be home instead with you

Just want to say, too, that as I'm seeing bits of this fall into place, it is very inspiring. Great job.

I knew the lyric was going to be tricky --- I didn't know anything about the second battle of Fallujah. I liked the music right away, started hearing a melody for the piano part in my head. Since the challenge was issued on a Saturday, I worked on the music first (generally I don't have the time
required to record during the workweek). I played with some progressions after listening to the track a couple of times. Then sat down on Sunday and brought the tune into my recording workstation. I played the piano against the original tracks a few times, working on variations, then recorded the
piano track. Finding an instrument for the second track took a while. I ended up with an electric guitar (Epiphone Les Paul) plugged straight into the workstation, no amp. This gave a nice clean sound and I found a very simple sliding motif that seemed to compliment the busier piano melodies.
For the lyrics I took some time to research the 2nd battle of Fallujah. I read an overview of the battle on Wikipedia, articles from major publications at the time, a few off beat pieces from the right and left, and an interview with a one time British soldier turned journalist, which provided the most interesting information tangential to the battle itself (a main criteria for the challenge).

I've replicated my notes below:
http://www.channel4.com/news/2004/12/week_4/fallujah.html
Election, 3 per cent, no sympathy for locals, Hajis, sympathy for own - no cameras, phosphorus glow "Willy Pete," shake and bake, black democrat senior ncos, sandbox (iraq) "South park during breaks, vehicle batteries"

It took a while to find a way into a story. Eventually the idea of the marines watching South Park on breaks and the reports of the use of white phosphorous stood out as the most emotionally charged elements for me. I had to use the first person to keep away from any judgment and, ironically, to
keep the narrator disassociated from the emotion of the moment --- this is what struck me about the South Park vignette, that the soldiers seemed unable to feel about what they were involved with in any direct and sophisticated way. I looked up Iraq marine lingo to try to keep things accurate. After a couple of hours I had the basics of the three stanzas and edited carefully for tone and trueness over the next few days. Attached is a picture of my home recording space, taken just after the recording process.

CHALLENGE #4: Record one vocal track for the attached song using your own lyrics incorporated with the lyrics provided:

Kind of pretty all lit up in white
When I blink I think I'm somewhere else ---
Out on the back porch watching fireflies
Nights when Georgia thunder sounds like shells

NATASHA DUCHENE:
Kind of pretty all lit up in white
When I blink I think I'm somewhere else ---
Out on the back porch watching fireflies
Nights when Georgia thunder sounds like shells

So as much as I love working with text, I'm pretty lousy at spitting out words on demand. That, and internalizing the rhythm/structure of the music provided, turned out to be the biggest challenges of this week.

Even though I didn't finish it on time, I got started early, hoping that inspiration would hit sometime before Saturday. I listened to the thing on loop and improvised over it, with and without words, usually some mix of the two. Often my lyrics develop from syllables that turn to words that turn to ideas, and this was no exception, at least in parts.

However, what was even trickier was finding a melody that I liked over the chord progression. Nothing was working. Certain words would pop out while I was improvising but, while they felt right at the time, the music was never going where I expected it to so it didn't work in the bigger picture. I took a break and landed right into a crazy few days of work and school and arrived home at 8pm on Saturday completely fried and unable to do much of anything.

So that's when I realized I needed to sleep on it. I crashed at 10pm and woke up at 4am, wired, still exhausted, but absolutely unable to sleep. So I decided to get up and work.

It turns out insomnia is sometimes just inspiration in disguise. I found the right melody for the part that was tripping me up each time (the line "When I blink I think I'm somewhere else" in the final version), and most of the words I was missing just came along naturally with that. When I went back to sleep I knew exactly what I wanted to record, but I was still missing the last line of the song.

So then all that was left was recording, more or less. When I got up the last line, "in a cloud of regret" just kind of appeared out of nowhere. I'm still not sure if I like it, but time was an issue, and the more I sang it the more it grew on me.

Here is the final lyric:

Kind of pretty all lit up in white
When I blink I think I'm somewhere else ---
Out on the back porch watching fireflies
Or was it stars reflected in your eyes
Nights when Georgia thunder sounds like shells
I leave my coat at home
And find myself under streetlights
Walking with memories
I can't forget
Walking through rainstorms
In a cloud of regret

As usual, it took me a bazillion takes to get a version that I liked, so I hope you guys dig it. I had to do a noise reduction that kind of gives the voice a slightly metallic sound (I'm hoping only noticable by me because I'm looking for it), but the buzz was really loud if I didn't do it. Finally, since I don't want this to be completely dull, I'm sending you a photo of my street because we just had our first real snowfall of winter this morning, and well, I couldn't help but link it with the first line of the song while I was recording (I didn't capture the actual snowfall unfortunately since I was still recording at that point). And also just because it is very beautiful here right now.

Snow fall in Montreal

JON BRIGGS - ENGINEER'S NOTE: This was one of the more straightforward songs produced by The Man Who Was Thursday. The only really odd thing that some people mentioned was the fact that this song was in the 5/4 time signature. Other than that, it was pretty standard: guitar, piano, drums, vocals. I added an electric bass track. Also, the ending was kind of abrupt, so Joseph K. Murphy and I threw in a cymbal roll.