“Sterep” and “Should Reprise”

“Should Reprise” was the last song I added to The Awakening and the only one I made a final recording of. It’s an instrumental with just two parts—one double-tracked nylon-string guitar and one electric guitar—making it by far the simplest of the EP’s seven tracks.

The song has an interesting genesis. Years ago—perhaps in 2005—I was noodling around on guitar, when out of nowhere I played this very reflective, melancholy guitar line. After playing it for a little while, I noticed that for the vast majority of the riff, notes alternate between the fourth and third strings. I was experimenting a bit with electronic music at the time and thought it would be fun to sequence the riff using a synthesizer, with all the notes from the fourth string played out of the left speaker and all the notes from the right string played out of the right speaker. I was going to call the experiment “Stereo” for obvious reasons, but I accidentally typed “Sterep” when creating the Logic project, and the name stuck. I went ahead and added a ludicrous drum beat and recorded an (unintentionally) out-of-time guitar, and thus “Sterep” was born. Give it a listen, preferably using headphones or speakers that are set relatively far apart; laptop speakers and their ilk obscure the stereo effect.

A couple years later as part of The Awakening, I wrote a song called “Should (Of Course It Matters),” which uses the same basic chords as “Sterep,” though it sounds radically different. Despite those differences, “Sterep” and “Should” were still similar enough that recording “Should” precluded any chance that I could use the “Sterep” guitar line in another recording. After giving it some thought, I decided that reworking “Sterep” into a less electronic reprise of “Should” would let me get the guitar line out there and help the pacing of the record a bit. Instead of electronic drums and synthesizers, I went with a classical guitar line made up of arpeggiated chords. I laid down the original guitar line on top of that and ended up with “Should Reprise.” No worries, this one can be listened to without any sort of special equipment.

I think the natural thing to do is to compare the two, though I can’t say I prefer one over the other. Each is good in its own way and has a distinct feel. If you prefer one or the other, drop me a line with that whys and wherefores.

That’s all for now. It’s possible that I’ll post another track from The Awakening soon, so be on the lookout… same Bat time, same Bat channel.