#silhouetting

Silhouetting by Patterns in Traffic

Well, this is long overdue. Almost two years after the release of Silhouetting, I’m finally getting around to the final post of this “Inside” series about the tracks on the album. I hope you’ve enjoyed them as much as I’ve enjoyed writing them, and I’m so glad to have had the opportunity to put my thoughts down about each and every track.

“Crash and Burn” was the second song that I ever wrote. I was in high school at the time and only played bass, so I plucked along as I sang. I played the song for the few close friends and family that ever heard me play, and then unceremoniously left it behind.

Years later, when I had learned guitar and was first considering putting together an album’s worth of material, I thought back on some of my early songs, wondering if any of them were worth revisiting. This one, which I would have dismissed as immature or simplistic in the interim, now seemed heartfelt and sincere. I reimagined the song on acoustic guitar and rewrote some of the original lyrics to bring it up to the quality of my more recent writing. After that, “Crash and Burn” was a song I would frequently open with when performing. It was a good warmup for my voice and a fitting introduction to my sound.

When I was considering different styles that I wanted to experiment with on Silhouetting, something that I really wanted to try was a piano ballad. One of my favorite artists, Butch Walker, has some beautiful examples, such as “Joan” and “ATL.” I love how raw and emotive a song can be when stripped down to just a piano and a vocal. Since I already had several acoustic guitar-centric songs on the album, I decided to reinvent “Crash and Burn” once more.

However, I am no pianist, so I enlisted the help of my Uncle Don to make this vision a reality. We worked together to create a piano rendition of “Crash and Burn,” and Don recorded the piano take you hear on the final recording. I have him to thank for allowing me to expand into that new musical territory!

Silhouetting by Patterns in Traffic

I was your stereotypical angsty and introspective kid during my middle school and early high school years. Before I had ever picked up an instrument, I wrote some forlorn poetry in the confines of my bedroom. Once I started playing and writing music in high school, most of my writing consisted of stream-of-consciousness lyrical ideas, similar to my earlier poetry. I did not yet have the musical knowledge to turn these ideas into actual songs, but I had plenty of lyrics printed out and sitting in a pile on the floor of my closet. 

As you can imagine, all of these ideas were mind-numbingly terrible, with the exception of one that stuck with me. I was in the midst of a torrid love affair with Brand New’s Deja Entendu, which led to a dark and metaphorical quality that was unique for my writing at the time. The song was originally titled “Born Again,” echoing the first line of the lyrics.

Years later, when I had started to learn some guitar, I came across the lyrics and started fumbling around with some chords to see if I could build the idea into a fully-realized song. At the time, I was in a band that used a free software called TabIt to share song ideas. It was a simple interface where you entered your music as guitar tablature, and the software would play the ideas back using an awful MIDI “electric guitar” sound. I tabbed out a full version of “Born Again” in the style of our band (think early Fall Out Boy or All Time Low). This time, I called it “The Ten Gallon Hat Song” for no particular reason. I thought it was funny, and we had a habit of coming up with song titles that had nothing at all to do with the actual song. Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately), the band dissolved before we could ever properly learn or perform “The Ten Gallon Hat Song.”

Sometime over the following years, I formulated the idea for the “epic” closing section of the song. When paring down the song ideas for Silhouetting, I penciled this song in as the closer. The final version features most of the original stream-of-consciousness lyrics from many years ago. It also features some of the instrumentation from the “Ten Gallon Hat Song” version, and plenty of new additions including the slide guitar that I had previously utilized on “Can’t Give Up on Us.”

To lend some cohesion to the full album, the end of the song fades into a reprise of the swirling synthesizer effect that opens the first track, “3 Weeks.” The title of the song was also changed to “9 Weeks” to mirror the opening track and reinforce the sense of the album coming full circle. These two songs ended up being great bookends for the album, making opening and closing statements that (hopefully) tie together the overarching themes and the listening experience!

Silhouetting by Patterns in Traffic

You might say that “Loved You After All” is the one glimmer of hope on Silhouetting. This is one of the few positive songs that I’ve written and remained satisfied with. Historically, I had a lot of trouble writing happy songs because they would inevitably start to sound corny or immature to me. I began and discarded many such tunes, which is probably why most of Silhouetting is comprised of songs about adversity and failed relationships. I guess I am just better at communicating those feelings! And I always felt a little strange trying to write a song about how happy I am. It feels like I’m bragging or something. But I digress...

As soon as I wrote “Loved You After All,” I knew it had to be on the album to keep it from being a completely depressing listen. It is a pretty straightforward love song that details the optimistic beginnings of a relationship when it seems like everything is going right. 

I wanted to try something a bit different with this track and start out with only acoustic guitar and vocals before transitioning into a full-band performance. In the final version, the first verse is purely acoustic before strings are added in the first chorus. The drums and bass then come in at the beginning of the second verse. It proved tricky from a production standpoint to add those instruments to the mix without a jarring change in the volume of the track.

The piano in this song was added late in the recording process. My Uncle Don heard an early version of the track during recording and suggested that another instrument in the bridge would help fill out the sound in that section. I decided to stay within the motif of acoustic instrumentation and add grand piano chords. I was then able to utilize the piano again to play a lead part in the outro section.

Silhouetting by Patterns in Traffic

“Get to You” was one of the last songs completed for Silhouetting. The concept for the chorus had been floating around in my head for a while before I could flesh out the other sections of the song. The vision really came into focus when I decided to make it a duet. I wrote one verse from the perspective of each of the two players in a relationship.

Most of this song was composed on acoustic guitar, and I originally intended for the final recording to be primarily acoustic guitar and piano. When my girlfriend Stacey heard the track, she pointed out how the dark subject matter contrasted with the upbeat nature of the acoustic approach. This got me thinking about different ways to bring a darker tone to the music. The final version uses a blend of organ and accordion samples to form the foundation of the song. The consistent drone created by this blend of instruments gives a gloomy and eerie mood to the track. I also replaced the piano parts with a synthesizer patch that had a more muffled sound than a bright grand piano.

I was lucky enough to have my sister, Kali Simons, sing the female vocals on the recording. Kali is a gifted singer and guitar player, and I am proud to be able to utilize her talent on this song. Amazingly, this is one of Kali’s first vocal performances on record! I was so impressed by her performance on the chorus that I decided to have her sing the lead part while I perform the background harmony. I think this provides a nice break from listening to my voice for the entire 50 minutes of the album. That also explains why I placed this song right in the middle of the tracklist! If that’s not enough, the incomparable Don Bellew performed the bass on this track.

Silhouetting by Patterns in Traffic

I was alone in the car on a long drive home when I started singing the beginnings of what would become “Turn the Lights Out.” As I sat in traffic over the next hour or so, I started building more and more of the song vocally and capturing the ideas on my cell phone’s voice recorder. By the end of the drive, the verses and chorus were largely complete. 

This was an exciting song to record because it was my first attempt at a more soulful, bluesy track. The 3/4 rhythm and prominent bass really drive the song and make it an album standout for me. I knew I wanted piano and Hammond organ at the center of the instrumentation, and I also knew I wanted to feature some guitar soloing. What I was not anticipating was adding a horn section. My dad can be thanked for that! When he heard me working on the recording, he immediately said that he could hear horn parts that would go great in the song. My dad played trumpet in bands for years, so naturally I trusted his judgment. He helped me to compose a three-piece horn section including trumpet, trombone, and saxophone; it took the track to a whole new level! We even ended up incorporating a saxophone solo into the outro section of the song, which I would have never expected at the beginning of this process.

The two long guitar solos are melodic in nature and almost serve as instrumental verses in the song. In fact, I wrote them vocally and sang them long before I ever figured out how to play them on guitar. I’m sure I sounded ridiculous singing those guitar solos in the shower most mornings before and during the recording of this track.

The outro section of the song with the “You don’t feel...” lyric was a separate idea that I had come up with that was not originally intended to be a part of this song. When I was searching for the right way to end the track, I came across this idea and realized how well it would flow from the existing parts I had written. I ended up combining the two ideas into the final version of “Turn the Lights Out.”