Creating Smarter Than This

Date Conceived: 9th April 2023

Some of the songs on the album have a certain "thing" about them that stands out to me, usually something I was trying to do. For this song it was trying to have a repeating riff that ran the whole way through the song. It mostly worked, although it didn't in the middle 8/guitar solo. However, it would have clashed with the acoustic guitar lead part so that didn't matter anyway. The main issue with playing a repeating riff over a song that lasts almost four minutes is that it isn't as easy as you may think. While I wanted to play everything on the album, I didn't commit myself to playing a perfect take. If I did I doubt I'd have finished a single track yet. I'd record multiple takes and assemble one master take for each part made up of the best bits (AKA comping). That was the only way I was going to get that riff done!

An example of "comping" in Smarther Than This. The ribbon at the top shows the comped bassline and below it are seven takes, each a different colour. The highlighted part of each take corresponds to the section found in the final bassline. You may notice, the later takes (closer to the bottom) feature more in the final piece, as my playing got better during recording.

I remember I worked out the guitar solo and spent half a day recording it and putting together the whole thing, and the coming back a day or two later and thinking "I can make that a bit more elaborate". I often do this; realise I can put in more twiddly bits to make it sound more impressive. It was slightly above my ability to play so I had to keep working on it, landing the notes, making sure to mute surrounding strings so there was no ring, working out how to do a basic sweep (never done that before) and so on. Once I had what I wanted, I deleted the files for the first version.

There are actually two basslines in this song. The most pronounced is quite high for bass and is doing more. I then decided to put a really simple low bass part underneath, but this blends in so well with the acoustic rhythm you don't really notice it.

I don't remember much about writing the lyrics apart from the fact I got them done really quickly, which doesn't happen very often for me at all. I also don't think I used RhymeZone too much to prompt me either, which is a crutch I usually lean on. You'll probably think the lyrics are rather vague, which is something I do quite a bit. I don't write a lot from my life. Not that I'm secretive or embarrassed, I just don't have much interesting I would say. Still, the odd part of this is me, such as "staying up late, getting up early" and "We only get one chance to sing our song. Only one life, it's not really that long", but the rest is just fluff that sounded like it fit.

Despite how easily this song came to me, I didn't particularly like it when it was done (or nearing completion). I wanted to make a 100% up-tempo rock album, but this is a slow acoustic song, and I hated my vocals, especially in the first half (I'm still not keen). Now some time has passed (well, over two years) I've come to enjoy it. It's not even my least favourite track on the album!