Finishing touches

Dreaming_in_Technicolor-Shooting_for_the_Moon.mp3 is available for free download from
http://music.download.com/dreamingintechnicolor (4.45MB, 3:14)

The Edge Of Chaos

ShootingForTheMoon1.mp3(3.0MB, 3:14)
Listening to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme the other day made it beautifully apparent that you don't need to have vocals as the central focus for a song; sometimes a few well placed phrases are all that are required to unlock the meaning of the song. Unfortunately, no way to get sax playing of THAT quality on this track (I wish!!) but the concept still holds. The breakthrough I've been searching for turned out to be as simple as 'less is more' - keep the bridge instrumental and add some soaring voice lines to keep it interesting.

A few ideas formed the basis for the final verse - the idea that life thrives at the edge of chaos, the Lorenz effect (a.k.a. the butterfly effect) where tiny perturbations in a chaotic system can result in huge changes to the system, and the idea that this makes it possible for individual actions to have an influence on the outcome

Here are the lyrics I ended up going with:


Here we are
in a world full of beauty and danger
under skies that are burning with stars
but it seems somehow nothing is stronger
than this burning desire of ours

Every day spins the world into glorious sunrise
Filled with promise of what's yet to come
and the night under glimmering starlight
Filled with dreams that outdistance the dawn

And we're shooting for the moon
Always shooting for the moon...

[Solos]

No one knows where we're going.
No one knows what the future has waiting.
We all live on the edge of chaos
where the wings of a butterfly
could be the seeds of a hurricane's force

Shooting for the moon
Shooting for the moon
Always shooting for the moon
In this world full of beauty and danger
Shooting for the moon
In the night under glorious starlight
Shooting for the moon


Still a lot of work to do on the drums and production, but I'm very happy with the bones of the song as it stands. Certainly took long enough to get to this point!!

Shooting For The Moon Meets Hydroplane

(Note: all text, lyrics and music included in or linked to by this page are Copyright © 2004-2005 Brian Cruickshank unless noted otherwise, and are provided for personal non-commercial use only)

Shooting for the Moon is one of those songs that is just taking YEARS to get off the ground. I can clearly remember when it started to take shape - it was near the beginning of July in 1998(!) after seeing Symphony of Fire (fireworks set to music) - the fireworks were reflecting off of the water in front of the CN Tower and Ontario Place cinesphere. Absolutely beautiful clear evening, the stars were shining, my brilliant, beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, means-everything-to-me wife and I were walking hand in hand back to our car. When this lyric surfaced:

Here we are
in a world full of beauty and danger
under skies that are burning with stars
but it seems somehow nothing is stronger
than this burning desire of ours

The next morning, the next verse came:

Every day spins the world into glorious sunrise
Filled with promise of what's yet to come
and the night under glimmering starlight
Filled with dreams that outdistance the dawn

I'd been working on some other lyrics at around this time, the only good bits of which were the lines

Thriving on Chaos,
Shooting for the moon

It's gone through way too many revisions to count, and the only bits that I've liked enough to keep are those first steps. Musically, the song has been much more direct - one of the best sax lines I've ever done is on it. Here is the first part of it as it stands: ShootingForTheMoon.mp3 (1:15, 375KB). It needs a lot of work, especially the drums, but it still manages to get a shiver up my spine which is a good sign. The problem is that I plateaued on this around a year ago and have been pretty much stuck since. Musically, the rest of the song is basically in place, but I know the lyrics have to live up to the potential of the song for it to be any good and it has just not happened.

Anyways, in mid December I was on my way back home from L.A. on an overnight flight, feeling particularly 'soul displaced' as William Gibson would say, unable to sleep, listening to Massive Attack's brilliant CD Mezzanine over and over, so I decided to try to write some lyrics for another song I've been working on (Pattern Recognition). I certainly didn't have Shooting For the Moon in mind at that point, I just wanted to write. And that's how Hydroplane came about:

If all you had was one day
how would you react
what would you say to the one you love
what would you change and what would you hold dear

hydroplane
all you really have is today
tomorrow is much too far away

hydroplane
feels so insane
coming apart at the seams
and all i have left to hold on to
is you and our dreams

hydroplane
as the waves rush past us
blurring in the time lapse photography
until the only thing that isn't noise
is only just you and me

everything you count on
everything you take for granted
everything you just put up with
everything you just can't stand
everything can slip away from you
and there's nothing that you can do
it's all gone in an instant

hypdroplane
feels so insane
running fast as if furious action
was the same thing as traction
when all i need is you
to hold onto
to make everything real again

you and i as time comes crashing
down around us
when i feel you close it's all ok

as we learn
to hydroplane
hydroplane

Written December 17, 2004
Copyright © 2004-2005 Brian Cruickshank


It didn't fit at all with the feel that Pattern Recognition had going for it, so I put it aside. I'd written it weeks before the tsunami hit. You wouldn't know it from reading it now. The meaning of the song certainly works within that context...
but it feels so negative, so down that I don't know that I really want to put it to music as it stands.

Well, tonight the idea of merging Shooting for the Moon with Hydroplane for some reason percolated up. Positive meets negative. Yin and Yang. Life and death. Not sure at all what bits and pieces will survive, or whether this bit of welding will even produce something worthwhile or not. I'd really love to finally get this song finished one day, and I'm hoping the act of writing this log will somehow help crystalize the song into being. Hoping for some kind of cold fusion to happen. Worth a try, anyways. After all, here we are...

Brian
http://www.dreamingintechnicolor.com