Too Much Detail

Sound is so close to being finished I can see the light! However I've just realised that I've never actually explained what I'm doing with the song? Or what my narrative intentions are.

The song 'Last Weeks Alcohol' is the story of a young man (or woman in my case) who is at a party but can't stop thinking about their girlfriend. At the beginning of the piece the guy is trying to forget his girlfriend who he being slightly passive aggressive towards in his inner monologue (rather pleasant to in actuality), his girlfriend is at home wanting to see him but he wants to drink, he wants to be at this party. Or so it seems. From the text you understand that the character drinks a lot and that his girlfriend isn't too pleased about it, something that becomes more apparent as the song goes on and the more alcohol is drank. The song picks up from the line 'Vodka flows into any mixer you can find' and you feel the urgency the man has to get more drinks, this continues onto the point where he starts noticing more women but every time notices something specific eg. 'Mini skirts shift' he remembers his girlfriend or the girls resembles his girlfriend. As soon as one of the girls make a move on him his anger comes out and he says 'Screw the phone, screw you and all your stupid rules' relaying his anger in a way that he almost blames her for what he's doing. He the addresses her directly (well directly in his head) hoping she is having a worser time than he is. ' Are you alone? Are you dancing by yourself!' Cuz I'm out here, alive here. We're dancing here' he then has almost a loss of energy when he realises that he's only become angry when he was drinking 'Chugging from the bottom shelf'.

At the chorus he describes what he believes to be love after the experience he's just had 'This is how it feels to fall in love. This is how it feels to fall. The weakness, the sadness. The sirens, the madness. The pounding in your chest, like you're racing the streets in an ambulance.' The descriptions are heightened because he's still very much drunk but you get more of a grounding from the real emotions rather than the alcohol fuelled ones.

The aim of my piece is to have the listener almost be inside of his mind, you have the beat driving the song 1 acting as a heart beat, 1 acting as the beat of the song (added reverb). You have the music as a very faint backing (simply so there is never any lasting silence and also so you know you're at a party). Then once you get past the initial texting to the girlfriend everything becomes heightened much like his emotions you hear the tapping of cans, the opening of cans, specific laughter (always a woman's voice) gasping, the rustling of clothes and of people being close to each other until everything becomes over powering at the line 'chugging from the bottom shelf' then everything mellows out slightly until you get to the end where the ambulance (I know very literal) siren takes you to the end of the piece. I've also used panning to my advantage since I can make the audience very disorientated something one could associate with being drunk.

I also had a tutorial with James where he looked over my piece and made the suggestion of instead of having the beat constant have it speed up over time and make the beat leave the song by the time the siren comes in and have the voice reverb be more gradual. And other than that to clean it up a bit, but it's nearly there and that's what makes me happy.

Also it's 30sec over brief but I can't cut it anymore....I just can't please don't make me.

An over view of how I left the mis Friday afternoon, hopefully the layout wont be changing that much.