The purpose of this piece is to examine the sometimes circuitous route a song takes from inspiration to final product. My original inspiration for this song came at a time I was living in Columbus, OH and listening to a very fiery preacher on the radio, who would break into little melodies in the middle of his sermons. I decided to write songs a capella, in my car. One of the songs that came out of this experiment was Desolation Waltz, originally a 1:36 long demo recorded into my laptop. I had only a melody and words, no chords, so I played my guitar along in order to stay (somewhat) in tune. A few weeks later, I was playing with my drum machine and made a beat I liked, and decided to sing this song over the beat, more or less in free time, with no underlying chords. After that, I went back in improvised a synth part to make an impromptu harmonic structure for the song. About a year later, I decided to revisit the concept once I had returned to Lawrence, KS, so I learned the improvised chords and transposed them to acoustic guitar, because I was playing a lot of folk music at the time. Once the rest of the band became involved, we returned to a more aggressive repeating drum beat, and added all the attendant bells and whistles you hear with the full band playing, including a drone section in between verses, and a long build which leads into the end section. We tracked the principal instruments live to tape in the studio, and added vocals and the overdubs I have highlighted below, Taylor's backwards/harmonized vocals (my favorite overdub on the whole record!,) and the synth tone which rises over many octaves, simulating a plane taking off.

:00- :35: Original vocal/guitar demo. No chords.
:35- :55: A capella melody added over electronic drum beat, with chords added later.
:55- 1:12: "Folk" demo given to rest of the band with underlying chords defined. (also 2:45 - 2:55)
1:23- END: Final full-band version tracked live on tape in studio.
Of note:
1:28- 1:39: Overdub of Taylor background-singing through harmonizer reversed via computer.
1:48- 2:25: Overdub of synth rise.

jordancgeiger