Ben's BLOG

Wow, and you thought the last blog update was overdue!

If you haven't downloaded the fourth installment by now, it's going to be up for just a few more days. Let me tell you a few things about these pieces of music.

These last two installments contain some of the best pieces I have recorded. The two cues come from late 2002/early 2003, and the song, "Stain the Rainbow," is a little ditty I whipped up while I was still at USC.

What I like the most about "I Can Chime" is that it is part of that Business Administration video set of cues that I wrote in 2002, and those cues represent a shift in my programming and writing mentality. "I Can Chime" is pretty minimal on orchestration, but I used some of the drum beats in a way that I hadn't really explored in my writing up until that point. "Not Stirred" was the beginning of this shift, and it continued through a good portion of the cues from that video, as you will see in the final installment.

"Are You In?" is another of the reorchestrations of old themes that I wrote for Ethan. It's a happy little tune that is very much at home in the style of my last album, and I am very pleased to have rerecorded it. One of the things that this cue did was to lead the way towards my own personal rediscovery of playing electric guitar, something that I think will also find its way into whatever the next project may be.

"Stain the Rainbow" was one of the quickest songs I ever wrote. Like, "Breakdown," I had the concept fleshed out before sitting down to write the lyrics. I wanted to do a song from the perspective of a guy who is about to die, and he wants to clear his conscience with his mate about the fact that he had cheated and lied to her for so long. Not the happiest of stories, but it was also part of a series of songs I wrote about confronting the end of life.

Also, like "Breakdown," I wanted to be specific about my aims with the song's theme. It's certainly a practice that I'm finding is much more at home in the realm of country music rather than pop, but, while I meant for the song to be specifically about the end of the character's life, it is broad enough in its scope that it is also about the end of relationships and the power of a lie. In this case, the lie was like a cancer, and the picture of the relationship was more pristine than the relationship itself.

"Stain the Rainbow" was originally a part of my first short form EP, recorded in 1999-2000. I think that aside from the lyric, which I am very proud to have written, it has one of the most solid chorus hooks I've composed. For a good while, I wanted to put it on the album that ended up becoming NOWHERE ON MY OWN, but I felt that it was more a representation of where I'd been and less of a representation of where I was going as a writer. That being said, I still plan to rerecord it and arrange it with the band for an upcoming project.

So, stay tuned in cuz we've only got one installment left!

Cheers,
Ben