Seven years to be born
Things are born by chance, sometimes. Or simply because they have to. It matters little what was the cause that gave rise to the first spark of an idea. Yet sometimes it’s nice to tell how it went and how insignificant and other deeply important events helped to create a song. The title is “Flashback”, a song that has been in gestation for almost 7 years.
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2012: madness and enthusiasm
It was 2012 and I was looking for a pedal effect for the guitar, a delay. After much research, my choice fell on a Flashback X4 of TC Electronic. Stories of ordinary madness and enthusiasm typical of those working in the recording studio. Here, we musicians / producers are very excited about this kind of thing, so much so that I immediately felt the need to test all the qualities of this effect pedal. Without thinking too much, I took my guitar, a Fender Telecaster, connected it to my other pedals and to the amp, positioned the microphones and began to record improvising arpeggios, letting myself be carried away by what I heard. Little curiosity: I never recorded those arpeggios again, they are the same ones that can be heard in the finished song.
My influences
I forgot, almost, this recording and my life went on. At that time I was very influenced by bands like Radiohead, Atoms For Peace, Low, Slint and others. In short, a mixture of gloomy, acoustic, electric, electronic and slo-core veins.
2013: bad situations and scars in the mind
A little later, in 2013, I found myself facing the most difficult year of my life. Not in detail, I can only say that I still carry the signs in my mind and the events of that year still affect many of my current choices, even my way of seeing the world. It is said that drastic situations bring inspiration to the artists, perhaps it is true, but I remember that the songs I wrote at that time certainly reflect perfectly the self-destructive state of mind in which I found myself. The stories I wanted to tell always had a rather obscure vein and my music took that direction without ever diverging too much.
2014: a surprise on the hard disk
In 2014 I found in the backup of my hard drive that arpeggio, with that groove of drums that accompanied him undeterred. I found that he lent himself well to accompanying a melodic line that reflected the mood that I still had behind and so I started working on it. The melody and the words were born, which I pinned recording a vocal part on the fly. Evidently, however, it was not yet his time: I was forced to stop production because at that time I had some studio projects to work on.
2015: convictions and attempts
In 2015 this song came back to my mind, and I really decided to get it done, I was convinced that once I had freed myself from that burden, I would have felt lighter. But every time I tried to do something around this passage, my mind was empty, as if it had the total refusal to plunge into the state of mind in which I was at the moment when I had begun to sketch it. So I gave up completely, dedicating myself to other projects, other songs, other things.
In the four years that separate this last attempt for the final one of this year, I tried several times to re-open the project, without success and with a vague conviction not to feel ready yet.
2019: the birth of a song
As the first few days of 2019 began to fill the calendar, so suddenly, this song came to my mind. I was ready, it was time. It all happened suddenly, without warning, without preliminaries. A passionate love that I could face with the right serenity without ever feeling detached, indeed, I was completely involved in the realization. The song wanted to be born at any cost.
This is the story of Flashback, my most painful song that has had patience, a lot of patience to wait for its moment. Today it is here and I present it to you.
Conclusion
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