SONG: We Climb.

SONG:

“We Climb.” [Download]
(To download: double right-click & “Save As”)

ARTIST: grant.

SOURCE: “Fossil fills out water-land leap”, BBC News, 25 Jun 2008, as used in the post “Four-legged Fish.” (There’s also a side-order of “Anti-evolutionary Bayou Seeping Into US Politics” in there, but you probably knew that.)

ABSTRACT: Well, we all love transitional life forms – lizards with feathers, mammals that lay eggs, Sasquatch… and Ventastega curonica, the alligator-fish. Transitionals show us where revolutions happen and where our desire, as living creatures, for what could be can take us. Those who don’t hold with evolution are fond of saying they don’t exist. And yet here they are. Look, a fish that learned to walk! Just to see what’s up there!

Recording this, I felt a little pressed for time, but the process overall was the reverse of last month – I wished I could spend more time working on words, and maybe less diddling with melodies. Because I said goodbye to my faithful old 1997 Compaq this month, I wound up salvaging and fooling around with an old program called JamWin (that I think came bundled with Cakewalk) that functions as a kind of semi-intelligent accompanist. You plug in chords and it spits out a drum, bass and rhythm track. It’ll even do little bits of melody. It’s a way to make MIDI when you don’t have a keyboard, too, and doesn’t sound half bad when you start tweaking it with some analog-ish effects. So that’s the drums and organ. The electric guitar and voice are all me, recorded in the usual way (in the living room between 11 pm and 2 am).