In the Key of K

New music! Streaming everywhere! Or buy it at Bandcamp! An artist like me makes NOTHING from any streaming services. If you want to support what we do buy the album at Bandcamp or check out Patreon and the merch store in the link tree.

I’m slowly getting all the merch added to the Merch Store! There will eventually be merch for every track on the album!

The last song from my first cassette tape from 1997–unless you acknowledge the hidden anti-christmas anthem I included at the end (but may have been at the end of side one, I can’t remember). It was a popular thing to do in the 90s–add an unlisted song at the end of an album. As with most of these older songs, the music is untouched. The vocals have been re-recorded but, honestly, I could have left this one alone. The original vocals weren’t terrible but I can do better now so I did. 🫠

This song gets playful with the lyrics. It looks like it has a lot more words than it does because the verses are reordered so that they didn’t fall in a linear single line pattern. You get an extra line after a rhyming couplet and then they rotate. You know, so that things don’t go in a single file line… Maybe a little too on the nose but that is how I wrote it.

The content of the lyrics is my typical inward thinking, as famously inscribed on the Temple of Delphi, “Know Thyself.” It’s also about keeping an open mind. There is definitely a little bit of anti organized religion sentiment too.
//
Single File

Give me a second a second to live, 
I’ll put a lifetime of life in my chance, 
Take it away for a thought in the mind.

Give me a second a second to live, 
I’ll put a lifetime of life in my chance,
Take only a need to prove destiny’s kind.

Take it away for a thought in the mind.
Take only a need to prove destiny’s kind.
Give me a second a second to live. 

Take it away for a thought in the mind.
Take only a need to prove destiny’s kind.
I’ll put a lifetime of life in my chance.

Chorus x 2
Death comes first, the beginning of life.
There is no need for close-minded sight.
Think what you want, it won’t be right.
There’s always another idea of life.

The answer’s not there if there’s no way to see.
We need to question every belief.
Nothing’s for sure in a thought that’s been cancered.

The answer’s not there if there’s no way to see.
We need to question every belief.
Try not to go and take too much for granted.

Nothing’s for sure in a thought that’s been cancered.
Try not to go and take too much for granted.
The answer’s not there if there’s no way to see.

Nothing’s for sure in a thought that’s been cancered.
Try not to go and take too much for granted.
We need to question every belief.

Chorus x2

Kick in the face of the thought you don’t know.
You won’t understand if you don’t think alone.
Stand in the line and just wait your turn.

Kick in the face of the thought you don’t know.
You won’t understand if you don’t think alone.
If you go astray you surely will burn.

Stand in the line and just wait your turn.
If you go astray you surely will burn.
Kick in the face of the thought you don’t know.

Stand in the line and just wait your turn.
If you go astray you surely will burn.
You won’t understand if you don’t think alone.

Chorus x2

Huh!

Single file. Single file. Single file in a row. x2
//

How on Earth do you play it? The structure here has three parts Verse, Chorus, Coda.

The verse is in a 12/8 or 4/4 with triplets. It easiest to count it in four and is some flavor of Gm.
Verse chords–I originally played all of these power chords off of the A string, so the G5 is at the tenth fret–it’s really fun once you get the hang of it:
G5*Bb5*|D5*Eb5*|F5*C5*| riff|

The riff adds one measure of 3/4 into the verse. Note that there is touch harmonic on the first string–make sure your distortion is screaming and barely touch the metal above the fourth fret. This harmonic also counts off the song in the beginning:
——————–h4–
————————-
————————
————————
-3-2-0—————–
——–3-2-0———
———————-

Chorus:
G5***|F5***|A5***|G5***|
The second G5 chord is not played on the guitar. Instead you do a descending glissando on the first two strings from 15th fret (which is G and D, the notes that make G5). Glissando is when you glide/slide down or up the strings–apply pressure evenly move down the neck across all the frets. If I were to play it today I would leave out the glissando.

The coda. It’s long and drawn out and I only ever played it one or two times. You can hear some Black Sabbath/Cream/classic rock influence a little bit here during the build up on the F5 chords.
|G5_Ab5_| repeat then
|G5_Ab5 A5|Bb5___|
Now you noodle around the F5 chord in the eighth position on the A sting. There is a build up and tempo change (no click tracks here!).
Single file chords:
F5***|Eb5***|F5***|Db5***| repeat
then |Db5___|Eb5___|B5(strings one and two only)
Then play nonsense notes over drum fills.

I buried a lot of the bass in the mixdown of the coda. The original recording had some really blatantly wrong notes. Now you can hear the bass when it is at it’s best. When it is really bad, I slowly lowered it so it wasn’t too noticeable. I guess I could have rerecorded it but at some point you have to decide if you want to rerecord the whole thing or leave it alone.

I love this song. It has a lot of the things I enjoy when making music. If I had it to do over I would leave out the classic rock influences but I do love that little break down. There might be some mistakes in how to play it but if I played it today this what I would do.