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photography by Glen DiCrocco Interview with Tim Morse Q: “Can you tell us how this project began?” Tim Morse: “I guess the origin of this album really starts with meeting Mark Dean, the producer and co-collaborator on this project.” Q: “Okay, I’ll bite - how did you meet Mark Dean?” TM: “Funnily enough in a way it was through the Yesstories book. I was just finishing up work on it when I was approached about co-promoting a concert with their former keyboardist Patrick Moraz in the bay area. The show was a very intimate performance on a grand piano with about fifty people in attendance. Anyway on one of Patrick’s breaks I sat at the piano and played some original material and improvised. Afterwards I went to look for Patrick and he was talking to Mike Varney who is the head of Shrapnel Records and was also connected with Magna Carta Records. I was introduced to Mike and it turned out he liked what I’d played. We started discussing various things and at one point he said there was someone I should consider working together with on a project – that person turned out to be Mark. Q: “What was your first meeting like?” TM: “We spoke on the phone and met in his studio. I brought some demos of various things and we had a good talk. He played me some of the projects he’d worked on recently and it all seemed very promising. However, there were a few obstacles in the way.” Q: “Like what?” TM: “The most difficult thing was finding a singer. The singer from my last band did the demos and it came back to me that people just didn’t feel his voice was appropriate for the music. So I auditioned around a hundred singers and it was like American Idol, you know? Most of them were really, really bad – almost all of them. Everybody thinks they can sing, but it isn’t true! If you could find someone that could sing then they almost always had some other baggage, usually a big ego. There was a guy who came in and sang great, I got really excited and enthusiastic about him. We invited him to take a stab at Present Moment and it became clear immediately that he couldn’t take direction at all. It was very uncomfortable, he moved around in the vocal booth like a caged tiger…so he was out! We were very fortunate to get Rich Zeller, because we had recorded the backing tracks and were ready to start vocals, but we didn’t have a vocalist – we really got down to the wire on that issue.” Q: “Can you describe the writing and recording process for this album?” TM: “I demoed all the songs at home before we started recording, so as instrumental backing tracks the music was fairly complete. The harmonies, rhythmic feel and overall structure was in place as a blueprint for us to work on. Mark’s main contribution to the writing at this stage was the vocal melodies, he wrote around 80% of the vocal melodies – the ones I wrote in general were the melodies I sang. When it came time to start recording I went into the studio and played a scratch piano track to a click so that Mark could start building the rhythm parts. I have to say, that basically I didn’t have any input on the drum parts. I knew Mark had the feel of what to do and I trusted him to get on with it. I think there was maybe two times where he consulted me about the feel of a certain section of a song and that was it. And I believe the drum parts he came up with are exactly right for my music.” Q: “And the other instruments?” TM: “As far as the bass parts go, sometimes Mark would play the part I’d created on the demo and other times like on the verse of To Set Sail he’d invent his own bass lines. Once the rhythm tracks were in place we got down to the business of creating the keyboard and guitar parts and this was time consuming and I mean that in the best way. We gave ourselves lots freedom to create layers, consulting each other on the notes, sounds and feel of the music. This was one of my favorite parts of the process, because we were great sounding boards for each other – really sparking off the other person’s ideas for the song. Sometimes in the course of arranging the pieces, things could change dramatically. At the end of Apocalyptic Visions I had the verse riff reprised and Mark told me that I was really ‘milking it’ – that I’d gone to that well a few too many times. I realized he was right, and rewrote it so there was a key change, a breakdown and a nice piano arpeggio section with the vocal that got the idea across in a much more effective way. It became one of my favorite parts of the song. Another example would be the chant in Shatter. I was driving home from the studio one night and it just hit me, ‘Shatter should have a Gregorian Chant in it.’ I spelled out the idea to Mark and he liked it and we intended to be a pure, straight chant. But the vocal melody Mark came up with took us out of that realm and we decided to go the other way and make it otherworldly, electronic and eerie. Anyway there were lots of decisions made on the fly, very spontaneously as we went along.” Q: “Can you give us an example?” TM: “Sure, the Bruce Hornsby-sque piano fills in the last chorus of Shatter were like that. We were laying down piano parts and whenever there was down time, I’d just start improvising and Mark said, ‘You know, that needs to be on the album.’ Since we were recording Shatter that night we looked for a pocket where that kind of playing could be heard and there you go, that was it.” Q: “What keyboards did you use on the album?” Q: “Was the recording the vocals as labor intensive?” TM: “After the keyboards and guitar work was finished we laid down the vocals. I have to say the Rich was a real trooper, because Mark and I were like Steely Dan when it came to recording the vocals. There was many times where we’d record just one line of a song 20 times. Mark would listen for timing and pitch and I’d be listening for consistency and performance and both of us had to be pleased with the take. I’m sure it could get very annoying, but Rich hung in there and was extremely easy to work with. After vocals were finished we got very carried away with all of the detail work the ‘angry villagers’ in Temptation and the sound effect ear candy in Apocalyptic Visions. As Mark has said it was difficult to know when it was done.” Q: “What about the mixing and mastering process?” TM: “That too was very involved. I was there for a lot of the mixing and it was very intense, listening to these songs hundreds of times making small refinements to the sound. I have to hand it to Mark, because he took on a huge job in mixing and mastering this gargantuan piece of music. He was especially mercurial about the mastering which I didn’t have anything to do with, other than coming in to listen to his work and approve it.” Q: “I’d like to ask about the genesis of specific songs. What comes to mind when you think about the origins of Present Moment?” TM: “Present Moment started its life out as a jazz-fusion instrumental called Spectrum. I wrote it when I was in college and had performed it with the band I was in at the time. It was one of the first pieces I presented to Mark and I remember the 15/8 section got him excited right away. Anyway the basis of the song was written then; I later added the intro and refined the middle section a bit before we recorded it. It’s funny, but I don’t necessarily think about meters when I’m writing and so when we were rehearsing Present Moment with the band for the album release party it was interesting to hear the drummer break down the meters: Okay it’s in seven, then four, fifteen, five, eleven…” Q: “And To Set Sail?” TM: “To Set Sail was initially two separate pieces, the song itself and the middle section. The middle section was something I had written before and the working title for it was The Chase Scene, because it sounded like one of those things you hear in a movie during a dramatic chase.” Q: “We’ll just go down the list – what about Prelude?” TM: “The basis of Prelude was also written in college, in fact the first theme and some of the variations are from a Piano Sonata I wrote for my music theory class. I decided I wanted the main theme played on nylon string guitar and we were fortunate to have Kurt Shiftlet come in and play that section. This piece was on my demo and Mark really liked it, so I tried to incorporate it into one of the songs. That wasn’t really happening and I later realized that it could be a stand alone piece and segue into something else.” Q: “How about Goodbye?” TM: “The basis of Goodbye was actually written by my friend Chris Holzer. He and I were playing in a band together and we started sharing some original material. However, when he first showed it to me the verse just consisted of the G9 to the Asus chord in seven. I thought we could spice it up a bit and so I suggested the change in harmonies and the turnaround in 8. I feel this piece was arranged beautifully by Mark and the solo at the end is one of my favorite guitar solos of all time.” Q: “Shatter?” TM: “Shatter is one of those songs that has been through a million changes. I wrote the intro on my friend’s piano and I changed the verse, chorus and bridge sections many times. In some ways I feel this song is the most experimental, especially with the ‘atonal’ part leading into the chant. The chaotic, free form portion of the song was recorded as were a few other things like the intro of To Set Sail for an artist Mark was working with who was recording her poetry and needed an interesting bed of music for her work. She and Mark didn’t end up completing the project, so some of that music found a home on my album.” Q: “And Temptation?” TM: “Temptation is the most recently written of all the pieces. The opening minute or so was composed by my friend Chris and then Mark and I arranged and re-arranged it. I demoed the song, but I was unhappy with the chorus idea and so I thought I’d dig through my stack of music and see if I could find anything appropriate. I found this idea with all these meter changes and played through it once and said, ‘That’s it!’” Q: “The orchestral section leading into the keyboard guitar duet is very interesting…” TM: “Mark pushed for the orchestral bits, not that I needed the pushing, so I arranged the passage and we decided to use real flute and violin. Scott Joss isn’t a classical player, but I think what he did, especially in his solo gives it a Dregs – Kansas flavor. I do really like the exchange between the guitar and keyboard, on each pass they get a little more harmonically adventurous until we’re playing whole tone scales at the end.” Q: “One of my favorites, Adrift.” TM: “A lot of people gravitate towards that song. The song was always going to be called Adrift, even when it was an instrumental. It just came out of improvising shapes and finger picking on my guitar. Basically all of my writing initially comes out of improvisation, I’ll play something I really like and then file it away to use later. I have to say I’m proud of the picking pattern in the chorus. So Adrift existed for a time as one of those songs that would get aired whenever I played my acoustic guitar.” Q: “Apocalyptic Visions?” TM: “The intro for Apocalyptic Visions was originally titled ‘Wind on the Plains’ and it was an instrumental impression of the Native Americans, I’d read a book on them at the time and this music was inspired by that. I had an idea for the verse section of the song and I played it for Mark and he wasn’t really into it. His comment was ‘Too Hall and Oates’ which is pretty funny. Anyway, I still liked the piece and just simply changed it from a major key to minor and it worked very well. Mark made important contributions in arranging the second half of this piece as I’ve already said; in fact basically the whole ending section was conceived by him. I told him that I didn’t want the song to wimp out at the end and he made sure that didn’t happen!” Q: “I really enjoyed your vocal performance on this song.” TM: “Thanks, I’m pleased with the way it turned out.” Q: “How did you decide which songs you’d sing and which songs Rich would sing?” TM: “When we started recording the album we didn’t have a singer. I thought I might sing some of the album, I knew that I was going to sing Adrift and maybe some backing vocals, but neither Mark or I was sure of how much I’d sing. Anyway, Mark had written some pretty tough vocal lines and we needed someone who could sing material like Present Moment. But then I had come up with some vocal melodies for Apocalyptic Visions and I was singing them to Mark and he said, ‘You should sing this song.’ Q: “And finally, Ascension?” TM: “Ascension was created completely in the studio. We had finished keyboard overdubs on a song one night and I turned to Mark and said, ‘I want to record a very floating, ethereal piece, basically just sitting on one chord.’ So we just started recording it right then, layer after layer – I think there’s about twenty keyboard overdubs or so all just improvised. Later we came back and added my father’s voice and had the female singer sing all these notes that we could arrange as a choir.” Q: “Let’s talk a bit about how you wrote the lyrics for this album.” TM: “I wanted the lyrics to the songs to have a different feel to them so I wrote them in several ways. The first thing I did was pillage my poetry for anything useful and Shatter and Apocalyptic Visions came out of those raids. I had to re-work and edit the content into the final draft, but the initial inspiration came from the poetry. Adrift and Temptation were more difficult. Adrift had a very particular message to impart and it was being done in a very naked musical setting, so every word counted. I probably spent more time writing the lyrics of Adrift than the words for all the other songs combined. Temptation too was a bit of a tough one, I had some ideas and some lines written down, but it wasn’t happening. So I went up to the mountains for a couple of days, sitting in the forest without the distractions of the modern world and hammered away at it until it was finished. Writing the words for Goodbye was a completely different experience…” Q: “How so?” TM: “It was about a very specific relationship in my life that lasted for nearly a year and I didn’t know how I was going to consolidate it into a five minute song. I also felt like I didn’t want to fight for it, that I wanted this one to just flow out. So one night I was in bad mood - feeling kind of depressed and the song came knocking. I didn’t really feel like writing it down, but I got out the note pad and it did just flow out of me in about ten minutes, I basically just had to edit it down. So in a way I’m proudest of that one, because I feel it captures the essence of that relationship in a musical snapshot.” Q: “Is Transformation a concept album?” TM: “You could say it is a concept album, or perhaps that it has an overall theme. The lyrics in the songs illustrate the series of events a person can go through in their lifetime and ultimately be transformed as a result of the experience. However, unlike a typical concept album I think the individual songs can be pulled out and enjoyed in their own right.” Q: “So what’s next for you?” TM: “I’d love to perform this music live, but we’ll have to see how that works out. It was a blast playing some of the material for the album release party, so maybe we’ll get a chance to do some dates. I have also started the demo process for the next album – the material is written – I just don’t know how long it will take to record and release it! My hope is to start recording the beginning of next year, but we’ll see… Q: “Thanks for your time.” TM: “It’s been a pleasure.” |
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