“Evangelina”

Track Notes:
This song was really written around the phrase “neon Mother Teresa” – coined by Kate about our friend Christina during a music video shoot (her head was draped in a bright scarf thing). Later I said “I call dibs on the term ‘neon Mother Teresa’ for a song”.

Recording/Mixing:
There is a lot going on in this recording.

There is one Juno 6 synth track. Like in “Noose”, because the Juno 6 is mono, I recorded the track in mono, copied it to another track, shifted the time slightly, and knocked one track hard left and the other hard right.

One bass track.

One drum line. I normally record the drum parts on grouped tracks. One track each for kick, snare, and toms. The hats and rides have their own track and the crash cymbals have a stereo “overhead” type track.

There are 4 guitar tracks. The first one you hear is pretty straight forward. When the song picks up, the second comes in (a screechy little riff). In the second where I sing “god damn neon Mother Teresa” I wanted the guitars to get really big, wide and phasey. I copied the original guitar track and pasted it to two new tracks. Like with the Juno, I time-shifted them slightly to make them unique to each other. I kept the original track in the center of the stereo spectrum and separated the copies hard left and right. Then I put a phase effect on one copy and a flange and amp simulator on the other (The amp simulator was to make it even more unique to the others.

There are 8 vocal tracks (5 regular tracks and 3 vocoder tracks). The first vocal has delay and a massive reverb from the M-One XL. Because I was using the M-One XL as the general “room” reverb for mixdown I recorded just the massive reverb to it’s own track. The second vocal part (“where she goes..”) I sang twice and doubled it up in the mix. I did the same with the “god damn Mother Teresa” section but I mixed it with a touch of delay. The last two vocals are the “Ooohh Evangelina” part with the 4 vocoder parts.

I wanted a nice, airy vocal sound for the “Ooohh Evangelina” section. I played around with different vocals and thought maybe a vocoder would fit. I put one vocoder part down but it wasn’t full enough. I put down two other vocoder parts using a different carrier signal to alter the sound of each. I mixed the three left, right and center from each other. The fourth vocoder is a copy of one of them, time shifted with the same massive reverb I used on the first vocal section.

I used the M-One XL for reverb and the ADA 2.56i for Delay.

Copyright 2012: Seven Graylands


Lyrics:
At the end of summer
She’ll disappear like a cloud
And at the end of sunlight
She wanders in to the night.

But where she goes, no one knows
What she said, had no words
Where she goes, no one knows

She was holding the moon and dancing with children
Like a god damn neon Mother Teresa
Giving glow sticks to the poor
Evangelina

Oooooooo Evangelina
Oooooooo We want to see ya

But where she goes, no one knows
What she said, had no words
Where she goes, no one knows

When she pulls you closer
Her touch is soft as the fog
She’s a mystic contradiction
who wanders in to the night.

But where she goes, no one knows
What she said, has no words
Where she goes, no one knows

She was singing a song as she spun in the sunlight
Mixing bible verse with a cake recipe
Spreading her arms out to us all
Evangelina (Evangelina)

She was holding the moon and dancing with children
Like a god damn neon Mother Teresa
Giving glow sticks to the poor
Evangelina (Evangelina)

Oooooooo Evangelina
Oooooooo We want to see ya

Where she goes, no one knows
What she said, had no words
Where she goes, no one knows
What she said, no one heard
Where she goes, no one knows
but when she smiles, flowers grow

(Evangelina)

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