April 2, 2015 was day three in the studio. Nicolay and I were still on a high from creating the music that ended up becoming that Tales From the Land of Milk and Honey album closer. Once again, we were feeling excellent about our newest batch of instrumentals and even started to talk about the fact that we should make these marathon sessions an annual, semi-annual or just more of a regular thing to see what else the two of us can come up with together or even to just stay razor sharp in the studio. At this point, we had pretty much called it a day and went into complete shutdown and disconnect mode. We wanted to wrap the shit up so that we could go and do what had become somewhat of a cornerstone of these studio sessions: EAT. And eat WELL.
Now, I can't remember if Nic was putting a quick mix on the "Until the Dawn (Milk and Honey, Pt. 2)" instrumental so he could bounce it down and send the files over to Phonte or what was happening exactly, but since I had a little bit of idle time on my hands and just so happened to be sitting at the (Yamaha) Motif keyboard I started playing around on it a little bit. Allow me explain something, most artists or musicians will tell you that some of their best music has come from simply "playing around" on an instrument. Songs that come to mind from my own catalog that are direct results of this include: "Greater Than The Sun" and "Body Rock." A couple of things I was playing around with started sounding pretty good to me until the next thing I knew, I had a decent sounding descending chord progression on my hands. It was another one of those situations where Nic and I kinda looked at each other on the same page like, "We may have to stop everything we're doing right now and record that." Nic opened up a new Pro Tools session and started to construct some drums around the same tempo as I was playing on the piano. The drum pattern he programmed was simple, yet it still managed to encompass his "sound." He laid the pattern out first so that I had a foundation to play over once it came time to record my parts. First, I recorded the piano track which was actually kind of "captured" by Nic. What I mean by this is, listen to the very beginning of the song and the way that it comes in; my piano part doesn't fall completely on tempo until my second chord. I THINK this is because I was playing around with the progression and then realized that we were actually recording. Either way, I LOVE the fact that it was kept exactly the way it was. Even as a perfectionist in the studio, I live for "human" elements in music. Those are moments that add authentic touches to what is being created and could never be duplicated by a computer or plug-in. Even most of what was played after the drums fade at the end was improvised. Second, I picked up the bass guitar and Nic recorded my bass parts, which I kept very minimal. A song like this does not scream for a "bass guitar show," so I felt that simplicity was key there. Lastly, I found a synth patch on the Moog Voyager that I was messing around with and Nic hit the record button on that as well. And I WANT to say (Nicolay, fact-check me on this) that all three parts were each done in one take; or maybe just the piano and bass parts. Anyway, we also layered a synth pad in there for some additional warmth on the track and some strings to make that ending bigger.
