Steno Steno

I suppose a brief introduction is in order, this being my maiden Hellagems voyage and all. Some here already know me through my various jaunts to Atlanta to visit billjings, good friend and Cake or Death cohort. I currently reside in Jacksonville, Fla., although I'm in the process of moving to Mississippi (fortunately, my landlord/tenant luck has been better than Rob's). 

Anyway, to the song. Back in January, myself and three friends in Jacksonville began a project by the name of The Monroe Doctrine. Our initial "sessions" consisted of us filling up one half of a 60 minute tape each time we met...we didn't care about the sound quality, we just wanted to fill it up. Over the past four months, we've gone back and re-recorded our favorites (about 10 so far) for an album. I decided to tackle one myself for Hellagems - a song called Steno Steno.

The droning sound in the background is piano recorded on a micro-cassette tape recorder. I chopped up the sounds in a wave editor and matched them up with a simple 4/4 beat from my drum machine (I fiddled with the EQ on the drum track to give it a more muffled sound). For each chord, I paired the original sound with a compressed version of the same sound, one after the other. After stringing it all together, I went back on top with acoustic guitar and vocals. I added the little tape button stop noise at the end for kicks.

Anyway, hope you like. As far as lyrical content goes, it's an ode to steno notepads. I'm a big fan. If anyone wants to hear the original demo from six months back, I'll gladly send it.