About Bones

2/13/10 (recorded mostly Dec. '09, conceived several months earlier)

This song began with the lyrics.

Since we build many instruments out of organic parts - wood from trees,
cat gut, calf skin, etc. - I thought it would be really interesting to
build an instrument out of human bones.  Since I will probably never
do such a thing, I figured I would write a song about it instead.

Plus it's cool to think you'll be making music once you're dead.

Anyways, I recorded this song in a more folksy style, with some hand
drums keeping the beat and a guitar backing up the vocals.

There's an old navajo drum that plays a kind of heartbeat throughout, 
an egyptian tabla and a west african talking drum join in for a lot of it too.

The drum breakdown includes: those three drums, shakers, and a tom and
a bass drum from a very old drum set (circa 1950s or something) that a
friend gave me on a long-term loan.

I wanted two breakdowns - one without any melody and just lots of drums 
and another with a very high tremolo kind of feel - so it's guitar tremolos
and falsetto, feeling angelic. I like how they interrupt yet complement
the mood of the song.

Finally, the shakuhachi makes an appearance in a song for the first time.

It might evoke a bone flute, it might not.