DNA
A song about gaining a new perspective on life after the death of my Uncle Danny
©2016 Song Arsenal Music LTD.
words and music written by Ian Patrick Gentles
completed Monday, October 10th, 2016, 4:27 PM
song #381, 1st song of Set 20
DNA lyric video
DNA live performance with acoustic guitar and vocals only (tuned a half step down from a natural)
A short film documenting the recording process for DNA
The Magnolo Family children, circa 1964. From left, my Uncle Dominic, Aunt Cathy, Aunt Linda, and Danny sitting on my mom, Patty Ann’s lap.
From left: My brother Cole, Danny and me in Hamilton Square, New Jersey around the 4th of July, 1977.
‘Dan the man’ and me goofing off at my folk’s house, circa 1989.
A couple of pseudo hippies: Danny and me with my tie-dyed VW Beetle, circa 1990.
Danny had a great sense of humor- and he loved the blues.
New Jersey born and raised, Danny moved to San Francisco in 1993 and never looked back. This is on top of the city’s Twin Peaks area during my first trip to see him in 1994. I would return a few years later to live with him for a year and a half.
Our Family in Barcelona, 2004. Danny is 2nd from left, I’m just to the right of him in black suit.
At one with the city he loved, circa 2005. This was during my mom’s first visit to see him after his diagnosis. He was still in good spirits.
the Song Bud
This green, ‘sticky-note’ paper slip is what I call a “song bud”. It’s how I remember and keep track of the literally thousands of song ideas that have popped into my head over the years until I can turn them into completed, copyrightable works . These song buds usually coincide with a brief, crudely recorded version of the melody itself with ‘dummy lyrics’ that I’ll capture to a voice memo when the idea comes to me. These ideas can ‘incubate’ in my mind for many years before I get around to actually turning them into fully-realized, completed songs with lyrics. In the case of DNA, (an idea that was bouncing around my head for at least ten to fifteen years before writing), the words “Anything, Anywhere, Anyone” became the temporary title that I assigned to the original song-bud idea to help me distinguish it from all the others. In other words, as soon as I would see this sticky note with these words on it, my brain could instantly dial up that specific melody- the same way you might instantly start singing, “There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold” if someone mentions the title “Stairway To Heaven”. I was able to incorporate DNA’s original song bud title of “Anything, Anywhere, Anyone” into the final lyrics of the completed song by modifying them a bit with the line, “everywhere with everything and everyone”. That’s not always the case and quite often, the original, ‘title words’ and/or ‘dummy lyrics’ are discarded altogether.
It’s extremely useful for me to write my ‘song bud’ ideas onto sticky notes. This technique basically transforms all of the abstract melodies in my head into ‘solid’ real-life, tangible objects that I can actually touch and see and move about in a physical space. This affords me the ability to easily mix, match and paste an entire song together from many different song buds that I can easily lay out right in front of me.
Complete and Finalized Lyrics
Early Working Lyrics
These are the lyrics to a song titled, ‘Pulling Apart At My Dreams’. It’s essentially a very early version of DNA, but it took many rewrites to get it there.
In July of 2011, my then-finance, Patti informed me of an online request she saw asking for independent artists to submit their music to them for possible use in an independent film they were working on. I reached for the “Anything, Anywhere, Anyone” song bud (see “the Song Bud” section above in this column) and made a quick ‘acoustic guitar and vocals-only’ recording of it with some sloppy lyrics I threw together before sending it off to them. (You can listen to it in the ‘Origin and Development’ section in the right column.) I titled it, ‘Pulling Apart At My Dreams’. However, I never heard back from them- not even a “Thanks, but no thanks”. Oh well. Regardless, we can see some of the early, rough lyric ideas on this paper that (five years later) I would reuse when I rewrote the song to be what is now DNA.
About The Song
ITS INSPIRATION and MEANING
The title of this song has a sort of double meaning. It was originally intended to phonetically spell out the name ‘Danny’ as if it were humorously pronounced by someone with an exaggeratedly thick, middle-American accent. It also suggests that the song is about a blood relative connected to me through genes, which makes sense because Danny was my uncle.
Out of five siblings, he was my mother’s youngest brother which made him less than seven years older than me. Therefore, we grew up together as brothers and best friends instead of the more traditionally common, ‘older uncle and nephew’. We went everywhere and did everything together. We influenced each other. He turned me on to Dylan, Clapton and the ‘Dead, and I taught him how to actually play their songs on guitar.
In the early 1990s, I was the first one in the family that he confided in when he was coming out as gay. Soon after, he moved to San Francisco where I too eventually went to live with him and his partner for a year and a half before heading back east. Danny, however, fell in love with his adopted city and made the decision to spend the rest of his life there; a decision that would eventually complicate one of life’s unforeseen, tragic curveballs.
In 2004 our family flew to Barcelona for my brother, Ryan’s wedding. Upon returning to the States, Danny visited a doctor due to a difficulty in breathing. Despite being a fairly heavy smoker since age twelve, he had always been very energetic and kept himself in great shape. Hence, he and the rest of us naturally presumed that he was suffering from a relatively more easily treatable disease like pleurisy- or at worst, pneumonia. Instead, sadly, his diagnosis was stage four lung cancer.
In the several years that followed, he made many months-long visits back to New Jersey to be with our family. I spent a lot of time with him then, and had it not been for me driving him to regular chemo treatments in Philadelphia, I never would’ve assumed that anything was remotely wrong with him. We didn’t really talk about his illness because as close as we were, our relationship was never one where we expressed our deep, inner emotions. Of course it seems ridiculous when looking back at it now, but I guess the attitude was that we were young, tough dudes and no matter what the world threw at us, we could handle it like “men”: no coddling, no tears. Besides, he was going to beat this thing.., right?
By the end of 2007 the cancer had spread to his spinal cord and liver. That January of ’08 I flew to San Francisco to stay with him for a week, vehemently denying to myself the entire time that I was there to say goodbye. In many ways though, it was like the Danny I had known for almost four decades of my life was already gone. He was filled with seething anger and a rage that seemed geared towards me. He screamed at me for the most ridiculous of things and would yell at me in public. At one point he said, “I hope you do more to help the next person you love who has cancer”. That week ended with me walking into his bedroom very early one morning to say goodbye before heading out to catch a plane back home. I gave him a hug and said I’d be back soon, but as it turned out, I would never see or speak to him again. For the remaining few months of his life following my trip, I would have to hear about his ongoing prognosis third-hand through relatives who had spoken with Danny’s boyfriend because he would no longer return my phone calls.
Finally, on Wednesday April 9th, 2008, Danny died. He was forty four. For quite some time after his death, I wouldn’t pick up a guitar, write a song, record or leave the house except for work. When I’d come home, I’d sit on the couch and stare with the lights off until the sun went down, fall asleep, and do basically the same thing everyday for weeks.
The most painful experiences in life revolve around loss and regret. I’ve beat myself up many times over the years wondering why I never made the effort to go back and see him before he died, or why I didn’t go much sooner than I did to begin with. I’ve tried to justify it with the partly true (but lame) excuse that I simply didn’t know how to deal with it. However, the more honest (yet less lame) excuse is the admission that I simply wasn’t strong enough to deal with it.
If I’m going to be even more honest with myself, I have to admit that a part of me was actually trying to save face because I didn’t want him to see me cry. I was sparing myself any shame that I may have felt by breaking down in front of him. How selfish.
Although… having said all that, I do put a small degree of blame on Danny himself for my own stubbornness. He was a big influence on me. I looked up to him and in some ways feel it was his own, unspoken rule that had been established at some point through example to always remain stoic in the face of adversity. Assuming that wasn’t a misconception on my part, I suspect that that facet of his personality could possibly have been a result of his earlier years as a closeted gay man who didn’t want to be perceived as weak or too sensitive amongst his peers. It’s all irrational silliness, I know, but the emotions and outcomes were very real.
Either way, I do still live with the regret of not being there with him at the end of his life and for not allowing myself to say a proper goodbye. However, I know that if he were here today- healthy and in his right frame-of-mind, he’d forgive me in a heartbeat.
ORIGIN and DEVELOPMENT
I had the actual melody for this tune running through my head for probably a good ten or fifteen years before I ever turned it into a completed song. I don’t recall where I was or what I was doing when it came to me, although it was probably while I was driving a truck. Back in the summer of 2011, my fiancé, Patti saw an ad online where someone was looking for an original song to feature in their independent film. I hastily threw together some lyrics and made a quick recording around this melody with just my vocals and acoustic guitar and sent it out to them. Needless to say, I never heard back. Their loss. The title I gave it was “Pulling Apart At My Dreams”- which, along with the words “Anything, Anywhere, Anyone”, was one of the original lines included in the ‘dummy’ lyrics that popped into my head with the melody itself. (These ‘dummy’ lyrics, as I call them, usually enter my mind simultaneously along with the melody itself. I often keep them somewhere in the final, completed version of the song, but sometimes they’re discarded altogether. It depends on what the song ends up being about when I finally get around to buckling down and writing it in full. However, the dummy lyrics do serve a very important role in the beginning by giving the rough song idea an identity I can associate it with so as not to forget it- the same way you would recall a popular song you know by singing a few lines of its lyrics to yourself.)
I don’t think there’s anything too cryptic in the finalized, completed version of the lyrics to DNA. If you read the above story, it’s all pretty much straight forward as to what the song’s about and how it’s all referenced. I make mention of seeing Danny in my dreams where he’s alive and well and it feels so real until I wake up. That’s also the point in the song where I was able to squeeze in the original, “pulling apart at my dreams” line and have it make some kind of sense within the context of the rest of the song by revising it to “…pull me apart at my dreams” (an obvious play on the saying, “coming” or “falling apart at the seams”).
All in all, I’m proud of it. I try to write songs that would make me say to myself, “I wish I had written that” if I heard it played on the radio but hadn’t actually written it. I also like to think that Danny would have liked it as well, although he could often be a pretty harsh critic of my music. Of course, I have no doubt that a degree of that criticism stemmed from the traditional, ‘older brother’ attitude that doesn’t allow for gushing or showering too much praise upon your kid siblings. (I should know. I’m also an older brother.) Nonetheless, this would have been an entirely different song if Danny had survived to actually critique it, and that would have been fine with me.
About The Recording
PROCESS, TECHNIQUES, PRODUCTION, SOUNDS, MIXING and MUSICIANSHIP
All of my songs are written in full on acoustic guitar. When it comes time to record them, that basic bare-bones, acoustic melody serves as a foundation upon which all of the other instruments (drums, bass, electric guitar, keyboard sounds and vocals) are built. When I take on the role of a producer in my studio, I’m always cognizant of the rule that all ‘decorative’ licks, riffs, solos and beats must conform in some way to that simple, acoustic rhythm guitar- otherwise it would be a mess to listen to.
There are many reasons for ‘decorating’ a song like DNA with musical accents. They can fill in lulls between lyrics and also serve to make transitions between song-parts (i.e. verses-to-bridges, bridges-to-choruses, choruses-to-refrains, etc.) more palatable. Sometimes they give more weight to a section of the song that might require a little more intensity. They can even reel a listener into the melody with strategically placed, catchy hooks that can become ear-worms, and give the song itself an identity that’s forever associated with that riff ever time you hear it. Likewise, a truly versatile and smart lead guitarist knows how to keep their ego in check for the sake of what’s best for the song. In lieu of constant solos, he or she knows how to delicately highlight certain phrases without stepping on the vocals or altering the melody.
When it came time for me to populate DNA with ‘decorative’, electric guitar licks, I couldn’t come up with anything that truly satisfied me. Any piano or horn-sounding tracks that I laid down with the keyboard (in the hopes of compensating for the lackluster electric guitar performance) proved to have the same, disappointing effect. After recording and trashing countless hours of work, I started to realize that it was the instruments themselves that were offending. I liked the parts, but they just sounded too aggressive or muddling when executed with an electrified instrument. Finally, I decided to do something I almost never do on my recordings: utilize the acoustic guitar as the lead, ‘decorating’ instrument instead. I know. How novel, right? You see, I’ve been doing this for a very long time and I’ve become a little set in my ways, but my personal system is to have each instrument play its own roll. The acoustic guitar lays the groundwork… ONLY! After that, I almost never use it again in the same song to tackle the duties for which the other instruments are more-often-than-not better suited. However, in the extremely rare case of DNA it became necessary to re-press it into service to help save the day.
If you listen carefully, (especially through head-phones), you may notice that I doubled many of the acoustic riffs by playing them twice at different octaves onto two different tracks. I then panned the output on one of those tracks to a hard left, and the other one to a hard right. The result is a stereo effect of delicate licks, accents and riffs that sit perfectly in the mix and enhance the song throughout. In certain sections of the song, (such as the intro and verses) I even ‘tripled’ the already-doubled and panned acoustic riffs with a complimenting, electric guitar version of the same riff recorded to a single mono track. When set to just the right volume level, this technique goes even further in highlighting the acoustic guitar parts with the hint of an ‘edge’- or even an ‘aura’ about them- without beefing things up past the point of being ‘light and airy’. While my electric guitar can still be heard supporting several integral parts of this song on its own, (i.e. the ‘squeal’ and lingering ‘wails’ at certain transitions) it proved to be the wrong instrument to feature in such a way as to generate this song’s particular ‘mood’ or ‘quality’. As I mention further below, that ‘mood/quality/atmosphere’ surrounding a piece of music is where we derive an emotional response to it. Alas, the tempo, melody, and/or message within the song’s lyrics are what usually (but not always) dictate what direction a producer will take that ‘audible scenery’. (Hey look! I just made up a term.)
In conclusion, I’m very satisfied with how this production turned out. It took a lot of banging my head against the wall to get it right, but that’s usually just another part of the whole process.
MY PHILOSOPHY
When the average listener hears their favorite song, they tend to take the background instrumentation- and actual sounds that were carefully selected and applied to those instruments- for granted. These instruments and their tones are instrumental (no pun intended) pieces of a complex puzzle that a song’s producer must tediously assemble. The song’s story, meaning or message found within its lyrics are usually the biggest determining factor in what type of ‘feel’ or arrangement the producer will pursue during production. While we tend to consciously focus on the singer, it’s this supporting cast of instrumentation that elicits many of the coinciding emotions that a song is trying to convey. It creates an identifiable mood- an ‘atmosphere’, if you will, much like the ambient music playing in the background of a soap opera or a scary movie. Have you ever seen that raw footage of the movie ‘Jaws’ without music? It’s almost comical to watch. (It’s also safe to assume that the movie never would have hit a nerve with the public if Steven Spielberg had decided that happy, ukulele music be played throughout every scene.) Two more shining examples: The guitar solo in the Beatles’ ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’. By electing to use a soft, delicate tone on his guitar for the recording, Eric Clapton conveys the theme of the lyrics, which (to me, at least) are about the outpouring of one’s emotions expressed via their guitar. Imagine that same exact solo played there with a raunchy, distorted tone. To me that would convey a sense of ‘while my guitar violently screams’. The second example is the song, ‘Little Green Apples’ written by Bobby Russell. It’s been recorded and released by dozens of different artists from Roger Miller to Dionne Warwick to Bing Crosby and the Temptations. However, the version recorded by R&B legend O. C. Smith (at least in my opinion) is the ultimate, definitive version. It’s produced in such a way that’s head and shoulders above all other versions of the song that I’ve heard. While O. C. Smith’s vocal track is second to none with his rich, smooth and soulful deliverance of the lyrics and melody, it’s that underlying thick, bass-heavy groove that kicks in behind him for the chorus after a very sparse and playful (even somewhat campy) intro consisting of call-and-response vocals and a glockenspiel. Thanks to producer Jerry Fuller, this version of Little Green Apples is the quintessential example of the way so many songs in the R&B/Soul genre were produced from the late 1960s through to the end of the ‘70s.
(As a footnote, I’d like to ad that the recordings of this era were also tremendously enhanced by the warmth of the pre-digital, analog tapes they were recorded to. Likewise, I’m well aware of the many great, very sparsely produced recordings that exist from all eras and genres of music. I’m only focusing on those with more intricate productions at this time as they are more relevant to DNA.)
Studio Track Sheet
I keep very detailed notes for each of my songs that I record in my studio by logging them onto my own, original track sheets that I created. Since 2009, I started keeping a “Session Diary” at the bottom of each page to serve as a sort of more-relatable, day-by-day record of my life and thoughts during the recording to offset the technical settings and track notes that populate the rest of the sheet above that. Also, I play all of the instruments and sing all of the vocal parts on these recordings as well as produce, mix and engineer every session in its entirety.
Apparently another one of the early working titles For DNA was ‘Anymore’, seeing as I wrote it above these old scratch lyrics for the song. I also wrote out some of the chord changes here and make mention of wanting to lower the key closer to my vocal range at the time.
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