Circle

Another “behind the scene” post, I guess I will continue doing this for songs I deem worthy of it.

Circle was written through inspiration. Nay … just kidding, it was pure accident =).I was practicing my unreleased song #12 (Circle is #13), a happier sounding tune. As I was wrapping up, I accidentally discovered the intro to Circle, very simple A-B-C. I put in A minor chord, liked what I heard, and spent the next 7 hours working on it.

Recording was tough. It took 4 of the 7 hours. I kept making mistakes here and there, so I decided that I need to cheat and divide the song in two parts. I recorded the first part and saved it. Then I just repeated the second part over and over. I needed to play A minor-F-G-C chord progression on my left hand, but I kept hitting Amin-F-G-Amin every so often. The freezing finger wasn’t helping too, I had to run it through warm water a few times =)

As I was recording, I decided to put in a little lyric to keep me motivated, so I started with the chorus. The chorus melody consists of C’-G-E-G-A. The high C note and the slight pause after it made it hard to start with pronouns (I, we, he, she, you), so I settled with “why”, and started rambling while recording. I accidentally rambled “Why, we draw a line”, and somehow it reminded me of South Korea bombing by North Korea just last week. I liked the idea that there is an imaginary line between North and South Korea, so I decided to use that as the direction of the song.

After all, we say “Koreans” when we see their people, never “North Koreans” or “South Koreans” because we cannot tell them apart. Why then defend a line that was not there to begin with? Korea was split in 1948 thanks to a minor decision of Soviet Union accepting Japanese surrender in the north region, and United States in the south. One believed in communism, the other one in democracy, Cold War happened, and the two Koreas remain divided until now.

What should we draw if we do not draw a line? I thought drawing a circle will kind of symbolize unification of the two; that was where the title of the song came from. The lyrics in verses were filled in after I was done recording the song. I decided to not use “Korea” anywhere in the lyrics to keep the song timeless, and to cater to listeners that are not into geography or world politics.

Hope you like the song. I like it, but I probably won’t listen too much to it. I like happier songs =)

John Doe

I was watching an episode of Chuck in which he was going off to a "suicide mission", and his girlfriend Sarah told him, "Don't be a hero." What she meant was she loved him and wanted him back alive. She did not want him to act so brave that ended up getting himself killed. That reminded me of an old question: were people who ended their own lives courageous or simply cowards? Wikipedia said it took guts (and means) for them to kill themselves, so who is to say they are cowards? If only they can channel their courage to something not as tragic ...

It happened to be that I was experimenting with "E Minor - C Major - D Minor" chord progression that night, with a melody that together sounded dark. I needed a chorus, and discovered it by accident when playing mindlessly. I realized it fitted perfectly with the question:

"If you have courage to die
Why don't you fight
To live?"

Hence the dark song "John Doe". John Doe is a nickname assigned to people with unknown identity, often deceased. The idea is that when we read about someone we do not know committing suicide, we want to ask that stranger, John Doe, the question above.

Back to Chuck, I like the idea that we do not have to be a hero to everyone, just to the ones we love. The rest of the time, it is okay to simply survive because there are folks who love us. Hence my favorite part of the lyrics:

“Be, be a coward
For the ones who love you
Be, be hero for
The one you love”

Oh, if you have not watched Chuck, you should! : )