Adnuntians bona
We don't have angelic heralds to announce the good news, but a new song is officially in the works!
Introduction
Short version: Gimme money! Every pledge you make will be met by two other donors, tripling your impact.
Long version: It’s been a busy year and half since the release of ÆTERNUM’s first song. This Substack was intended to be a way of discussing the project and its music, but I’ve not had as much of a chance to write for it as was hoped. The newsletter itself is experimental as can be seen that I took the time to play around with podcasting by discussing the science of sound. I still plan on discussing a few more aspects of the first song during the next year. But in time for the Christmas Season and New Year, I’d like to officially announce a new song in development: “Desiderium ad fontes.”
The musical details
The previous song, “Domine refugium,” was more post-rock / metal inflected, whereas the next song idea to be pursued draws more on my interests in “shoegaze.” During a lull in my summer travels I recorded (or programmed) various instrumental components that could be turned into a fully-developed song “sketch” during the rest of the summer. Here’s the final rough sketch without any “vocals” (i.e. synth organ), the action starting around 1m33s:
The main rhythm guitar is acoustic, there’s the beginnings of a violin part (synthed), the drum beat is more poppy, and the bass guitar is a key driver of the energy of the song. There will also be two lead guitars to add a lot more musical variety to song (with the completed violin lines). One of them will add some harder-edged metal-ish riffing, whereas the other one will be more atmospheric, chimey, etc.
The closest musical precursors I have in mind for the new song are “Leave Them All Behind” by Ride and “Fait Accompli” by Curve.1 As part of the wider English shoegaze scene, both bands were legendary during the early 90’s — before the derivative and uninteresting Nirvana ruined everything.
Both songs happened to fall between the 90-100 BPM range that my own song required. Once I realized that their sounds are similar to what I’m looking for in my own and that the rhythms match well, I took this as a sign that I was on the right track.
The vocal details
The song structure emerged from the Psalm texts I decided to use: Psalms 41-42.2 Why both? Because if you read through them you can see very quickly that the same refrain appears at 41:6-7, 41:12, and 42:5. They are clearly related to one another, forming one continuous Psalm. Further, I chose these texts because there is a refrain, lending the song to a verse-chorus structure typical of popular music today.
Thus the song structure naturally coalesced into three Movements: the first two are musically similar, ending with the chorus; and the third is musically distinct from the preceding two, but without the chorus. I formed the initial rough sketch demo from this structure, then adjusted the song as I wrote the vocals. I also augmented and reordered the text somewhat to fit it with the music better, resulting in the text you can see here.
The final sketch, with simulated vocals, sounds like this (you can follow along with the music with this PDF)…
The musicians
I look forward to introducing the musicians who will help accomplish the song, so stay tuned for updates on that front. For now, here’s the line-up:
Most if not all of the instrumentalists from the previous song, who will record in the Twin Cities. Their work will be integrated with that of the vocalists to create the final track.
Four new vocalists from Catholic University of America, two Sopranos and two Altos. As I got to talking with them, it became clear that I needed to transpose the song upward from A-major to C-major, so they’ve already been helpful to me. We’ll start practices in January, record in DC, and send the tracks (with video?) over to the sound engineer in the Twin Cities we worked with previously.
Conclusion
That’s it for now! We’re still at the preliminary stages of the project, so there will be lots to tell in the coming year.
Would you like to help get this done? We’re not going to be able to accomplish this second song without sufficient funding. But two generous donors are willing to match every one of your dollars donated, tripling the power of your donation. The minimum we need to raise through fundraising is $1000, and these donors will help us with the rest. If you’re willing to support the project, please donate here or get in touch with me directly. Whatever money we bring in beyond the $1000 minimum will go to future songs, merch for donors, and making sure that we’re able to do video this time around.
May the Lord richly bless you in the New Year!
Fr. Brian John Zuelke, O.P.
I’m more interested in the musical content of these songs than the lyrics, which are mostly dumb or unedifying.
Numbered in most Bibles today 42-43. The numbering of Psalms for the Greek and Hebrew texts used for translation differs. The Greek Septuagint numbering was carried over into the Latin Vulgate, which is the primary translation I’m using. See here: https://jimmyakin.com/2012/06/why-are-the-psalms-numbered-differently.html.