Finding the voice

the brief

the first muso-flavour song, a celebration of the songs starting in gordon’s life and their impact on his psyche

Finding the voice, the 3rd karosong to start channeling, began on the guitar as a simple chord sequence that I had discovered years before. It was based around a D-minor chord and there was a jangly quality to the sequence that I really liked even though I played it badly.

Turned out that sequence was for a verse. I also got the chords for a chorus before any lyrics began coming through.

i was a poor boy on the black hawks
each time they blew lord stanley's game.
then I was hap happy on the oilers (hockey team)
well, until they traded wayne away...

From the start, the lyrics were personal — quite autobiographical in fact — bringing up the various ego traps that the meditation energies had forced me to look at. Ego identifications. Groundless fear. Missing faith.

The first three verses dealt with each of those in turn, describing how I had found the voice by "opening my doors", "meeting my fears" and "finding my faith".

And finding the voice, each chorus declared for its topic, had been a "blast".

but
meeting that fear was finding the voice and
finding the voice, yes finding the voice
was a blast

For me to that point, the 'voice' the song described finding was both the arrival of the songs and singing in my life, and a feeling that a 'voice' would emerge from the songs and take me on a remarkable journey. (It has been that.) I saw the song as a celebration of the great joy and hope the songs had brought to my life.

Then the fourth verse dropped the personal and went all missionary on me.

when you reach out to heaven above
you find it is your self touches back
we are all, every one of us, gods underneath
we've just lost our way, lost the voice inside

You too, the chorus went on, could find your voice if you tried “opening your doors, meeting your fears and finding your faith.”

I found the change a little confusing. It shifted the song's focus to self-awareness as a self-improvement project, but gave no clue on how to "open your doors", "meet your fears" or "find your faith", or even what those really meant. It was the first but not last time my inner professional writer questioned aspects of the songs.

But I had no say in the matter and, even if I didn't fully understand the song's intent, I still loved playing it. Even as badly as I played it.

There was a pattern in the choruses similar to something I had noticed in Transformation and Proposal. The choruses changed slightly and built across the song's early verses, leading to a final chorus that combined elements from the earlier ones. To me that was evidence, in all three cases, that the song had existed in its completeness before I ever started to channel it into being.

The Flame Within by Yanni was the only track I tried matching up with the spokesong version of Finding the voice, I think initially because Yanni's somewhat jarring opening piano reminded me of the jangly D-minor progression that started the song coming forward.

The existing lyrics fell into place quickly but the entire recorded spokesong version covered just half the length of Yanni's track. I sensed there would have to be some new material added but it wasn't clear what that might be. Another verse? Even two? A more expansive chorus? There was no clarity at all, so I put the song away for many months while I worked on the 2.0 versions of other songs.

When I finally took it up again (as karosong #17, towards the end of the second phase), it became clear that, yes, there were more verses and that, yes, the chorus was going to become way more dynamic. Way way way more dynamic.

But it was another case where — being an idiot musant — I didn't have the vocal skills to easily get where the song wanted to go, how it wanted to be sung once it got there, and then be able to sing it that way. It took a few months of vocal fumbling to get the new sections of lyrics and how they were to be sung.

And so the first half of the new song was a bog standard 2.0 karosong, based on 1.0 lyrics. But the second half was actually a 3.0 type karosong, a new asynchronous collaboration. Hence the song's 2.3 classification.

but if you try
finding your faith
meeting your fears and
opening your doors

you’ll be finding the voice

Post-script

Finding the voice was one of the first songs that I went back to during the 3.2 period when the whole/full karo was emerging. It had been quite a few years since I had sung it, but the re-connection to the song was immediate and strong.

the brief

Post-script

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