The Vigil

This song came together in 2010. It is currently slated to be track 8 on “Hindsight”.

(The following was originally posted in a track by track breakdown on the Reinvision Substack page on Mar 2, 2023. Original post here The Vigil – Substack Track Breakdown Entry)

Background

What a way to close out an album, huh?? Hopefully, you think so too!

So this song has an interesting backstory. In August of 2010 I went up to Woodstock, NY to see the band Three in concert with what was to be the short lived Ophilya Payne crew; Nico, AJ, and AJ’s girlfriend Pam. It was a great show and we had a blast. However on the couple hour ride up each way, we listened to a lot of the band The Birthday Massacre. And for as much as I love Three, I think The Birthday Massacre, and their industrial/electronic approach, sunk into my psyche more that night for whatever reason. The very next day this track came together.

I tried to channel that more industrial approach, yet dynamic sound. The idea I had in my head was almost soundtrack-y. This started with the drums, and that is admittedly simultaneously one of the biggest departures here, yet perhaps one of the more distinct sonic signatures of this song as well. Once I got the drum sounds, I tinkered some more to get the other keyboard sounds, threw together the guitars and bass, and a demo was born. It came together pretty fast.

This initial demo was originally titled “Third’s The Charm”, which meant nothing in particular, it just needed a name and I came up with that. At the time, the plan was that this would also be an Ophilya Payne song. As a matter of fact, I believe this was the first song to be potentially slated for Ophilya Payne.

Soon after the first demo was done, the idea was to re-track it with AJ on bass. Nico had written lyrics, and would sing on it. So there is a version of this with AJ’s bass and with Nico singing. In order to accommodate all of that, the track was adjusted to be a little longer. This updated/extended version was titled after the lyrics: “The Way We Were”.

As mentioned in the write up for “Losing Control”, Ophilya Payne ultimately never took off, and this song sat for a little bit.

In the mid 2010’s I brought this song back out as an instrumental when I was making an attempt to get some more of my music out there. Christina helped me put together a video for it, and we re-titled it “The Vigil”.

This is one that even in it’s earliest demo forms, I was very happy with the way it came out and sounded. And while it’s a lot different than most of what I’ve done before or after it, I think it’s one of my more accessible pieces in a way, and it just nails what I was going for. I also knew that it was most definitely the song to close this album.

This track also became my test bed for the new recorded tones on “Hindsight” for guitar and bass, since I didn’t have to wait for drums to see how they would sit in the mix. Needless to say, for as great as the demo of this song came out, the updated guitars and bass definitely kick it up a notch. I can’t wait to share it with you!!

Demos & Gear

August 30, 2010 is when the earliest files exist for this song. As I mentioned, when I started working on this track, the first thing I wanted to try to accomplish was to get the right drum sound. To me, at that time at least, the drum sound was what I thought was the biggest separation between what I had done previously, and what I was trying to accomplish here.

So I recall spending a bit of time experimenting in Reason, but once I came up with the appropriate basic drum sounds, I realized that the way to get the sound I heard in my head was to add a lot of reverb, but then to add a compressor/expander AFTER the reverb, which meant that instead of the reverb trailing off, the tail of the sounds were boosted up to make it almost sound like the drums were sustaining in a way, with each hit ringing much longer. I ended up just using a loop of this for the entire track, and this became the foundation for the entire song.

I then experimented with some rhythmic pad keyboards that added texture, and even a synth bass feel. Then I layered in guitar and bass, which were initially tracked with my 1998 fretted Carvin 6 string bass (the main bass I was using with Angel Vivaldi at the time), and my white customized 2001 white Ibanez RG7321 7 string, both through my Rocktron Chameleon. I used the white guitar because at the time I recorded this, the Universe was down for the count with a dead lead pickup. I have no idea what happened, but in the summer of 2010 at a lesson, the lead pickup just randomly died. It wasn’t any other part of the electronics. A winding must have broken or something. So when I initially tracked this, I just grabbed the white guitar. That guitar has the exact pickups as the Universe, as well as the same tone woods, so it sounded pretty close, but that was when I realized that there is still a difference between those two guitars, especially recorded. The Universe just has a certain magic to it. Which is a nice mantra in itself!

I have files from September 17th where I edited the song to make it longer, and also one titled “Third’s The Charm now The Way We Were”. This is when I was also working with Nico on vocals. For vocal tracking purposes, I transposed the melody into a guitar lead as a vocal guide to follow. Here is a September 17th file called “The Way We Were (Practice Melody) that shows the longer arrangement, and how the vocal melody was intended to go:

From my original recording, the initial lead bits were where you could hear the difference in the two guitars. At the time, AJ was actually the one who chipped in and bought the replacement pickup for the Universe, which I promptly installed when it arrived. I have in my files, a folder from September 24, 2010 titled “Return Of The Universe”. Once that was corrected, I have files for this song from September 30th that have these leads updated. The rhythm guitars stayed. These September 30th files also have versions with AJ’s bass.

That was where the song kinda fizzled until a version I have from March of 2012 called “Third’s The Charm (2012 tweaked)”. So that was when I apparently flipped the title back to the original name, for a bit at least. I also reverted the song back to its original shorter length.

Then in December 2015 I have files that are titled “The Vigil 2015”. So that would be when I updated it, and used it as a foundation for the video. That honed version is also the version you hear migrated into the 2022 Hindsight Demos as well. I actually made no tweaks on this one for the Hindsight demos other than slightly updated “mastering” to make it a little louder.

So this song has been around the block a few times, and I’m glad it finally found it’s home here, as I think it’s pretty kickass. 😊

Video

Links

Here are some links to hear “The Vigil”:

Reinvision – The Vigil (2022 Demo) on YouTube

Reinvision – The Vigil (2022 Demo) on SoundCloud

As promised, here is a link to the video as well:

Reinvision – The Vigil 2015 Video on YouTube

Stay tuned for future updates as progress is made on this song.