Arrangements

[ButchVig]

Originally Posted by _Morph_

Hi, Butch. Thank you very much for being available to answer some questions from the gang.

I wonder if you follow a certain philosophy concerning arrangements. I mean, every song is different, but what prompts you to choose a cello for "Something in the Way", a sampled and highly processed beginning for "I Think I'm Paranoid" or the quarter-note silence in "Supervixen"?

Best regards!

"Something In The Way" is a beautiful, dark song, and I didn't really feel like like it needed a lot of additional instrumentation. We decided to add a cello because it would add to the mournfulness, and the bendy sliding parts help make it sound a bit surreal, at least to my ears.

In "Paranoid" I thought the intro needed to sound sort of spacey and swirly, so you feel like the narrator is not quite sure what's going on in their head.

In "Supervixen" we originally had the drums playing through the holes where the guitar stops, and then decided to have the drums match the pattern, so I cut the holes out when we mixed by doing automation mutes. It became even more exaggerated when the mastering engineer went to digital black.

Looking back, I feel like those arrangement decisions all help to serve the song....which is a good thing to think about when trying to decide what a song needs.