Wednesday, March 29, 2017

From Caterpillar To Moth : The making of Together We Become Forever with John LaMacchia

The Song
 Together We Become Forever was written and performed, in its entirety by Greg Puciato. When I initially heard the piece I instantly fell in love with it. It was really interesting to me that the piece never returned to the opening sequence. Instead it undergoes this metamorphosis like a caterpillar to a moth.


Greg Puciato in The Gauntlet 2008 
“I sat down at around noon one day, and then didn't get up except to eat and piss until about noon the next day, and this is what came from that block of time. The writing of this song to me is a perfect example of a state of being that I love, when you are so into what you are writing, so devoid of conscious thought, that there ends up being a complete dissolution between mind and music, time flies by, and you just get sucked in to wherever the inspiration is coming from. The piano melody initially started off from me playing the piano music to "Alfie" by Burt Bacharach, and then it just took off into something else. The slowed down string/feedback swells underneath the piano throughout the whole song to me represent something trying to break free, kind of struggling and twisting around under the surface, building tension, and then at the end of the piano finally breaks through with the loud string swells at the end of the song. This song was loosely inspired by the movie "The Fountain", with the first part's bittersweet piano melody but with tension underneath representing the struggle the characters were going through throughout the movie, and the musical resolve at the end reflecting his finally reaching enlightenment and freeing himself and reconnecting with his wife by letting go. 


The name of the song is even an homage to that soundtrack by Clint Mansell, who I have since reached out to and thanked for the inspiration. John actually also remixed this song and we were gonna put that on this EP too, but didn't due to time constraints, but we'll definitely put it out, it's really good.” - Greg


The Mix
 My role with Together We Become Forever was to mix it. It would be the only piece of music I would mix for the EP with the exception of Drop which was not included with the initial 2008 US release. So with that in mind, I wanted to make sure my mix matched the sonic integrity of the rest of the music on the EP as best as I could. In my mind this would not be an easy task because all of the rest of the music was recorded with microphones in a sound studio. The song was written and performed in a midi based music program. None-the-less, in the end, I felt I was able to come close enough so that it could be mastered to match the rest of the songs. I honestly didn't stray very far from what Greg laid down. I wanted to stay as true as I possibly could to the rough mix he had sent me. The only difference being a few EQ and volume adjustments.
 I was really inspired by this piece of music. So much so that as Greg mentioned, I did work on a remix of it. He titled it, Together We Become Voltron, which I felt was appropriate. Maybe one day we will get around to putting it out into the world for you all to hear. For now the original piece will have to do.”

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