Shattered Visions Song Analysis

This song started with a couple of ideas that I composed on the keyboard, with
the I bVI chord movement (B major to G major) going over some hits reminiscent
of the intro to DT’s ‘The Glass Prison’. I notated this on Guitar Pro 5, and from
this ‘seed’ Bobby fleshed it out into a complete song arrangement, including an
interesting bar of 31/32 in verse 2 (1:48) that consisted of 11 sixteenth notes
and 3 dotted sixteenth notes, so a 22+9 grouping, i.e. retaining the 4/4 feel for
most of the bar with the end replaced with 3 slightly longer equal hits.

Bobby said he was going for a Karnivool vibe with the ascending unison line in
the heavy bridge (1:58). The softer 12/8 bridge (2:02) was an idea I had come up
with as its own separate idea, which I thought was kind of Opethy. It happened to
slot into the song quite nicely, and Bobby approved.

When we were workshopping the song as a band in the practice room, James
suggested I reharmonise verse 1, which is something I like to do eg. the Ex Curia
Jetpacks Was Yes Periphery piano/vocal cover on youtube. In Bobby’s full
arrangement, the keyboard line was the same two chords in the intro/main riff,
verse 1, chorus and verse 2, so it was a little static harmonically. So I took the
vocal melody from verse 1 and changed the chords underneath and added a
rather busy keyboard line, which, while busy, doesn’t clash with the melody in
my opinion. In verse 2, I ended up not playing the keyboard part there, but
doubling the heavy riff for a greater impact. So the two verses ended up sounding
completely different, but they both share the same melody that works over the
intro/chorus I bVI chord movement.

These are the verse 1 chords (0:52): Bmaj(add2), Dmaj7, Bmaj(add2), Emin9,
Amaj7(add6), Bb7(#5), Bmin9, D/C, C#min11, Emin9, F#7(#9,#5). Interesting to
note, the bass line steps up chromatically from the Amaj7 chord to the C#min
chord.

We also weren’t sure about what sound the keyboard should use. I was playing
around with an 8 bit plugin in rehearsal, which Rob suggested I use for this song.
It worked because the chord progression kind of gives off an underwater
videogamey vibe (a lot of my ideas sound similar to video game music). There is
a dotted eighth note delay effect on the 8 bit sound. This delay is often referred
to as ‘The Edge’ style delay, but it also happens to be common in video game
music. I played some of the keyboard sections with a staccato articulation to
really get the delays to come out clearly (eg. listen to the left channel at 0:55-
0:57).
 This 8 bit sound also inspired James’ lyrics, which is about a man that gets
trapped in a video game, that glitches/breaks around him as he tries to escape.
This is subtly reflected in the music starting at the double chorus (3:01) where
the keyboard sound starts off as the 8 bit sound (the video game) and gradually
transitions via crossfading to a piano sound (real life) – Daniel