"Number eight" a Geir & Jarle original

[cuthbert]

Very Beatley keys, I hear...  Did you use a Mellotron flutes sound? I use this same type of rhythmic pattern quite a lot myself when playing keys.

And very nice vocal harmonies - you guys sound great together, and loved the harmonized lead guitars!

Sweet percussion, too...it's a winner!

[Bluesberry]

Such a wonderful, unique, deep, beautiful, strange, musical, catchy, addictive, track.  Well done guys, well done.  Its old-school prog, back to the beginning, like something from back before they invented the name prog. 

[Hook]

It's like a lost track to the Foxtrot album! Completely captivating & wonderfully artistic; I totally love it!!!
Rock on!

[dobrodaddy]

Really beautiful song here, Geir and Jarle.  Can't beat family harmonies.  The blend is so special.  Great arrangement and production.  Lots of layers to enjoy.  I hope you and Jarle get together again soon for some more musical adventures!  DD

[andy casson]

Blimey, wonderful song, loved what you guys have done here! Deffo early Genesis vibe going on, those harmonies are to die for, and when that ele guitar comes in is wonderful. Excellent listen, and so so clever

bravo
andy

[OsCKilO]

When Eight ( 8 ) feels weak as a number
And falls from the rest in line.
It waits in state, until it wakes.
Infinity (∞ ) on its side...



Wonderful track.

It took me an hour to fully appreciate it (from pressing play..... To pressing upload.  )

[Geir]

Thank you for all the kind words!!

This was a very special song for us in many aspects. I'll come back to the lyrics later, but here's some background on how the music was made:

About a week ago I sat down with my (very) old Technics electric piano and wrote a chordprogression in Cm, and having just a vague idea for the melody.  the chordprogression was : Cm, Cm-5, B, Bm maj7, B7sus4(no3), C# C#sus4 .... (yeah I know, pretentious eh ? ... well keys can do that to a guy ). At the same time, without me knowing it, my brother had written lyrics and had come up with a chord-progression fot the chorus on guitar ( D, D maj7, am/d, gm/d, A add4, A). When we met and played the parts for eachother we said; Hey let's try combining them to one song..... and so we did. Well ... his part ending on an A and my part starting on a Cm was a challenge, so I tried finding a way to get from the one to the other and ended up with A, C#m, G#sus4, G#, Cm , which actually is just moving one finger at a time between the chords (using just three strings).

So now I only had to learn to play the guitarpart on the keys and the keyboard part on the guitar. It soon turned out to not work very well with the piano (I'm not a very good keyboardist) so we searched for other sounds. And the flute turned out to be a changing point in the development of the song. The sound called for simpler playing and it seemed to suit the song well (and my abilities as well )

Saturday the vocal melodies where fixed and the harmony parts developed and recorded. We wanted a little "lift" on the instrumental part and after the rhythm parts were added by my brother (all on selfmade instruments !) we decided to try the electric guitar. So after getting an couple of initial notes from my brother I added the four-part guitar-harmonies.

Lastly we added some strings to smooth out a couple of sections.

That's about it

I hear now that my main vocal part is a bit distorted on the first verse so I might have to go back and try to rectify that (but as about 40 tracks were used I'll need to have a whole evening for myself just to find it re-record (if needed), re-bounce remix and remaster ...)

I'll get back later and explain the background for the lyrics. It's quite an extrordinary story.

Very Beatley keys, I hear...   Did you use a Mellotron flutes sound? I use this same type of rhythmic pattern quite a lot myself when playing keys.

I used a flute patch on my old Roland D10 synth on this. There's also some subtle strings from the same synth on some parts of the song.

[TPB]

Very nice key work got that beatle sound to it was really chilling on this than the guitar kicks in and takes it to another level.A well balanced and interesting song
Tim

[The Gobi Desert Canoe Club]

Guys, not often I'm lost for words but I don't think there are enough superlatives in the English language. This a wonderful listen, thank you.......Willie

[AndyR]

Oh good grief - this is a stunner. Nice one guys. I loved it anyway, was wondering what else you could do and maybe this was all of the ideas in the track/arrangement, it was enough... and then Brian May arrived and there was a HUGE grin on my face - absolutely perfect thing to happen right there. Could have seemed contrived, but it doesn't, it's just right.

I'm not sure you need to explain the lyrics for me - it speaks stuff to me anyway.... oh go on then, I'm intrigued.

Actually, I didn't notice the distortion - maybe it's right that it's there? You're getting as bad as me!