"We All Scream" - Original by Ted

[Ted]

"We All Scream" © 2006, 2019 Ted Johnson

Guitar, Bass, Keyboards, Drum Arrangement (MBR), Vocals: Ted
Produced entirely on the Micro BR, except the keyboards were done on a NanoPad plus a lot of drag-and-drop editing in GarageBand. The guitar "solo" is also a GarageBand loop that I exported, tweaked in Audacity, and imported into the MBR.

V1
I scream
Any time I see his stupid fucking face upon any screen.

You scream
Every time somebody criticizes your red-hatted regime.

Chorus
We all scream,
But we know we're not changing anybody.
We all scream
For air, milk, sugar, and dopamine.

V2
You say I'm mean,
Arrogant, elitist, rude, self-righteous, smug, and condescending.

I see what you mean.
I'll try to be nicer when I tell you one and two equal three.

Chorus

Bridge
I... I've got nothing against you
Except for the one thing I know about you.
Oh, Can we still be good neighbors
Since we've discovered we like different flavors?

V3
I scream
You scream

I don't even know whether the two of us still taste the same thing.
Pay no attention to the man behind the ice cream machine.

Chorus

Here's a little thing I hope to play live one day.

The main riff and the chorus were sketched in 2006 — two of hundreds of little sketches waiting to be brought to life. The original idea was literally going to be about ice cream. I decided instead that ice cream could be a metaphor for something else I consume compulsively.

[Oldrottenhead]

The trumpster gets me that way too. Braw bro.

[Redler]

It nice to hear that (almost) all has been recorded on good old MBR! You're really good with the recorder - this is a sample that it's possible to make professional recordings.

Great songwriting and the performance is top class as well!

[Ferryman_1957]

Wow, this is a nice treat, a new/old Ted song. Love the lyrical concept here, nice use of the play on words around "ice cream" and sums up the divided times in which we live. I like the angular rhythm guitar that really cuts through the mix and the change of the chorus is very effective. Nice backing vox as well. A punchy mix for a punchy song, great work Ted.

[cuthbert]

A very well-produced demo! And it has an immediacy that I wouldn't expect from a revisiting of a song idea written approximately 15 years ago.

Nicely done, Ted!

[TPB]

So well recorded this sounds good even on my crappy speakers at work
Tim

[Hook]

Yea this sounds really well done. Great mix and master. I dig this.
Rock on!

[Mike_S]

Certainly sums up the times we live in... good song Ted, would work well live I think.

Mike

[Ted]

Thanks for the comments. The production and mix here is mostly thanks to MBR magic and presets. The mastering preset I used was DanceCmp. I backed off the bass EQ just a little.

This is a well-traveled song. I chipped away at it while traveling in the USA. I recorded scratch tracks and the guitar part in a hurry at home in Antananarivo, Madagascar. I didn't know when I'd have my hands on an electric guitar for awhile.

I borrowed a bass in Sioux City, Iowa and recorded the bass and vocals in a spooky Victorian AirBnB. I did the GarageBand keyboards in Binghamton, New York, and made the first attempt at a master. That version had lots of clipping, plus I had a weird placeholder for a guitar solo that didn't convey what I wanted. I also started noticing problems with my bass playing, and was tweaking it in GarageBand, which felt wrong.

In the Sioux City AirBnB with the MBR propped up on a night stand with chamber pot.

In Chandler, Arizona, I was reunited with my trusty old Ibanez bass. (A friend is holding on to it for me.) I re-recorded the bass, and produced the master that I uploaded here.

While I was still in Arizona, the Nutrients started working on this. We may do a more pro recording of it in coming months. My friends here in Madagascar may look into performing this as well.

[Ted]

This was a feature of my room in the AirBnB. She was watching me the whole time.