On The Fourth Day, I Layered My Instrumental Cake

One of the key compositional techniques I wanted to incorporate into Insecure Attachment was Dr Damian Barbeler’s concept of layer cake orchestration™ to add dimension to the sound without overwhelming the listener with complexity. It can be applied in multiple domains including time, volume, spectrum/frequency, pan position left/right, and spatially foreground/background.

In my case, I wanted to use temporal layering by introducing the instruments in section A sequentially like Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells, representing my foetal development in my mother’s womb. I edited the MIDI track for the drumset to mute notes on instruments I didn’t want so that track starts with just the kick, followed by the toms. Together, these represent my foetal heart starting for the first time. These are followed by the introduction of the hit-hat, snare, bass, synthesiser melody, and synthesiser chords progressively indicating the formation of the rest of my body, brain and higher consciousness as an independent human being.

Layering the instruments in the time domain required changing the number of bars in the section from the original power-of-2 length of 32 bars, to 24 bars matching the number of instruments being introduced 2 bars at a time. Symbolically this evolution of the piece mirrors my attempts to escape the rigid, dogmatic, ultra-conservative control of my mother and assert my independence.

At 24 bars it’s not exactly a radical departure though, which mirrors the difficulty of truly breaking free from the conditioning of such a powerful formative influence I was initially reliant upon for my survival. As Dr Gabor Mate has pointed out based on his life’s work helping people overcome addiction, the challenge in breaking free of dysfunctional childhood patterns is that we risk losing our attachment and this can trigger our primal fear of death by abandonment.

Here’s what the resulting logic session looks like now:

Logic Pro Session — Logic Session for *Insecure Attachment*

I’ve added a shaker in the B section, partly because every great track needs a shaker but also to represent the physical shaking associated with the terror involved in attempting to attach to an emotionally unreliable caregiver. It pans left and right to reflect the infant rooting reflex used to seek sustenance from the mother’s breast, and keeps moving to symbolise my unsuccessful attempts to find a source of emotional nurture from her. This is an instance of layer cake orchestration™ in the left/right panning domain.

I also added the gradual tempo increase to represent danger in the B section, highlighted really nicely by the new shaker, and cut one of the rising panic cycles to keep the track about 4 minutes long. In the process, I discovered that the SMPTE timecode displayed by Logic Pro for my project had a bizarre starting point of about 1:00:59.573, which fooled me into thinking the track was a minute longer than it actually was, and this tricky edit wasn’t really necessary to keep the track under 5 minutes. Nevertheless, now that I’ve been working with it, I’m happy with the more concise version.

I also gave names to the sections, as follows: