“Lose My Way”
Vincent Truman and piano.
I was probably eight years old when I learned how to cluck.
My clucking wasn’t chicken-esque, I should point out; instead, it was a rhythmic tool. I found, quite by accident, I could hum a melody and cluck on the beat – more specifically, the snare beat – without pausing. Having no ability to whistle while exhaling, a skill yet to be attained to this day, this was an incredible revelation of self-entertainment.
Gradually, the clucking sound morphed into a short nasally-pushed near-cough, which sounded much more like a snare than the cluck. Imitating a bass drum was simple enough, with a deep back-of-the-throat ‘thud’ sound. And cymbals were equally easy – a light ‘tit’ sound driven through the nose as well without vocalization. Hence, my first forays into songwriting, long before I learned how to play anything, were composed solely using sound effects generated by my face.
Of course, in time, I learned how to play the drums (my first instrument, around age 14) followed by acoustic guitar (age 16) followed by piano and then picking up instruments that were largely derivative from these first three: banjo, bass, dulcimer, etc. Thanks to technology catching up to me as a humble consumer, I’ve managed to record a great number of songs, playing all the instruments much like my heroes Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, the latter of which (at least) having no classical musical instruction.
Despite this, when I have written songs in my head, I have reverted back to the face playing that served me so well in my pre-musical days. And for some reason, I felt a bug in 2013 to try and record a song using only my face. This became “Lose My Way.”
I began the recording by taping the bass drum and cymbals, then looping them. This was followed by a nasal snare, also looped. Then, unsure where to go, I recorded a warbly ‘wah-wah-wahhh’ sound, then a doop-da-doop-doop-doop vocal bass, then a higher registered ‘doot doot doot’, followed by a harmony of the same. On tape, I had the basis of a two-minute song featuring four of my voices. So on top of it, I recorded an improvised vocal over three takes (to ensure the proper rhyming), staying in the same key, followed by several tracks of response vocals to the improvisation, singing each at a different pitch in the same key and, on the final take, ascending up the scale for effect. I added some flourishes of added vocal percussion in different speakers, some high-pitched ‘ooh’s and ‘ahh’s.
The end result:
