How "6 Foot Fences" Was Written

this song is one that really benefitted from my and aaron’s partnership - it certainly would not have even existed if not for our collaborating on it. it started with this neat chord progression i came up with during the early writing sessions that I called ‘nice motion’ - but it -truly- started with this goofy little hammer on idea that i wrote while sitting on my porch, -years- ago…

I really thought ‘nice motion’ could be something cool. aaron scrounged up this hammer on idea and suggested they could work together. i was pretty rocked by the fact he saw compatibility between these two ideas, especially because to get them to fit together, we needed to change keys, tempos, and even the rhythm of the hammer on idea (it became the bassline). i vividly remember him sketching out the rhythm of the bassline against the ‘nice motion’ chords and us discussing which notes had to move to make them compatible. in the end, we edited it to this:

around the same time that I came up with ‘nice motion’, i came up with this pretty blustery chord progression below. it sounded to me like wandering through the edge of the woods at 6pm on an autumn day when it’s like 48 degrees out. aaron -loved- this idea, but i felt like ‘eh, but it’s not really a basic printer feel’. he was really interested to make it work.

that’s when he realized it could be strung together with what we had made above. after figuring out how they could work together, i made this simple demo where i wrote a vocal melody and some lyrics. this is, according to aaron, ‘his favorite melody on the whole record.’ i never thought i’d ever be able to write a melody well enough for aaron to have a reaction like that :O

i hired pete, the basic printer live guitarist, to help me track guitars and dial in tones. for this song, we used his vintage roland chorus echo and some other things to get this really sleek sound that felt as earthy as it did alien. enjoy this extended vid of me fucking around and playing with noises.