Posted on January 7, 2012 at 4:28 pm
The second track on The Stranger is the title track, a song that on the original album bounces in turn from smoky film noir jazz to Steely Dan-style rock to tropical disco and back again over the course of five minutes and fifty-one seconds (with the best drumming and bass playing on the whole album).
As soon as I finished “Movin’ Out,” I started worrying about how to pull this next song together. The biggest issue was the “Stranger Theme” that bookends the song. I didn’t want to keep the two musical ideas separate as Billy had on the original, so I kept putting off recording the song until I had figured out how to integrate them. As you’ll hear, I think I came up with a pretty elegant solution. (One problem that solved itself immediately: my whistling range is about four notes, so I knew I wasn’t going to try to reproduce Billy’s virtuoso whistling solo.)
The original tempo is about 92 bpm, which I bumped up to 107, with a sort of reggae feel. I dropped the key a major third, mainly to accommodate the falsetto stuff I wanted to do in the theme. In the verses, I changed some of the chords just to simplify the harmonic motion since the tempo was so much faster. I also reharmonized sections of the bridge, but that was kind of inadvertent; the way I’m playing it is just the way I’ve heard it all these years, and I was surprised to look at the sheet music and see that it wasn’t really that at all!
The percussion on “Movin’ Out” was provided by the body of my acoustic guitar; the percussion here was actually my guitar case. It’s amazing when you’re recording how everything in the studio starts to look like an instrument.
The Stranger
Music and lyric by Billy Joel (1977)
Jason Robert Brown: piano, percussion and vocal
Recorded at Casa JRB, Los Angeles, CA, 1/7/12
Oh God, the next one is “Just The Way You Are.” All right, follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know when it’s ready (probably not until February). And Happy New Year!
UPDATE: The next track is now posted here!
4 comments
Your piano sounds awesome! What’s your home setup like – piano, mics and mic placement?
[FROM JRB: Why thank you! I’m very proud of my little setup here. The piano is a Yamaha C5 that I bought in NY when I was writing “The Last Five Years” and then had shipped out here to LA once I had a house to put it in. I use a stereo Røde microphone inside the piano (this one), and honestly, I move it around a lot; I haven’t yet found the ideal placement, especially given how loud I play, but I’m enjoying playing around with it. I only have one other mic, a Røde K2 tube mic that I got on eBay (they don’t make this model anymore); it sort of works for everything – it’s a great vocal mic and a very true and clean sound for the acoustic guitar stuff I do. I drive everything into a MOTU Traveler and directly out to my MacBook Pro, run it all with GarageBand and that’s my setup!]
I can’t stop listening to this – absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for posting!
This is fantastic! I’ve had it on loop for the last half hour or so. Any chance you’d put up an mp3? I’d definitely pay for it if you tossed it up on iTunes or did a PayPal link or something – it’d be great to be able to listen to it in the car/on my iPod.
[FROM JRB: I may in the future; I hadn’t really planned on it, but lots of folks are asking. I think I have to get clearance from Billy Joel to release the whole thing… I’ll think about it. Thanks for listening!]
This is such a great reworking of the song! You really make it your own and I love it. “Movin’ Out” was great too. What do you think of when you’re reharmonizing some of the chords? Or does it just come naturally to you at this point that you don’t even think about it? Are you ever going to release the whole thing as an album? You probably would need permission, but I hope you do so once it’s all done! Great work Mr. Brown!
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