Johannes Schult

This is a little homage to WatchTower, written in anticipation of their show next Friday.

Eleven years ago I wrote a song called “Golden Future” for From Thy Ashes (my band back then). It was an attempt to combine a whole bunch of complicated parts. The result wasn’t very impressive. But I figured back then that the ideal unit for writing such material wasn’t a couple of bars; much rather does it boil down to chunks of maybe three or for notes. If you have a big simple thing and start adding details, the music just gets weary. So this time I didn’t really bother with the big picture and concentrated on making every single note count.

I started out with the drum track, programming some wild, odd bars of hectic noise with only very vague ideas of guitar riffs in my head. I have little (meaning no) advanced harmony knowledge, so I just played what I’d never play in an ordinary e minor setting. Half-step runs? Yes, please. I wrote pretty much every single note by trial-and-error as I went along, recording the tiniest bits separately, one by one. I was baffled how flawless it all sounded once I stuck everything together. I played the bass on keyboard, as usual. At that point I was close to keeping the song an instrumental. Most of you probably wish I had. But then I figured I could mirror the title of WatchTower’s third album, Mathematics, by singing about my profession: statistics. I dare to say that it all made sense in the end. At least to me. I know, I sound somewhat ridiculous when I try to channel Alan Tecchio’s vocal style. Still, I’m very happy with the overall outcome!

#16 Statistics

When I say what I do for a living
The response is silence
Statistics: misunderstood and ignored
Statistics: valuable and powerful

I love data
I love Stata
Statistics: misunderstood and ignored
Statistics: powerful and valuable

(words and music by Johannes Schult)