Deep inside my darkness, you found a peephole
You pressed your eye up to it and you found a sleeping ghost
Then you started chanting, the ghost began to wake
You’re just like Prince Charming, you kissed my DNA
Those were the words quietly rasped by Sarah Jacob that drew me into her song, DNA. I first heard it performed what feels like over a decade ago. It likely was. Layered over Sarah’s marching piano part - two chords - an accompanying guitar riff by Darrell Arnold bubbles over, octaves of F sliding up to G and back again. The two parts counter each other in rhythm, creating a slight dissonance, like a specter haunting the verses. The song is melodically simplistic, but weighted with philosophical lyrics, even suggesting that our subjects are awakening the ghosts of each other. The chorus, wherein Sarah almost joyously states that her love is like a river, never twice the same, is in double-time with only one chord added to the previous two. It’s beautiful in its unpretentiousness and, what another producer friend of mine calls “accessibility.”
I love DNA, which is why when Sarah asked me to record and add orchestral arrangements to a few of her songs back in early 2017, we agreed that DNA would be one of them. I had recently moved my home studio to a warehouse and started a small production company called Paper Trees Productions. Sarah would be one of my first official clients. After coming up with a general game plan, Sarah and Darrell came in to record the vocals, piano, and guitar for three songs. The sessions themselves were smooth but I was soon left alone with the skeletons of her songs and the expectation to create something more grandiose around them.
Recently, I’ve been updating my portfolio which gave me a chance to revisit some of Sarah’s music and, in particular, DNA.
If you’ve never heard Sarah’s music before, here’s a brief description: As alluded to previously, Sarah has an incredibly unique voice. It’s edgy and tinged with her British accent. I like weird singing voices. I have one myself. Her songs are long, and the producer in me would always think of how to shorten them when I’d listen. Like DNA, they can be lyrically deep and philosophical, but I never find them to be pretentious. Okay, maybe Molecules and Atoms is a little much. I don’t know. Sarah works well with elements of contemporary jazz accompanying her, and she would often play with a saxophonist who exemplified this. She’s not a piano virtuoso, but I think her music is more about her words than how well she plays. Her songs being long actually would be beneficial to the project we were doing together: How would Sarah sound with a full orchestra (albeit programmed with MIDI) behind her?
DNA was actually the second song I worked on after another called At the Mercy. While At the Mercy was full of dramatic strings - a solo cello and violin playing against each other - and a really cool and somewhat frightening vocal sung by Darrell in German, I wanted to change the direction a bit with DNA and revisit my symphonic band roots. This meant doing all of the orchestration with winds, reeds, and horns. In retrospect, I’m happy I did this because it set the song apart and gave it a unique feel, even though it’s still part of a collective package.
0:00
Besides the flutes and French horns, I really wanted to emphasize Darrell’s guitar part, which I felt was integral to the vibe of the song, and partially what made me fall in love with it in the first place. So, right off the bat, we are met with horns slowly warming up, almost as if they are tuning. Once Darrell’s part kicks in, we are presented with the first hints of the hook I wrote for the piece. Still, everything is centered around that simple F slid up to G and back again. One of my goals was to create complexity within that simplicity.
0:35
The moment Sarah’s vocal starts, the room empties and we are left with those originally recorded base tracks, free of production besides some reverbs and compression. Eventually, Sarah reaches the line of lyrics that started this essay, where she talks about her (or whoever the song’s about) darkness and how her lover found their way to her. A warbling flute enters like a ghost and plays the very hook that you’ll be hearing in different ways for the rest of the song. It’s only momentary as the chorus comes right after and the room again empties. As the chorus comes to a close, Sarah sings, “And I could love you morning, noon, and night. But I will never love the same you twice” as Darrell’s guitar echoes and fades away.
2:05
We are allowed just enough silence to take a breath before thunderous drums ring in, bass layered under Darrell’s guitar, and horns playing a cascading melody over two bars then repeating again. The part builds and builds until a flurry with flutes breaks in and introduces the next verse. In a way, it’s designed to be overwhelming until the verse pulls everything back and calms the song down again. Sarah now sings with light winds behind her, sticks clacking in eighths, and flutes filtering in and out in staccato. As we approach the chorus again, horns begin to enter, breaking through the mix.
3:28
The second chorus was an interesting production choice, to say the least. I’ve caught some minor flak for it sounding like a marching band. It wasn’t intentional, and I stand by the decision to add those tubas, goddammit! In fact, many great artists have made the some production choice: 15 Step by Radiohead comes to mind, and of course there’s so much of David Byrne’s work that utilizes the same musical aesthetic. Whether intended or not, it also contains one of my favorite parts of the entire song. Where Sarah sings, “And you could love me morning, noon, and night,” the drums, coupled with horns, sound almost as though they are gliding through the song. It is reminiscent of older productions from the 60s & 70s where so many producers just had to throw tons of horns in (Looking at you, The Soft Parade by The Doors).
4:02
The song stops, breathes, there’s a little more tuba for some reason (Okay, maybe I do question the tuba a little), and it’s off to the races again with Darrell’s guitar solo. If I remember correctly, the solo is somewhat pieced together from a bunch of takes we did. Darrell didn’t have something definitive, just a handful of ideas. I’m reminded of David Gilmore recording many of his solos the same way. This is followed by everything dropping out, even Darrell’s aforementioned F & G riff, allowing Sarah to be alone with her piano, singing her tribute to her lover once more. Slowly the horns and flute flurry return, but instead of the song escalating, it relaxes back as Sarah sings, “You kissed my DNA awake,” again and again.
6:00
In total, DNA is a whopping six minutes long. Sarah writes long songs, as we’ve learned. In fact, I’m pretty sure that some of the interludes and the outro added some time to the original piece as well. A song like this one, however, full of movements and moments, deserves its time. I look at the songs Sarah and I recorded together as epics, each a story with a definitive beginning, middle, climax, and end. Maybe there were some epilogues thrown in there as well.
Some years after we recorded DNA, in the summer of 2020, Sarah approached me again about arranging another song of hers called, Stain on a Glass Window. It was written in response to the murder of Ahmaud Arbery and to be submitted as part of the Positive Pandemic Experiment, an Instagram page featuring singers and songwriters from Miami. The only catch was that it could only be three minutes long… We got it down to three minutes, 12 seconds. Regardless, I still have an extended, roughly five and a half minute version that I rediscovered during my portfolio update. I hope to release it soon, with Sarah’s blessing, of course.
Until then, please enjoy DNA.
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